Review: Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed Almost Gets It Right

Akiba’s Trip is one of those games that’s hard to forget about, at least conceptually. It’s a game where the goal is to punch people in the jeans so hard that they fall off. It’s utterly absurd; a joke concept that may be tough to stretch to a full game, and yet the team at Acquire tried to do that.

Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed is the second time they attempted the concept. The first game was a former Japan exclusive that eventually got a remastered worldwide release as Akiba’s Trip: Hellbound and Debriefed. Undead and Undressed, however, did get a worldwide release the first time around, releasing in the West for the PlayStation Vita in 2014. Now, almost 10 years later, it’s getting a Director’s Cut remaster for modern systems. So the question is, how well does the sequel hold up after all this time?

So let’s get this out of the way. Akiba’s Trip is weird. Not just because of its concept, but its execution is all over the place. One moment the game feels like it wears its concept on its sleeve, playing it up for all its absurdity. Then in the next moment, it’s tripping over its own pants with awkward dialogue and clunky gameplay.

Screenshot by Siliconera

If you’re unfamiliar with Akiba’s Trip, here’s a quick rundown of the plot. You play as a generic protagonist named Nanashi by default. He wakes up in a strange lab after responding to the reddest of red flag job adverts. He’s been turned into a Synthister, a violent emotional vampire. However, he gets rescued by a mysterious girl named Shizuku who helps him escape and shares her blood with him to prevent him from losing his humanity.

Now Nanashi, Shizuku, and his friends in the Akiba Freedom Fighters are heading out to stop the Synthister menace plaguing Akihabara. Of course, the best way to defeat them is to remove all their clothes so they can be burned away by their vampiric weakness to sunlight.

Screenshot by Siliconera

The process of doing this, however, is poorly executed. Combat involves attacking an opponent’s legs, torso or head in order to do damage to the clothing or accessories in that area. With enough damage, Nanashi or his friends can grab the shirt or hat or whatever and remove them. Remove all clothing items and they’re defeated.

This whole system is clunky to control. Fights are often against large groups, and limited dodge and inconsistent targeting can often make it tricky to position yourself in a way that you’re not getting punched in the back all the time. It’s also painfully repetitive. Every fight has the exact same rhythm, and I never really felt like I could mix up combos all that much. It says a lot that combat improves a lot when you unlock the team-up ability. This often causes so much instant damage it feels like it skips most of the fighting.

Screenshot by Siliconera

Not that things are much better out of combat. You get a decent chunk of Akiba to explore, including multiple real stores to visit and buy assorted items from. This would be great if you weren’t wandering into a loading screen every five seconds. Akiba has been split into multiple tiny regions all sectioned away from each other, with the most egregious problem being Main Street split into four separate corners.

These tiny locations also add to the problems with combat, as I frequently found myself backed into corners within the transition points. Thankfully, area transition is usually locked out while in combat, so this doesn’t lead to interruptions. However, the camera shift that indicates the transition does still happen, making it much harder to see what you’re doing.

While the first game had these problems, it could be attributed to its origins on the PSP. However, Undead and Undressed started out on the Vita, a system that boasted Gravity Rush as one of its most prominent games. That was a game with a seamless open world that Akiba’s Trip could have done well to emulate.

Screenshot by Siliconera

Where Akiba’s Trip fares a little better, however, is in its writing. There’s a satirical edge to much of the game’s dialogue, acting as a celebration and brutal takedown of otaku culture in equal measure. After all, the game starts with the protagonist taking a sketchy job offer simply because they pay in figurines. This is just a fraction of the self-referential humor about the obsessive nature of otaku. An obsessive nature that makes them a perfect target for a surreal mission to turn their entire Tokyo hangout into a hive of energy vampires. It’s all delightfully silly and it knows it.

Of course, there are times where it walks the line between satirical and just bad. On one hand, the cosplay sequence where the normally serious and distant Shizuku gets super into the hottest anime is genuinely funny. On the other hand, the awkward dialogue of the protagonist’s little sister is generally obnoxious to put up with. It’s a huge tonal problem that runs through the whole game.

Akiba’s Trip is a real mixed bag of an experience. It’s clear there was potential here with some of the writing, and the combat has a solid foundation that it fails to build on properly. It reminds me a little of Deadly Premonition, a game that managed to do so much wrong and yet ended up being a strangely compelling experience. Akiba’s Trip doesn’t quite pull off the same feat, but frequently feels like it could get close. It just never quite comes together as a cohesive whole.

Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed is not a game that has aged well. Its combat is repetitive, its map is too restrictive and its dialogue sometimes leans into the worst tropes too sincerely to be called parody. However, it’s clear that there is an audience for this out there, or it wouldn’t have gotten this remaster. If you can put up with the game’s many issues, it may be possible to lose yourself in the absurdity of its concept and enjoy its more successful satirical moments.

Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed Director’s Cut is out now for Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PC.