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Genre: Anime JRPG beat’em up
Developer: ACQUIRE Corp
Publisher: XSEED Games, Marvelous USA, Inc.
Release Date: July 20th, 2021
Edited by DarkLunarDude
For the anime gamers that are not in Japan, it’s always nice to get a game that never got a western release from time to time. Akiba’s Trip: Hellbound & Debrieffed is one case that the game should have been brought to the west earlier than it did. For those who are fans of the series already most would know this, but Akiba’s Trip is but a port of Akiba’s Strip that started it all. But wait there is more, the game is a port of an improved version called Akiba’s Trip Plus that was released on the PSP only in Japan in 2012. So wait, we here in the west got an HD port of a re-release? So why call it under a new name and not its original name with an HD marker at the end? Who knows?
The game starts as you, the protagonist, lying on the floor in an alleyway and beaten up by a guy in a leather jacket with your friend in the background face first. It seems like you are going to meet your end until a raven-haired girl comes and saves you by stopping the guy, which is her brother. As she leans into you, she kisses you as some of her blood is drank and begins healing quickly as the two disappear. After you blackout, the protagonist wakes up in an unremarkable room and tied up while in your underwear no less. This scene is where the player is introduced to a group named NIRO or the National Intelligence Research Organization, as well as the explanation of what happened to you in the alleyway as it was your first encounter with a group calling themselves Shadow souls. Touching lightly on the subject Shadow souls have similar attributes to the popularised vampire (i.e. Superhuman strength and speed with a weakness to sunlight), and the only way to destroy them is as the title goes, AkibaS trip them!
For those who are unfamiliar with what Akiba’s Trip games are about, they are focused on the choices and the actions you take that make the story as there are multiple endings to go through. You can even leave Akihabara as soon as your let go ending the game quickly to save your data and start a new one with your equipment and whatever skills you have learned. Just about everything you do or say to a group will reflect on you and how that specific group will treat you for the rest of your game. Players can explore Akihabara by using an overhead map system that displays several areas that you can explore, along with a cell phone menu, and the main menu. The cell phone in a sense, is the player’s journal of his adventure, keeping up with the player’s e-mails that he has received, a to-do list, your character info, and an instant messenger that includes everyone in Akihabara. The main menu consists of your usual staples when you pause the game within an exception of one, and that is the Change menu wherein you can change your character’s weapon and clothing that consists of a top, bottom, and headwear slots. The most annoying part of this is that you cannot access this menu unless you are out of an area and into the map overlay, so if you just bought or looted a new weapon or clothing, you will have to wait until you get into the map overlay which can be frustrating.
Speaking of clothing and weapons, there are tons to choose from for your character. From weapons that could be used as weapons such as baseball bats, to the bizarre such as waifu body pillows! And it doesn’t stop there as the clothing options are just as off the wall as the weapons. There are hundreds of clothing and weapons that give your character a sense of who they are and what they are all about. Even though there are so many weapons that the player can use, it is broken down, into three categories of weaponry. The first one is your bare-handed weaponries that lack the reach of the other two but are the quickest and easiest to combo with and, for the most part, consist of gloves of some type. The second is your one-handed weapon that can be easily wielded due to its average speed and average reach it has and as for the weapons go, they are more or less items that logically could do most of the damage since they consist of normal things that can hurt a person, (i.e a frying pan, police batons, and umbrellas.) though that doesn’t mean that you will not find awkward stuff to fight within this weapon style. The last one is the two-handed weapons in which I’ve seen can be the wildest and weirdest things you can find people hitting you with and hitting people with as well such as computer monitors, duramas, and laptops. How weapons and clothing are upgraded are simple enough with an item called tungsten that will give you a +1 to a weapon and synthetic fiber doing the same with your clothing. Because of this, you can mix and match with only a little worry about stats at the end, where if you wanted to make your character from another source material into the game. (Such as a baseball-wielding guy with an eyepatch that I did.) It helps that there is one slot in your equipment that’s purely for show to add more flavor, but some of these are hidden away because of the head equipment, which is a disappointment.
If you want to expand your closet with what clothes you have, half of the time, you will be stripping your enemies for their clothes. To do this, the player will have to go around shops and buy what looks like skill books, if the player does not have the appropriate skill book for the clothing, then it will simply be torn off then taken off, so it is wise to invest in these items. Speaking of, how you find the Shadow souls is through your phone camera wherein has a special ability to show who is a Shadow soul by taking a picture, if the person disappears from the shot, then you have your target as this is taken by vampire lore as well with them not having a reflection because of a lack of a soul. By identifying the Shadow soul, the player can initiate combat with him by revealing the person’s identity to them. How you strip your enemy is simple enough, hit the target body part until you mess up their clothing as it begins to flash red, indicating it’s ready to be ripped off, if not, it is a tug of war to see if it is ripped off or not. Once you rip off a piece of clothing there will be a quick time event where you can rip another one immediately, I have found this troublesome as the letter indicators are black and white, giving me less indication of what I have to press and not to mention at times if you are close enough to something that requires a button press you will have two indicators that can make things confusing and frustrating. Not to mention the targeting while you are fighting at best is shaky at best and inaccurate at worst as it ends up me hitting a friendly, making me having to fight multiple targets where the targeting gets worse.
As for as sound goes, it’s nothing incredible but decent enough where it will not bother you except for maybe the background music of the shops where it plays the same song that may get annoying after a while that I had to mute the game’s music altogether though when I did, it muted the cutscenes music that was a video clip. With the sound being unremarkable, the graphics are just as much. Everything in the game seems aged, and poorly might I add as stated before, this game is a port of a ten-year-old PSP game. Some include bad lip movements that bearly are on queue, everyone’s armpit clipping through their clothing, and the blocky state of the buildings. Though at the very least with the lip movements the voice acting with the game is done pretty well.
Pros:
- Fun and addictive gameplay.
- Incredible customization.
- High replayability as skills and equipment are ported over to the next.
Cons:
- The game shows its age with its graphics.
- The combat can get repetitive quickly.
- The targeting in combat is neared nonexistent.
- The quick-time event stripping can be frustrating.
Alexknight2005 gives Akiba’s Trip: Hellbound & Debrieffed a Drastik Measure a 5.5 out of 10.0 (55)
Unfortunately, this is a case of the I am not mad, I am disappointed here. With the title as is, I thought it was going to be another game than a re-release or at the very least a remaster, but it is only a port. From what I can tell from its Japan-only release, the graphics were only touched up while the gameplay was untouched, so no quality of life changes was made that I saw. At the price of $39.99 on steam at the time of this review, even for the fans of the game like myself, it would be best to wait till it goes on sale around the $10 mark for this port of a PSP game.
