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Game Title: Akiba's Beat
Platform: PlayStation 4
Developer: Acquire
Publisher: PQube
Genre: Role Playing
Age Rating: PEGI: 12+
Release Date: 19th May 2017
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Game Score: 6.2/10
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Summery:
Although the story and the empty padding knocks Akiba's Beat's rhythm off a few notes but the tune has it's moments that are enjoyable.
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2013 and 2014 were the gaming years Japanese and Western gamers became shocked and wowed over the Japanese stripping simulator that is Akiba's Trip most notably Akiba's Trip 2 which is the sequel to the Japan only PSP game. It was a game where go through the actual Japanese district of Akihabara literally stripping your enemies down to their underwear in order for to be killed by sunlight. It was absolutely shocking to see such a game come into existence but it was a reasonably enjoyable and strangely laughable games that has quite the charm to it for anyone who can take the kind of humour. This now brings us onto Akiba's Beat released for the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation Vita where if you think you are going to be undressing more unsuspected Otakus then you are going to be disappointed only in that aspect. Instead the developers take the Akiba games into a entirely new direction by focusing on the standard J-RPG features and gameplay that you would see within the genre but still dwelling with the whole Japanese Otaku themes.
Being an Akiba game Akiba's Beat still takes place in the Real Life Japanese district of Akihabara where it is full of Japanese related stuff such as Video Games, Anime, Manga, Maid Cafes and collectible stores populated by Japanese Otaku. The protagonist in this game is Asahi Tachibana who is a NEET who is someone that doesn't care about being in education, employment or training but instead wants to live a lazy life where he spends all day reading manga, watching anime and playing video games like any young teenage kid would. His everyday life takes a change where he and several other characters that you come across are stuck in a time loop where Sunday repeats itself and mysterious worlds called Delusionscapes spread all over the town of Akihabara. Delusionscapes take the form of each of the various Japanese Otaku's desires all over the town, these include a Delusion full of Audio stuff, one Delusion that is fitting for a Top Class Idol, a Delusionscape that is Maid themed and so on and each of them do fit the game's theme very well. You will come into contact with plenty of Otaku that become obsessive over the amount of Japanese stuff that is displayed and it is nice to see how each of the NPCs express their thoughts on them even if they are displayed as faceless silhouettes. You will go through the storyline of the game watching a ton of cutscenes and for the amount of scenes that you will witness through 16 of the game's chapter it's told decently well for the most part and the translation is quite good and the main characters are surprisingly likeable. The voice acting for the English dub is decent for the majority of the main characters although Asahi's voice in a few spots is a little weak in tone and sometimes sounds a bit bored. Arguably the best voice acting performance goes to Kotomi who pulls out plenty of emotion over the Delusionscapes and some of her dialogue can be somewhat comical dispute her bad attitude. All of the other characters are voiced really well and there are plenty of humorous jokes and memes that are spilled throughout alongside plenty of fourth wall breaking jokes that you'll come across, that is if you understand the kind of humor. The main issue with the storyline is that it takes so long for the storyline to get anywhere and in some of the chapters you will spend plenty of time watching dozens of cutscenes before you can even advance forward. I understand that it is done for the sake of story building but it can be boring to sit through dozens of cutscenes in order to get to the next part of the game and the NPC silhouettes that populate the town do not help. If you are not a fan of the English Dub the game does have the option of using the Japanese voice track which is cool.
Akiba's Beat allows you to explore the whole town of Akihabara or at least partially of the town interacting with each of the faceless NPCs in order to advance the story and go to where you need to go. You can also take in the views of the town but however you won't find much considering you only explore the portion of the town that Akiba's Trip allowed you to explore before. At least you can look at the various parodied store names which do make fun of the actual stores shown in real life which is a neat touch. There are stores in Akihabara which follow the RPG stable for buying recovery items and clothing stores which sell clothing which acts as armour for increasing your defence stats. Instead of weapon stores you have PP stores which you can purchase parts which make your characters PPs stronger so that they can be more effective in combat. You'll either advance the storyline by going to the red exclamation mark or by doing one of the many side quests and character sub events. The sub events have you going to one spot and talk to one faceless NPC, go to another spot and talk to that NPC and then go to one more NPC to finish the quest. You do this for about 90 % of the character events and for the most part they just serve as nothing more then empty padding to waste your time. You don't even get dialogue options in any part of the game which could have gave any interactivity with the characters. These events do provide plenty of funny dialogue and hilarious moments at the very least but like with the main story it can be boring having to just watch cutscenes to get more out of the characters. At least Akiba's Beat has 50 different side quests which have you killing a certain number of enemies to complete them, at least they are enjoyable somewhat.
Akiba's Beat runs on the Unity graphics engine and usually games running on that engine have either performance issues and at times do not look good at all but Akiba's Beat isn't a bad looking game. The various designs of the Delusionspaces look great and are like I said themed from the desires of various delusers across Otakus. My favourite of the Delusionscapes is the Doll Delusionscape where you see various doll designs and it has that Alice in Wonderland look to it. The majority of the character animations are either done in the cutscenes which look nice by the way or done through the game's battles and they are really good for the most part alongside various attack and spell effects on both the characters and enemies which look decent. The game does run at a smooth 60 fps all the way through without any performance problems or game crashes which is rather impressive for a Unity powered game.
You'll go through each of the various Delusionscapes in Persona like fashion collecting items left around, fighting each of the game encounters and in some dungeons solve a puzzle or two to advance onwards. Some of the Delusionscapes are straight forward while other ones not so straight forward and require a puzzle to solve which doesn't take long to figure out and also require plenty of exploring to see the correct path. These are decent to explore and the designers did place a reasonable amount of enemies to fight but however in some dungeons you might notice that some floors are copied and pasted from other dungeons which is lazy design.
Hope you'll enjoy going through these Delusionscapes also because throughout the game a you'll end up revisit plenty of these as part of the story just to get a lead onto where you need to go next. It's that kind of lazy game design where the game tries to pad out game time by having you back to previously visited areas just to waste your time and it can be boring at times having to go through that one dungeon that you already just been through just to try and advance the story.
Akiba's Beat's main attraction is the combat system which drops the undressing mechanic and instead is heavily inspired from Namco's Tales of franchise, most notably from Tales of Xillia 1 & 2 instead of the newest game in the series Tales of Berseria. Now being that I played through Tales of Berseria and enjoyed the combat system on that so much it feels strange going suddenly back to the older style of the Tales Series combat system. Like in Xillia you hold down the L1 button by default to be able to free run using the left analog stick otherwise you run up to an enemy in a single axis. You have a simple attack button for using normal attacks and a skills button which by itself or with the direction of the analog stick uses a character's skill like in the old titles, a block button and a menu button where you use an item, change tactics, escape and on. Each attack you use takes up a single AP point and once it is depleted you need to wait for the meter to recharge to keep attacking and occasionally healing.
Alongside upgrading PPs you'll eventually get access to Trading Card Stores which will allow you to get trading cards which carries various effects such as increased stats, improved chances of unleashing a critical hit or being immune to status effects like poison. A character can equip 2 different trading cards and it is nice that each of them have various effects which make them useful in their own way. In addition to the trading cards you also gain the ability to use the Imagine Mode which is this game variation of the Tales series Overlimit system only that in this game it is done in a musical format. Attacking an enemy fills up the Imagine Mode and when it is filled partly then you can unleash it by using a character skill and pressing the attack button when the symbol appears. During Imagine Mode your attacks are a lot stronger, your stats increase temporally and you can't be staggered as well. Once you fill the Imagine Mode meter all the way you can engage in Imagine Mode completely where the same effects happen but also the whole area you fight in becomes a song filled with various beat effects which looks stunning. It is also accompanied by an awesome soundtrack which goes along with the themes of the characters and battles really well. You can get various songs as you go through the game that you can make them use for Imagine Mode. Attacking an enemy in timing with the rhythm deals massive damage as well as allowing you to if your characters learnt them pull of special ex skills which acts as this game's Mystic Artes that deal mega damage. The combat system does work reasonably well, the AI controlled characters are capable of holding their own and use whatever skill without needing to assign skills to them, you can switch to other characters with a simple press of the d-pad as you wish and I like that they put some of the Tales series spells into the game and they do somewhat function like the Tales of spells. The recovery items you use in the game function like their Tales of counterparts as well and it is nice that they put Life Bottles in the game but they do not revive characters if they are killed but Tablets do, instead Life Bottles in the game heal 60% HP to all allies.
While those aren't that deal breaking some of the combat issues is the controls. For starts I really do not like the default setup, for starts the button for normal attacks it's Square and blocking is circle, for interacting with the objects in the world it's Square which should not be the controls for an Action RPG game. Thankfully you can change the controls in the field menu which is thankful but you don't get it until you are in the game's first dungeon, forcing you to deal with it for a short time so you can set it up to how you like it. I will also point out that the controls can also be a little stiff at times, the character can take half a second to start blocking when the block button is pressed down or released. You also have to be very on point with the analog stick when using a character's special attacks otherwise you might end up spamming the same attacks again and again. I would complain that the character's attacks do terrible damage even with the best equipment in the game but I am going to assume that every enemy in the game has such ridiculous defence even if that your character's attack stats seen on the character's status screen are very high and should deal more damage then they should. Boss battles on the other hand are a challenge because every single one of them at times do not stagger when they take damage and also tend to hover around the battle arena which will require a some patience for them to go down. However it's possible to get into rhythm where you can keep attacking and avoiding their attacks when ever possible and as long as your character's are reasonably levelled up and also have the right equipment and cards equipped they are not to hard to beat on the Normal difficulty.
I will also point out about the support system as well, the supporting character that you can have with you will support you in combat by either healing HP, SP, boost your character's stats or cure status effects. Each of the support characters can be swapped over to your liking and each have their own ability that can be helpful. The biggest annoyance is that they point out and need to tell you everything, from save points to shops they are happy to remind you about what you pass by. It's kind of okay to be reminded that I am low on Health and I need to heal up but what I cannot stand is every single character reminds me about saving my game or if I walk by treasure to pick it up, going to a store or when I am about to get into an encounter. It might be nice to hear the responses once but afterwards it just becomes annoying to listen to every single character giving you remainders when doing something. It just treats you like a beginner more then anything and it's a shame that you turn these messages off.
While these small issues tend to knock Akiba's Beat's rhythm off a few beats but they do not ruin the game in any fundamental way. The game isn't difficult on the Normal difficulty and can be beaten in about 60+ hours. The game does include a few post game content including a optional Delusionscape, a battle arena and optional boss challenges, a new game plus mode as well as various trophies to unlock as well. Akiba's Beat does feel like a Tales Series clone with Persona elements and I think the game does a decent job in what it is tried to accomplish. I do like the battle system to the opening song which is called Again that is sung by Claris which again is what the Tales Series has done as well. While you do not get to get a full view of the entire Akihabara district of Tokyo and at times the enemy padding during the story and sidequests drag the game down but there are still a couple of things that makes Akiba's Beat somewhat enjoyable. I cannot fully recommend the game at full price but if you enjoyed the Tales of games and enjoyed stripping various anime girls in Akiba's Trip then you'll certainly enjoy getting to the beat with Akiba's Beat. I am not saying it's an incredible game or anything but I will let you know that it is not as bad as everyone seems to make it out be and I personally think it's at least better then Final Fantasy XV and Star Ocean 5.
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The Good Points:
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1. Enjoyable combat system
2. Nice soundtrack
3. Likeable characters and funny dialogue
The Bad Points:
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1. Storyline takes too long to build up
2. Most Side Quests are empty padding
3. Constant back tracking to previously visited areas
4. Annoying reminders from the characters
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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