You know what I love? Japan, girl’s pants, shopping, iPhones, teen culture, stripping off peoples clothes unexpectedly, vampires that aren’t really vampires and that kinda thing. Thankfully I’ve just discovered a game called Akiba’s Trip 2, or possibly Akiba Strip 2, that is all about pulling off the clothes of teenage vampires to unveil their pants and make them explode in sunlight. It always amazes me how easy it is for something ‘from Japan’ to just leave me confused and flabbergasted at its existence so instantly. It’s also a sequel to a PSP game.
The game starts off in a beautiful cell shaded anime fashion with your main character lying on a table slightly confused. Relatively unanimated images of the characters appear on the screen to ask you questions and you are given the opportunity to choose your responses from a dialogue tree. It’s also possible at this point to say the wrong thing and be killed at this moment. Suddenly a beautiful anime girl comes in and teaches you how to kick peoples asses by dodging and punching and the like. The controls are a wee bit sloppy in my opinion, a more DMC or God of War battle style would of been preferable but it reminded me more of Vice City’s sluggish punches.
At this point it becomes a very odd mixture between a dating game and the kind of game that would normally be designed by a young teenage boy. There’s fan service all over, but it’s not an entirely bad game either. As I said; the control system is a bit wank, but you can tear through the game in no time if that’s what you want or you can upgrade and become awesome, unlock other fan service stuff like being able to change the female characters underwear and having see through clothes, fall in love with most of the female characters in the game, and experience a number of multiple endings.
It didn’t take long for it to discard it’s own mythology though; as the story evolves you learn that you are a parasite of sorts that feeds on the energy and motivation of others but you are a good one like Blade, and everyone else is a bad one. The only way to defeat them is to have their skin be in direct sunlight, the only way to do this is to tear off the clothes of the people you are fighting and watch them explode. The reason I say their mythology dissolves is because there are many girls walking around with very complicated lingerie on that, when you reveal them to the sunlight lingerie intact, explode whereas you’re-not-going-out-dressed-like-that girls who are showing a lot of skin already seem to be immune until you get them down to their little underthings. Also the characters get oddly addicted to this fighting style and when in battle with human beings will also tear off their clothes causing them to run off in embarrassment but having absolutely no reason to justifiably do so.
I took a while playing this one, as the story line was functional at best though quite fun and interesting if you understand all the obscure Japanime references and the like. There’s a lot of Excel Saga and Puni Puni Poemy style satire constantly on the go. When I play grand theft auto for too long I forget just for a second that it isn’t okay to break into cars, so I was concerned that if I played this too much and I got into a bar fight with my friends I might pull off everyone’s clothes. Which is already an urge. I’m kidding of course. I have no friends, which is why I’m playing anime games that are entirely about pants and boobs.
I would buy this game if you enjoy anime or manga satire or are likely to go to Akiba in real life and can therefore make use of the discounts from the real actual shops fliers that you get tin the game. It’s actually fun, but I can’t tell if I’m being tricked into thinking its fun by the evolutionary urge to get excited by pants.
Who knows?
3/5 for Akibas Trip 2. It’s a bit pants.
[★★★☆☆]
Dave Roberts
Akiba's Trip at CeX
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