Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed originally released in Japan as Akiba's Trip 2, the sequel to the PSP original. It initially launched on the Vita and PS3, and received an enhanced port on the PS4. This latest port is based on that version. I'll say that when I first heard of Akiba's Trip, the West would never get it, seeing as the original was passed up for localization. Thankfully XSEED games stepped in and brought this little bit of zany brawling to the masses in a number of ways. It's a fun time, even with a bit of rough edges to deal with.

The game's story is about how the protagonist, Nanashi, is an everyday otaku who sees a job ad promising rare figurines as payment. To his dismay, he finds that it was a trap for him to be used as an experiment for a new type of drug. The drug turns him into a superhuman capable of great strength and speed. The catch is that he is forced rob otaku of their life energy, much like a vampire. He even develops a weakness to sunlight. Of course he refuses, but before he is about to be terminated as a failure, he is rescued. After escaping, his benefactor, Shizuku, then saves his life and his dwindling sanity by forming a blood pact. This makes him her familiar. Also kind of like a vampire. They both then work together to stop the evil plan of the organization that is making these vampire-like 'Synthisters'. 

Seeing as the enemy of Nanashi and Shizuku are basically vampires, the easiest way of dealing with them is obviously to beat them up enough to easily remove articles of their clothing to expose them to sunlight. To this end, any clothes that you strip off without tearing can be mugged from enemies. Of course you can buy other articles of clothing, as well as weapons and items. The only real problem with this is that most clothing has crummy durability. Thankfully Nanashi's little sister can fuse clothing and weapons to make them stronger, for a fee. The real issue here is whether you want to spend the money and time needed to grind for any particular piece of clothing or weapon.

Combat plays out like a typical brawler, the face buttons either jump or let you attack high, middle, or low attack the enemy. Holding the corresponding button down will let you strip the article of clothing off. That's assuming that it's weak enough to be done, which is indicated by the red flash. Green flashes mean you can attempt a tug of war for it instead. Of course the enemy can do this to you as well, so it's important to fix your clothing which restores your durability. This takes time though, so learning to evade attacks while blocking becomes important. Or running to get a decent amount of distance at least. Leveling up your level and skills will make combat easier, but items can temporarily boost your stats if you need the extra help. The game is actually not that difficult. Most issues with the combat lie within being unable to freely switch targets, making fighting large mobs a bit more difficult than they need to be. At least when the mobs have a great deal of clothes weakened, you can do combo strips that also grant exp bonuses. There's also a super move that instantly strips all clothing on weaker enemies, and stuns others nearby. The targeting issue is a symptom of the game being a port of a Vita game though. The lack of buttons hurts it a bit. 

Thankfully the quality of the PC port is great, assuming your rig has the RAM necessary for it. This game takes a ridiculous amount of 4GB. That's the minimum. But it's really more like you need 6 or 8 to avoid most lag problems. Here's another issue that absolutely needs to be mentioned. Due to apparently a hardware design, the Nvidia Geforce 970, at least at present, doesn't play nice with this game. Outside of that one glaring detail, you'll need at least a dual-core to play the game decently without dealing with too much slow down. This makes me wonder just how optimized the port is. 

The game's new feature from the PS4 replaces the AR functionality from the Vita release. It's basically a soft modding tool that let's you mess with the colors, effects and sharpness. The game's pretty short, but there's plenty of endings to see and item collection to do. But if that's not enough you could mess with the visual editor to do some silly things. The brawler combat is fun cheeseball fluff, and the setting of Akiba and otaku culture makes for a great parody of both fanservice games and even internet culture. If you want to play a game that takes the piss out of these things, then Akiba's Trip might be up your alley.   

The Bottom Line: A fun Action RPG brawler than parodies otaku and internet culture. Is generally a good port despite a few unavoidable issues. 

Acquisition method: Digital code was provided by XSEED Games.