Akiba’s Trip is one of those Japanese crazy things. Akihabara is divided into various factions. Humans on the one hand and vampires on the other. And how are vampires killed? Well, stripping them so that the sunlight kills them. Today we review the review of the original PSP.

Akiba’s Trip: Hellbound & Debriefed is the remastering of Akiba’s Trip Plus !, which is, in turn, a somewhat expanded version of the first Akiba’s Trip that appeared 10 years ago for PSP . The grace of this title is similar to that of Yakuza: Like a Dragon: walking through the mythical Japanese neighborhood doing crazy things, living very strange experiencesand making very particular friends and enemies. The ones from Akiba’s Trip are even rarer than those experienced by Ichiban and his friends, as they focus on undressing the people you meet on the street while various events related to the culture of manga, anime and those of Akihabara take place. . The reason for so much forced striptease is that human beings inhabit vampires that must be unmasked. If you remove their clothes in broad daylight, they die. But be careful, because you are also a vampire , so if you get undressed you also die. With this approach, Akiba’s Trip: Hellbound & Debriefed will have us up and down various areas looking for enemies, making decisions that will alter the course of events and fighting in the meantime.

The approach is still as nice as the original 10 years ago. I like how the video game makes an effort to make jokes, how it leads us to disgusting situations and how it distorts reality to try to make what it counts is coherent; minimally, at least. But we are talking about a very, very fair remastering of a video game that came out on PSP in 2011. The original title was no longer a technical boast, it had serious problems with its camerasand with the dynamics of their fights. The enemy’s AI left a lot to be desired, and although the neighborhood knew how to surprise you with events, with having to show you more akin to one faction or another, and even analyzed your behavior so that its inhabitants reacted in different ways, the adventure became quite monotonous. Unfortunately, all those problems remain in this remastering. In PSP and a decade ago they were not so noticeable, but in 2021 and with an Akiba’s Trip 2 already published and that solved many of them, yes.

Neither the language nor the technical finish help neither to enjoy it nor to celebrate the anniversary of the gameAkiba’s Trip: Hellbound & Debriefed’s revision work is basically aesthetic. The game’s visual style has been adjusted to provide more definition for the player. Analyzed on Nintendo Switch, the title has a very solvent frame rate, but the image is still somewhat undefined, the animations are tremendously poor and the textures and modeling as well. Of course, this is the best version of the title to enjoy the original, but those who do not know English will miss the best of the game: his humor, because the title is not subtitled in our language either. And it is that Akiba’s Trip is funny because of how it poses its situations, because of how it takes such a stupid plot so seriously, because of how it leads its characters to idiotic moments … But neither the language nor the technical finish help neither to enjoy it nor to celebrate the anniversary of the game.

A very decaf review

I can’t recommend this remastering because it’s so poorAnd it is no longer just the technical that we find problems with. There are many things that make little sense in 2021. Fighting with several enemies at the same time is hell because of the terrible system of targeting enemies, there are long loading times every time we move between one area and another, and the weapons equipment New clothes or clothes can only be made if we are on the map, and it is necessary to solve many of the missions in the game. To find the vampires, we first have to take out a camera, give the option to search and then shoot, which becomes very cumbersome. As we progress through the game, new ways of interacting with the people around us are added, the story gains in interest and everything we can find in Akihabara is great, but all theseUsability problems appear again and again to sour the experience.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this remastering because it is so poor. It does not work as a celebration of this franchise because it remembers its failures more than its successes. If you want to enjoy Akiba’s Trip today, I invite you to play the PS4 title. And only if you liked that a lot, if you know English and if you can forgive the problems of having appeared on PSP, then try it with this one.