Akiba’s Beat wants to be the Groundhog Day of JRPGs. But great ideas fall flat thanks to poor execution. A followup of Akiba’s Trip, the game notorious for having stripping as a fighting mechanic, Akiba’s Beat aims to follow the anime a bit more and to be a bit more of a traditional JRPG, where you run through simple dungeons having encountered. It’s a bit of a mix of traditional JRPG and a fighting game, as you tend to be on a 2D plane and sidestep rather than block.
The problem is the story is a bit too precious for its own good, full of meta-jokes that get a little tiresome, and there’s too much of it; the first hour of the game is literally just running around, setting up the plot, before you actually hit a dungeon, and the game hits every annoying stereotype along the way. It also never really pushes its repeating day gimmick as far as it should; while it can be used in some fun ways, we’ve seen this before.
Adding to the problem is the game poorly explains its stamina system, and the controls feel sludgy as a result. There’s ultimately very little strategy or skill to the game; just run up to an encounter, and hammer buttons until the enemy falls or you do, buy them some new pants and upgrades, and go find another fight. Paired with uninspired graphics and a repetitive soundtrack, unless you’re a hardcore JRPG fan, this probably won’t sync up for most players.
Verdict: Don’t Waste Your Time
This review was conducted with review code provided by the publisher.