Publishers XSEED Games and PQube have announced that Akiba’s Beat, Acquire’s action RPG with a musical twist, is releasing on May 16 in North America and May 19 in Europe for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. It will be available physically and digitally on both platforms.
XSEED’s Tom Lipschultz explained how Akiba’s Beat relates to the previous Akiba-related game, Undead & Undressed:
The answer is… it doesn’t!
…Well, not entirely, anyway. It is from the same developer, Acquire, and it does share the same setting, but everything else is completely new: the story, the characters, the gameplay style, and even the tone! For those who don’t know (or can’t tell from the name), Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed was a bit of a risque brawler we published back in 2014, tasking players with stripping the clothes off of vampires so they melt in the sun. It earned a well-deserved M rating from the ESRB, and was an awesome game with a great tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and a heaping helping of Japanese cultural satire.
Akiba’s Beat, on the other hand, is a (mostly) non-risque action RPG that tasks players with traversing surreal “Delusionscape” dungeons and fighting monsters in action-packed battle scenes. It has a much longer and more complex narrative, a bigger cast of all-new characters, a more involved and nuanced battle system, a more narrowly focused satirical tone (still satirical, but less in-your-face about it), and – most notably – no stripping. None! This one was rated T by the ESRB, and is decidedly much tamer than its Akiba forebear.
Akiba’s Beat allows you to choose between Japanese and English audio, and there are nearly 22,000 lines of voice-acting in the game, from over 180 characters.
By pre-ordering Akiba’s Beat, you’ll receive a a pocket plushie of the game’s mascot, Pinkun (at participating retailers and while supplies last).
[Source: PlayStation Blog (1), (2)]
