It’s time to return to Akiba!

Welcome to Akihabara once again, as the spiritual successor to Akiba’s Trip, Akiba’s Beat has released a story trailer to whet your appetite. Publishers XSEED Games have created a new satirical JRPG that takes players down the Akihabara-inspired environment. What can only be described as camp, kooky, and crazy, this trailer has me raring to give this PlayStation exclusive game a go.

Akiba’s Beat will be a modern-day homage of the classic JRPG genre we’ve all come to know and adore. It will be set in a “true-to-life” recreation of Tokyo’s Akihabara district (“Akiba” for short), and players will take control of several youths led by Asahi Tachibana, the games protagonist. It’s up to him and his friends to seek out and rid the town of any out of sync anomalies, disrupting reality during a Sunday that is in an endless loop.

There will be two parts to the gameplay formula: first players will have to explore the streets and interrogate the quirky Akiba residents on a multitude of subjects relating to the mystery surrounding the town. Doing so will unlock fantasy-themes dungeons known as ‘Delusionscapes’, which are besieged with monsters known as ‘deluseons’. These monsters can be fought in a party-based action battle system, testing a players skill and creating a unique experience that effortlessly blends real-life Tokyo with the secret delusory world of its residents’ innermost desires. Akiba’s Beat will also feature dual audio, with both Japanese and English language dialogue options, covering a whopping 22,000 spoken lines. It’s safe to assume that the game will certainly be part JRPG, and part gaming novel.

Developed by ACQUIRE and published by XSEED Games, Akiba’s Beat is headed to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita systems this May 19^th.