Akiba's Beat (PlayStation 4) Second Opinion Review

Themes are an important aspect of any story. They can help tie up an otherwise loose narrative and can be used to develop characters in a neat and concise way. Overreliance on a single theme, however, can leave lasting damage.

Akiba's Beat's main theme is delusion and it enforces that as much as possible. Its reliance on delusions is refreshing, initially. Too many JRPGs begin without a clear focus or fail to flesh out their themes fully, so it's nice when a title manages to integrate its theme so tightly into its narrative. Unfortunately, it's this very insistence that ultimately ends up being the plot's downfall.

Delusions are overused to the point of frustration. The writing is already on the weaker side thanks to a dependence on forced humour and an overall lack of character nuance, but it's made all the worse when characters begin discussing delusions. The repetitiveness almost feels like a joke at times, but it's hard to tell when the script opts for cheap laughs over developing its theme and cast.

The opening, for how grating it is, makes it seem like the plot will eventually criticize society's need to delude itself but, when those delusions come to manifest, it's seldom taken seriously or given the respect a theme needs to flesh out properly.

Even the Groundhog Day plot, which could have been used to criticize how society handles its day to day, is little more than added flavour. Akiba's Beat's story is teeming with potential that stays painfully untapped.

Combat is so stiff and slow that it may as well be a turn based RPG considering how much time is spent waiting to attack again during any given battle. The idea here seems to an attempt at making sure fights don't boil down to spamming the same attacks repeatedly, but it instead makes the action feel restrictive.

A slow-paced action RPG isn't necessarily a bad thing since it can leave room for more strategic play ala Dark Souls but if the AI is brain dead, which is the case here, all that's leftover is wasting time and awkward stops in gameplay.

Dungeons don't fare much better. The concept of dungeons being based off of someone's delusions is a fantastic idea, but it never feels wholly integrated into the gameplay nor realized in the scenery. Environments are samey and interesting puzzles are removed in favour of the ever frequent hunt for switches.

Each dungeon plays out much how like the Midnight Channel worked in Persona 4 with no real interaction outside of navigating past enemies to get to the next floor. Where Persona 4 had engrossing combat and the occasional puzzle to balance things out, however, Akiba's Beat has next to nothing to make dungeon crawling anything more than a chore.

At the end of the ever-repeating day, Akiba's Beat struggles to grasp any kind of identity. In straying so far from the series' origins, the sequel neither improves on any old concepts nor introduces new material to justify it's rather large shift tonally and mechanically.