I always kind of wonder why people want online co-op platformers. Idk but I can't imagine it being any fun if you can't properly interact with eachother if you're not next to eachother on the couch. I guess not everyone has someone to play co-op with them though.

If you've ever played New Super Mario Bros Wii co-op with somebody you'll know it'll never work online

You can't punch somebody for throwing you into a bottomless pit if they're not with you

I would think that'd be the main reason for wanting such a thing. It's definitely a reason for me.

Go outside and make some friends then?? Idk man

It's not that hard

Yeah that's a solution. Making friends is not easy for some people though.

Exactly. Punching people is part of the co-op expierence. Current technology can't recreate such an expierence.

One day....

Alright, I've been talking about this for three days and it's been just about all I'm playing. Now that I'm sitting back and looking at the flaws of the game, it's about time I reviewed:



Alright. If you've been on Skype with me or been watching my PSN you'll know I've been all about Akiba's Trip recently. I've already played through the game three times and put like 20+ hours into it.

This game is literally about stripping your opponents. You play as an otaku who was turned into a Synthister, which is pretty much a vampire that isn't warded off by garlic or holy crosses and steals willpower rather than drink blood. You hunt down other Synthisters who are out of control and have to strip them to expose them to the sun to defeat them. It's generally a goofy game and it's really light-hearted overall.

STORY, VOICES, CHARACTERS

The story isn't really anything special in itself. It's lightly interesting but that's about it. A decent amount of main-story missions are just patrolling areas and fighting synthisters you find there. However, the characters are incredibly lovable and they're hilarious at almost every turn. From an unemployed highschool dropout who hates 3D girls to your adorable shut-in little sister, you'll find yourself liking at least most of the characters. Hell, even random NPCs say really hilarious things. Ever play Tales of Graces F? One fun little thing in the game is that one of the characters says something that sounds like "Dance like the damned, instant balls!". In the battle arena in this game, one of the contestants will yell that as they run out. Somewhere near the endgame your character also says "It's dangerous to go alone, take thi-- I mean, me" as a dialogue option.

The characters have a huge issue, however; some of their voices are outright terrible or just don't convey the right message. One character requests your help as they're attacked and when you get to them they sound like they're joking around when there are enemies right in front of you. It sounds like a trap. It's ridiculous; I couldn't take the scene seriously. Other parts felt like they were trying to be so bad that they were meant to be good. I heard one NPC talk and literally the first thing that I thought of was:


Despite some characters sounding horrible, others are hilariously fun to listen to. Nana makes me smile at almost every line of hers, it's so awkward and hilarious. It's luckily the intentional kind of awkward and it's executed well. The male characters are also generally fine.

GAMEPLAY

Now for the gameplay. The gameplay is simple; you use different types of attacks to tear off different parts of your opponents' clothing. You have four types of weapons; knuckles, swords, boards, and greatswords. These aren't exactly what they are as opposed to how you use them; guns are treated as knuckles, bats and brooms are treated as swords, parking signs used as greatswords, and boards can be motherboards, keyboards, laptops, waterboards, arcade sticks. That sort of stuff. Each weapon has slightly different properties and attack somewhat differently but generally none of them are drastically different. This is both good and bad; while you'll never be stuck using a terrible weapon (not taking stats into account) there isn't really much variety and you don't really have to care about how you fight. Sure, greatswords are slightly better against multiple enemies while fists are outright awful for multiple enemies but you shouldn't ever feel totally confused when using the wrong weapon.

The combat is fun and addictive, but it's rather simple. You and your opponents have three health bars; your headpiece, shirt, and pants. You just press the button that corresponds with the clothing you want to tear off. When you tear off the equipment by lowering its durability to zero then holding down the corresponding button to rip it off, it's removed and cannot be healed. You press and hold the L1 button to fully regain your HP. When all three pieces of your clothes are gone, it's game over for you. There are some moves you can use (and there's a movelist that the game doesn't tell you how to access or that it even exists) but generally your neutral combos are enough. Some weapons have absolutely terrible attacks. There's one where you crouch down and hit yourself on the head with your keyboard/laptop/motherboard and it has very little use, and since the game doesn't tell you how to use moves or how combat really works you'll end up using this a lot until you figure out just to stand still while attacking. Another terrible move is crouching on the ground for about two seconds, then lunging at your opponent. Both of these moves have very little worth and they are inferior to the default combos. Why add variety if it all sucks? However, there are lots of weapons and you're bound to find something you like even if it does have a couple of bad attacks.

Defense works by holding down the button and you dodge just about every attack except power attacks, which both you and the opponent can use. These are much better for your opponent however, as generally when facing a group of multiple enemies you can't charge up a power attack or you'll get pummeled by six of them while you're charging it. However, your normal attacks won't hit the dodging opponent so just attack until you hit them, I guess. Power attacks are only good when you have one opponent which roughly 95% of the time isn't the case. This makes for some incredibly frustrating battles. If your enemy decides to just dodge everything you throw at it (and you can't power attack, as said, since you'll get pummeled) you'll likely get stuck in between a few enemies before they beat the hell out of you and strip you for a game over. It happens! Defense is done horribly in this game. I can't say a single good thing about this, sadly. Stick to the offense.

Despite these, when the game's AI doesn't feel like a cheating bastard it's super fun and addicting to play. Combos are fun to pull off despite being simple and the strip system brings an interesting little mechanic into the game. Stripping is used creatively, like being able to chain strip (which lets you repeatedly strip your opponents one piece of clothing at a time). This lets you develop your strategies and decide how you'll approach a battle.

GRAPHICS AND MUSIC

Aesthetically, the game is pretty mixed. The graphics themselves are in a fine anime style, and the textures look beautiful despite actually being Vita graphics (SURPRISE) and there's nothing that makes you go "ew" when you see it. It's nice to look at. However, a lot of the stuff looks like it wasn't even finished. Animations are really awkward and they don't look smooth at all; one girl seems to be meant to have a breathing animation but when she breathes out she looks like she's trembling. A lot of your clothes will clip with your other clothes (you can't wear your sister's hoodie and a head accessory. They always clip. And if you sacrifice your head accessory, you just lost 1/3 of your HP potential) and a lot of clothes are kinda glitchy. When you put on any female tops, you gain breasts. But they bounce uncontrollably, like they're trying to consume everything around them. It looks terrible. It's not even the "I'm-getting-aroused-by-polygon-breasts" bouncy. Weapons just kinda float there behind you and a lot of the time you don't even have an actual grip on the weapon. The in-game portraits are really awkward to look at and their animations aren't smooth. The talking looks fine, but as soon as they stop talking it suddenly changes expressions. Basically, think of it this way:
When a character is speaking, he looks something like this: :D As he speaks. Then, when his lines are done, instead of going to the closed mouth frame, his expression changes to :oh: . There's no transition. It just suddenly changes. It, like most of the other animations in this game, feel really unfinished.

The music in the game is outright excellent. I feel pumped with boss fights and the unison strip theme is even awesome and satisfying to hear. There's mostly battle music with some side stuff but the battle music is some of the best I've heard in a while. It's a shame I can't find it on Youtube or something to listen to it outside of the game; it's great. Even the opening is really beautiful and sounds nice.

OTHER

Alright, let's start with the loading times. The loading screens are short and sweet. But, in actuality, the game fooled you! Joke's on you! The game isn't done loading when the load screen ends. It's still loading NPCs. They have taken as long as 10 seconds to load up for me. When missions are timed and you get an e-mail in-game that's telling you that your mission is about to be cancelled, you don't have time to wait around for NPCs to load. You want them to already be there to talk to them and complete your quest. I've had a quest end on me right as a girl loaded in. If I didn't have a save from before the mission, I would have missed out on the sister sub-ending.

The game also fails to tell you about lots of things. One of your missions from your sister is to take pictures of maids. I go around and try to take a picture of one and I get no message telling me I took a picture of her. Oh, that's it. I was supposed to take pictures of CERTAIN maids. It doesn't say so in the description nor does anything imply it but you actually had to go and take pictures of five certain maids. The game also fails to tell you what some icons mean, how to do certain attacks, if something is relevant, and so many other things. When you get an E-mail on your phone that's threatening the end of a quest, you can obviously tell. But there's also a totally unrelated and useless e-mail that tells you about an Indian restaurant that opens and closes, and another one where your friend is waiting for you in front of the arcade. Both of these don't impact anything and are just there. Nothing tells you otherwise. In fact, the game teaches you the contrary; if you get an e-mail of someone angry at you or something being cancelled, your first thought is "Damn, I missed this" not "Oh, it's just spam".

There are also framerate issues and apparently freezes. I have never had the game freeze on me but many people reported otherwise. The game's framerate walking around. Remember something I said before?

You're actually playing a Vita port (assuming you're playing the PS3 version like I did). A PS Vita port onto a PS3 is having framerate issues. There's something wrong with this. There's also framerate issues on the Vita as well.


However, this game does a lot of things right that fall under the "other" section. The side-missions is well done and the idea of your clients cancelling a mission if you hold it off is rather realistic and it's well-done. It just needs to be polished a little, just like most issues with this game.



This game has a ton of content, from raising your strip skills to getting new clothes to fusing your clothes to have max stats to powering up your allies to having multiple endings.. there's just so much to do in this game and it's still fun even the fourth time around and skipping the cutscenes. The battles, while they can be frustrating, are incredibly enjoyable and it feels amazing to rip some shirts and skirts off. The game is hilarious and sometimes I just started laughing in the middle of combat; it's so quirky and fun. Despite these game's flaws and how much I go on about how many issues it has, it's still incredibly fun and just needs a bit of polishing and fixing. The game feels rushed; I'm sure if it was delayed by a decent amount of time it would have gotten a 10/10 from me. I do feel that it was worth the entire $40 that I spent on it, even if it did make me want to rip out my hair a couple of times. I suggest trying it if you're into nerd humor and love anime related stuff as well. Even if a couple of the characters are losers, they're still awesome and fun to listen to. While the game does feel glitchy and unfinished in many places and could use a lot of fixing up, the fun factor outweighs that even only if by just a bit.

Pros:
+Fun gameplay for the most part with tons of weapons; very addicting when not frustrating
+Unique battle system
+Hilarious dialogue, characters, and, as stated before, gameplay itself
+Tons of customization for yourself and other characters
+Lots of replay value
+Multiple endings and scenarios
+Amazing music
+Some characters have great voices
+Large area to explore (Apparently it's accurate to the real-life Akiba too!)

Cons:
.-.Game generally feels glitchy and unfinished
.-.Unpolished animations
.-.Cringeworthy voice acting for some characters
.-.Unbalanced moves
.-.Some frustrating parts in the game
.-.Game fails to give some vital information
.-.Can't let anyone know you play this game ever

As you can see, Akiba's Trip is a game that has a lot of cons but somehow stays really addicting, fun, and does so many things right on so many levels. If this game gets more sequels, I'll import them if I have to. If this game's problems are fixed, it'll be one hell of a game. Right now, we're not quite there yet. So all in all, I have to give this game:

7/10





how did i do

good review
i got it this morning and feel the same way pretty much, but i haven't beaten it so

it's REALLY f*** funny

I've not played the game so I didn't read the review but I give your formatting a 10/10 :thumbsupemote:

You forgot to give a minus because you have to strip dudes as well

uh
stripping the male bosses is fun though because you get these goofy portraits
i had a link to one that wasn't a real spoiler but dammit. they're hilarious though.

EDIT: oh, here we are

those weren't actually in the japanese version btw, xseed contacted the devs and asked them to add them just for the localisation

equality!!

i know but what f** buys the japanese version when the US version is here
honestly i like the male art better than the female art because i feel like a creep

good

you feel like one because you are one

Hi friends

I've been saying for ages I was gonna bump this thread whenever I finished a game that I had a lot to say about

Well buckle up your f***' assholes my dudes 'cause I'm about to make a big post about
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (Bros)
That you won't fully read

I did a little review a few years back on the previous game in the series, Dream Team. Overall I had two major problems with it: It was too long for the small amount of content it had, and it had an absolutely ridiculous amount of tutorials. I felt it was flawed, but the potential to be a great game was there -- the kind of game deserving of a sequel.

I'm gonna structure this review in the same way as that one.

The good:
+New mechanics. The addition of Paper Mario changes up the game in some fundamental ways -- it's harder to defend with three characters, enemies have new and more varied attack patterns, and Paper Mario has some special properties of his own, like managing the number of Paper Mario copies currently in play (Getting hit kills copies instead of draining HP), jumping hits once per copy active, the hammer targets all enemies (or as many as is possible, based on the number of copies in play), and Paper Mario can float for a while after he jumps. These additions do a good job of shaking the game up fundamentally compared to the previous entries. In addition, a new card mechanic has been added, where you enter battles with a deck of cards that perform certain effects (buffs, debuffs, damage, increased EXP after battle, etc) used by star points which accumulate during battle. Using them does not count as your turn, so you can heal with one and then follow up with an attack. You can earn shiny cards with cheaper usage costs by fighting enemies. They're not revolutionary, but they're another level to the game that adds some extra strategy, so for that I consider them welcome.
+Tutorials have been dialed back significantly. Dream Team had mandatory tutorials for every single mechanic and puzzle in the game for the first 25 hours or so (and there were many). It was ridiculous. Thankfully, this is one area where the devs actually listened to criticism -- there are only a handful of mandatory tutorials in the entire game, all of which explain new concepts only. Tutorials for special attacks, basics and returning concepts exist, but they're hidden away in a menu where experienced players never have to see them. This is a huge step up.

Mixed:
~The art. My opinions on the art are the same as in the last game, since it uses the same style, but in short: the sprites are super well animated and gorgeous in their original resolution, but they seem blurry and poorly scaled during actual gameplay. 3D alleviates this somewhat, so I would consider playing in 3D to be essential.

The bad:
-Length. Mercifully, this game is a bit shorter than Dream Team (27 compared to 42 hours, according to HowLongToBeat). However, I don't think it was cut short enough. The game only needs to be as long as it can keep the player's interest, and this game just doesn't have enough content to remain interesting.
-Areas. There's a grass world, a desert, a beach, a forest, a snowy mountain, and the Bowser's Castle/lava world. These are all places we've been to a thousand times, even outside of the Mario games. Just looking at the world map removes any sense of wonder. Dream Team had a handful of dreamscape levels, which had unique music & atmospheres and provided slightly different takes on the existing worlds, but there are no such surprises to be found here. Get ready for the safest environment design imaginable.
-Enemies. The areas wouldn't be such a problem (and the length issue by extension) if there were a variety of fun enemies to fight, but Paper Jam drops the ball hard in this respect. I don't think there's a single original idea in the entire enemy bestiary. Every single enemy and boss is ripped from some existing Mario game or another. You can only kill so many goombas before it starts to get boring, you know? I mean s***, look at this thing from Dream Team. That's maybe the worst f***' enemy design I've ever seen but at least it's different, you know? They tried something new. On top of the recycled content, the amount of enemies is pathetically small. They try to trick you into thinking otherwise by arbitrarily doubling the amount of enemies by adding paper variants for most of them, but the main differences between them are that the paper versions are ever so slightly slower and weak to fire. I criticized Dream Team for padding out the enemy list later in the game by adding lots of recolors with slightly faster attacks & higher stats, but this is even worse. Most areas have about 3 different enemies you'll fight maximum, and you'll be spending probably 3-4 hours in each area (estimation). This is pathetic. Compare the number of enemies in Superstar Saga to the amount in Paper Jam (note that "shiny" enemies are identical except for slightly higher stats). Now recall that Superstar Saga is about ten hours shorter. It may seem like I'm going on and on about a small part of the game here, but the reality is that the enemies make up a huge part of what makes this game entertaining. All the cool mechanics in the world are meaningless if there aren't any fun enemies to use them on, and considering how few enemies are in each area, how long you're in each area and the fact that you know there are no new enemies to be seen, the enemy variety & design in this game is f***' boring. I should never be able to describe one of these games as boring.
-Papercraft battles. These happen five times (I believe) in the game, and each one is more unwelcome than the last. They're meant to be climactic boss fights that shake up the mechanics, akin to the giant battles in Dream Team. I liked the giant battles, because despite changing the controls and atmosphere, they still felt like battles in a Mario RPG game -- turn based, attack your opponent using precise timing to do extra damage, then dodge their attack and avoid all damage with skill. I bought these games because I love this gameplay. Papercraft battles are something else entirely. They're some kind of real time tank battle with stupid and equally out of place rhythm mechanics. They're long, slow, tedious and absolutely nothing like anything else in the game. They're so out of place it's amazing; I can't believe this got greenlit. I buy these games because I like these games, I seriously do not need a bad minigame being required & taking up so much of my time. Also, as a side note, once you enter one of these battles it's impossible to leave unless you finish it, and you can't save during the battle itself. I have no idea how that oversight got through, fire somebody for it
-Filler. Another big part of why I don't like this game's 27h length is because a significant portion of that is filler. Sometimes it's more subtle, strategically re-used areas (oh, you want to progress? Backtrack the last three rooms and collect these Things for me first, and each Thing is obtained via minigame), but other times it's a lot more obvious. The game has several moments throughout where progress grinds to a halt as you complete Paper Toad rescue missions. Some of them are short minigames; most of them simply return you to a room you've already been to and say "there are 20 toads hiding. find em". None of them are especially creative and each of these moments are obvious padding of the worst variety.
-Why the f*** isn't Waluigi in it?



Paper Jam commits the highest sin I can imagine of this series: it's f*** boring. All of the cool new mechanics it adds mean nothing when combined with such an empty, safe, heartless game. It feels like a game released quickly, without much thought, in order to cash out on fanboys (yes, like myself) with a nostalgaic love for the older games (there are many games on 3DS like this, by the way, some better than others). The worst part about this game's problems is that they're all problems that not only could easily have been fixed, but already were fixed in earlier installments in the series. Cut a few rooms out, add some new enemies, cut the filler, cut the papercraft s*** and you'd probably have an immensely enjoyable game. As it is, the only people I could see liking this are those who have never gotten to play a Mario & Luigi RPG before. And that's a huge shame. I didn't want the paper/mario crossover to be like this.

I'm giving it a 2/5 (bad), and in the future I'll be sure to look more carefully into these games when the inevitable Mario & Luigi RPG 6 is released. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, eat s***.

Is it better than Dream Team?
Kinda. Paper Jam is mercifully shorter, but, although I never thought I'd say it, Dream Team actually has a lot more & more interesting content in it. Dream Team is still lacking in a lot of ways though, so my verdict would be to skip both

Is it better than Superstar Saga?
Absolutely not. I only put this here for idiots skipping straight to the end. If you're interested in Paper Jam, (re)play Superstar Saga instead. Or maybe Bowser's Inside Story (dunno, can't give that one my blessing since I never played it but I hear good things). Don't play this one.