I have been waiting to play this game for a very, very long time and I am happy to see it remastered, but I cannot lie to you. It looks like a PSP game, which it was, and plays like Acquire's first attempt Akiba's Trip which they refined in the other game Akiba's Trip 2, released in America as Akiba's Trip Undead and Undressed (calling it AT2 from here on out.). If you want this, you will have to meet it halfway. You're playing a relic given the thinnest layer of spit polish preserved for posterity. The fact that this got remastered and then translated AT ALL is really a love letter to the fans of AT2, so as a labor of love I am extremely happy with this product. Is it as good as AT2? Not at all and it has not been upgraded to be so. But it is still a fun ride and a joy to have this relic updated and ported and translated so that I may finally have a chance to play it.
One big difference in this from the second game is that the story has multiple branching paths depending on which faction you wish to side with, complete with different final bosses, which gives it a bit more of a Way of the Samurai flavor and a bit more justification for replay than AT2:U&U had. Plus, even though you cannot steal underwear in this game, it somehow manages to be even more lewd and shameless than the sequel. That having been said, the game still has obvious flaws: The pacing is pretty lousy. The game is packed with side quests that are just "Go here, beat this dude up." repeat, and you MUST do them (Except for the quest fairly early on that is nearly impossible to complete without NG+ stripping skills.) because you need money to go buy skills for your character to extend your moveset and to strip clothes without destroying them (Mercifully you can knock most of this out in one play and if you want to go back for the other endings in NG+ those skills carry over.). The main plot path isn't too much better with two whole quests where you have to go change to a specific outfit just to mess with your build and slow you down and every route ends in an awful WotS classic series of boring horde fights. That said if you play it smart you can hold onto plot outfits and buy extras of grocery shopping items to speed through the game on replays.
Most of the game's negatives can be evaded if you just do the following: Play only on Casual difficulty, nothing harder, nothing easier. You can enjoy just about everything the game has to offer if you do all of your runs on Casual and you will avoid every problem with the combat system. The combat itself has similar issues to Nier Automata and all the Way of the Samurai games: The devs are amateurs at making action combat in their RPGs, and when AT1 gets hard, it typically gives you enemies that can kill you in two hits in a combat system where most of the time you and an enemy are staring at each other blocking forever because attacking into the block stances just gets you countered and a guard break attack will be countered by most AI. The combat simply is not as good as the devs think it is, and the proof of that is in their laughable single "crowd control" move which will not improve your horde fight experience at all. Again, this entire paragraph will be completely bypassed if you just play on casual, same way Nier Automata's combat problems are almost entirely invisible if played on Normal. So stick to Casual.
Now this is is a weird nitpick to make but the heroine of the game is on the side of all the bad guys pretty firmly so this obviously nice, good girl spends half the game off screen or even as a midboss and you are left girl-free for most of the run, possibly even for one of the endings if you side against her. Without a girl to fight for/alongside, you're kinda just some degenerate weirdo following random emails to go rip clothes off of Akihabara's worst vampire jerks. But for all the alternate endings and factions they give you, the heroine is quite clearly after the best ending and makes the best pitch for a good way to resolve the game. They are trying the WotS style "choose your own ending" faction system, but at least in those games even siding with the bad guys you could see as a reasonable choice. Here, you dont even get to smoke cigars and laugh with the villain. The bad end is just "You ruin a little girl's dream and make her cry." It is a weird tonal holdover from WotS but I can roll with it. Acquire is pretty crazy typically so these sorts of curve balls come with the territory.
Two more things: The translator had a lot less CREATIVITY for this game than AT2:U&U (THANK GOODNESS) so you are not going to be subject to a bunch of awful jokes in place of stuff like "hai hai" and "nii nii." And full Jap voice track is added too so you can play the dub or play the original dialogue.
Addendum: Brief review of the deluxe contents. The soundtrack does the job but it still sounds like it came from a PSP game. The artbook is mostly commissioned art from other artists. You get a brief extra story telling you where everyone from AT1 is "now" after the true end of that game, and about a half dozen extra pieces of official art. Half the book is dedicated to AT2 (U&U), but the only pictures they have for it are character art and the CGs from that game that you've already seen if you played that game.
