Akiba’s Beat is both a stellar role-playing experience and a heartfelt yarn with bite. One of 2017’s best RPGs so far, and a new personal favourite.

I’m torn about Akiba’s Beat. On the one hand, there are large sections of the game I simply didn’t enjoy. The character portraits for the visual novel sections move slightly during conversations, which just seems like a tease. The combat has a wide range of options for getting through some very simple battles. I really miss decking out my avatar in ridiculous clothing combinations. Yet, the writing is excellent, the voice acting is on par and the game’s tone is just right.

While I can most definitively say that Akiba’s Beat is a marked improvement over its predecessor, I can’t help but feel that in its aspiration to become like the much beloved Persona and Tales series, it has lost an identity of its own. Despite its improvements, with the stellar lineup of games all bidding for your time this year, it’s hard to recommend Akiba’s Beat over its superior alternatives.

Akiba Beat’s biggest failure is, undoubtedly, its disconnect with what makes Akihabara so enticing. It is missing the heart of what you’d expect a game of its kind to have.

Despite a great localization and plenty of solid aspects, Akiba's Beat's strengths never manage to overshadow its glaring problems. Its copy-paste combat system, constant revisiting of dungeons, and other minor problems all add up to a bland and occasionally irritating experience.

Akiba’s Beat is a disappointing follow up to what was a flawed but entertaining game. The majority of gameplay involves walking to a location to button through some dialogue or progressing through tedious and repetitious dungeons. What content is here is stretched to breaking point as you’re asked to do the same thing over and over. If you enjoyed the characters from the last game you may find some joy here but others may struggle through the fifty hour playtime.

It is difficult to find anything nice to say about Akiba's Beat. It ignores all the good elements from previous entries and delivers something extremely bland and poorly-executed. With so many better alternatives available there is no real reason to give Akiba's Beat a try.