First things first, since I played this game in its original vita release form, I definitely experienced some performance issues while playing that were fixed by the PS4 port. Since these have been updated by my understanding I won't raise them, but I want to note their existence on vita.

With that being said, my opinion on U&U is a little strange. I really disliked the monotony of the gameplay and the artificial difficulty, and none of the side quests were particularly interesting. The pacing of the narrative is super weird, going from nothing happening in the first 10 or so chapters to more or less everything at once. Shion's route is an inconsistent mess that uses one of my most hated tropes of all time.

And yet I'm still really fond of U&U! The other main girls are all really interesting and awesome, the main antagonist owns every minute of screentime they get (which admittedly is not many, though Director's Cut may fix this) and the lore has a lot going for it too. Nana's subplot is straight up adorable if you go all the way with it, the replay value is neat... in general U&U just feels like a very weirdly cosy game. Also, yay for equal fanservice between the men and women!

However, with Director's Cut existing... I really can't recommend the vanilla PS3/vita releases anymore. Even without playing DC just yet the devs pretty much admitted these versions were unfinished without the "true ending not told ten years ago", so really I'd say just go straight to DC rather than the original game, there's nothing in them that isn't also in DC aside from maybe slightly better lighting.

I played Akiba's Trip H&D pretty much immediately after its... successor AND predecessor (yay localisation issues), Trip U&U, and I'm unpopular in saying I prefer this entry. However, I just can't deny how great the plot and characterisation of H&D is! The narrative is mostly light even with its tackling of some mature themes, with a faction war at the centre of both the story and the branching endings. This setup allowed for some good old themes of coexistence and acceptance, and boy does H&D get it right. The characters are all absolute treasures (even the villains and random NPCs!) and I found myself incredibly attached to everyone by the end. This is definitely aided by tanu's amazing sprite work throughout the story's cutscenes.

The gameplay is generally serviceable and nothing more, however I actually prefer the system for obtaining clothes here to U&U and the option to buy different move types was a godsend. How U&U didn't have moving or area attacks is beyond me. The graphics are also mostly serviceable, but to be totally honest after seeing what they were in the original PSP release they're a definite upgrade, jesus. Audio quality can be a little strange on VA in the early game, but due to H&D's production coinciding with covid lockdowns this isn't something I hold against the game at all.

Given the whole concept of H&D involves you learning stripping techniques from a shady dancing woman who lives in a pink mansion on an Akiba rooftop, it would be easy to assume it's mostly fanservice and not much plot (not that fanservice is a bad thing per se). But not only is fanservice a minimum, this story is one of the most welcome experiences I've chanced upon in a game.

This will be the only game I ever give a star rating to, purely because of what it means to me. I'm honestly not gonna rant on Akiba's Beat too long, since I'd be here forever and I know it would turn into gushing, but I do still feel my judgement is valid having played the game several times and watching a relative play through another recently.

The main point I want to state with this review is that this game is NOT soulless, and I still can't understand where this reputation emerged from. Everything from the dialogue to the item descriptions to the narrative to the voice acting... this game is absolutely a work of passion. I definitely respect that the story isn't for everyone, but the love that was poured into this game both by the original team and the western localisation team shines through no matter what. Regardless of anything else, I'd absolutely recommend Beat on heart alone, with its somewhat satirical yet genuine core narrative about escapism and isolation. I've talked with a couple of people who worked on the game, and the one apparent thing every time is how much passion they put into it.

With that out of the way, all I can really say is this game was pivotal to me in more ways than I can describe. Its characters and themes were and still are a huge comfort to me, and the core theme of moving into the future while carrying memories of the past has helped me time and time again. It lets you know that it's okay to fantasise and escape every now and again, since it's those daydreams that motivate us to catch our goals in reality, and that's always been really powerful imo. To quit my emotional stuff for a moment, the plot straight up bangs and the characters are brilliant. Regardless of if you find them predictable or not, there's some really cool and compelling concepts in here that are grounded well by the setting and characters.

Beat definitely shows some indie roughness in a few QoL aspects but nothing will ever stop me from loving it, even now I find new reasons to appreciate it. It just saddens me that people could call it heartless.

To make one last comment: As someone who has played the first portion of Persona 5, they are nothing alike. This isn't to do with quality or my opinion, just objectively, the story themes are completely unrelated, the gameplay isn't the same genre, even the structure of the narrative is completely different. I can confidently say that people who compared this game to P5 did so because of the similar release dates and/or not playing enough games with mindscapes for environments. I have the same things to say about P4 too. A much more apt comparison would be Tokyo Xanadu eX+, another game I greatly enjoyed, and I can confidently say that if you enjoy one then it's highly likely you'll also enjoy the other.