Platforms: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Vita, Windows, and Xbox One
Attack on Titan as a property and I have a strange relationship. I enjoy the show because of the action sequences and overall world it sets up while caring only minimally about the characters and the narrative surrounding them. For me, Attack on Titan is an excuse to see a pretty cool idea move around on the screen while I passively take in the rest. Omega Force’s Attack on Titan 2 is largely that in video game format, never really elevating the minutia of the series beyond anything but noise to get through until I can get back to swinging around and ripping through some Titans. While the previous game largely nailed this feeling, some of the missions dragged on a little too long and weren’t as paced out as quickly as I would have liked. The sequel largely rectified that issue, but it added a few things to the formula that actually bogged it down more overall.
First, Attack on Titan 2 is a musuo (pronounced moo-so) game. If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, it’s a rather simple power fantasy game wherein you run from area to area in a map literally mowing down hundreds of mooks, only occasionally running into enemies stronger and/or smart enough to give you any pause. When done correctly, these games can be satisfying as something to decompress to after being beaten down at work. The combat is normally fairly simple – hit attack a few times, followed by an occasional heavy attack and something cool happens on screen, while occasionally hitting a different button for a “super attack” of sorts. There’s not a particular trick to it, just repeat that dozens of times per level and watch the KO count go up.
The difference between your normal musuo game and Attack on Titan is the amount of enemies you face. While it’s possible in most musuo games to end up taking out over 1,000 enemies per level, rarely will you see the body count rack up beyond 50 here. The Titans you face are huge, multi-storied tall things that look human but just slightly off. There’s only one place that attacking them will take them out (the nape of the neck), so it’s a little more deliberate as to what you have to do with each encounter.
And how are you, as a comparatively tiny human, supposed to reach the nape of the neck of one of these things? The thing that makes Attack on Titan as a property fun to watch is the ODM gear. Think sturdy zip lines with anchors that shoot out of two scabbards clinging to your hips that not only propel you by reeling in the lines once connected, but also allow you to use the gas to rotate around whatever you’re anchored to. These are controlled by sword handles that are attached to the scabbards that also have spare blades to swap out once they wear down. It basically lets you move a bit like Spider-Man while swinging around. You can simply attach yourself to the nape of the neck of a Titan, let the anchor reel in, and, with a slice or two, take out something that could be five stories tall. It’s an idea that’s fun in execution and the missions themselves rarely bog you down with areas that you can’t utilize the ODM gear to swing through most of it.
When it takes away the ability to swing around because the level is set in a more open area without things to attach to, you’re on horseback. The early horses you have are considerably slower and can only sprint for a brief time. This slows things down and is probably meant to add to the tension of trying to get from one place on the map to another, but with a generous amount of time to get from one spot to the next. All it really succeeds at is taking away the fun movement, the one thing that really makes Attack on Titan stand out as a game. These times are pretty blessedly limited, seeming to take a cue from the previous entry and really minimizing the amount of time per level that you’re only real mode of moving quickly is on horse. Some of the horses you unlock move considerably more quickly, lowering the time you need to be on them even more. It’s a strange decision when you really get down to it. Why bog you down with slow horses for only a few levels only to have substantially more fast options available fairly quickly? It seems like an unnecessary systematic decision just for the sake of upgrading that I can’t really get behind, but it takes up so little of the game that I don’t really feel the need to dock it for that.
Taking out Titans is a simple enough idea, but Attack on Titan 2 adds in the option to cut the Titans at their knees and elbows. While you can get by slashing the back of their necks, some Titans will have ingredient rewards for cutting off their limbs. Getting these let you upgrade your gear between levels, something necessary as the Titans get stronger as you go on, but also extends out your anchor range, lessening the times you can’t be flying around on your ODM gear. There are a variety of options for new ODM gear, scabbards, and blades you can equip that are more proficient in some areas than others. Rewarding you with the choice for improved gear is a simple gameplay hook, and Attack on Titan 2 does this well, rarely making me want to skip out on cutting limbs off when the reward is available.
Where Attack on Titan 2 falters is when you’re not in mission. You go to a hub area to wander around and talk to your classmates. The game puts you in the role of a classmate of the main characters from the series, feeling more like a fanfic insert than anything else. When you engage with them outside of the levels, you’re given a choice of three things to say to them to level up your relationship with them. One will greatly increase it, another only slightly, and the third doing nothing. As you level up your relationship with the characters, you get a scene showing you doing something with them. This is something that might appeal to people who enjoy the characters, but as someone who’s not particularly attached to anyone in the series, these slow the game down way too much for my taste. And it’s not a simple matter of just skipping over them entirely, as you gain stat bonuses and abilities from upping these relationships. It’s something not technically necessary to continue through the game, but skipping over them could make the later going extremely difficult.
Your relationship with the other characters in the series can increase just by helping them out during levels, but once you fill up the bar, the only way to get the benefit of it is to speak to them during your down time. The times you help someone in combat aren’t infrequent but don’t happen often enough to really level up the relationship to be of much help. As there are a substantial amount of characters to potentially gain abilities and stat boosts from, bailing out a handful of them during combat isn’t going to net you very much without repeating side missions. While your level increases for taking out Titans and your overall performance during a mission, you don’t actually gain any stat increases when doing so. Instead, you only gain ability points that enable you to equip the stat boosts and abilities you get from increasing the relationship. I don’t think the downtime between missions is actually a terrible idea. If interacting with the characters is something you want to do, it would be a good way for fans interested in doing so to do just that. Instead, tying your abilities and stats to this makes someone like me who would rather just get to the fighting feel bogged down enough that I found myself mashing through these interactions as quickly as possible. Perhaps a better reward would be unlocking different costumes or having these characters perform better in combat while in your party, but I guess I shouldn’t play armchair game developer here.
The previously mentioned party you can have normally has you starting with no-names, but as you play through a mission, side missions will pop up that allows you to get characters from the series. These party members will occasionally attack the area of the Titan you have highlighted, but it’s not something to entirely rely upon. Instead, the party members each have a special attack that has a cooldown period. These can be cooperative attacks on a Titan that will deal massive damage, individual attacks that do more than regular damage, shooting out a flare that will make the Titans less attentive to you, a quick round of healing, or cooperatively capturing a Titan. While I like the idea, I rarely actually felt the need to utilize it. I would often forget about it entirely until I came across a particularly tough Titan or one whose movements were so unpredictable that just using one of those options saved me the effort of trying to take it out.
While Attack on Titan 2 isn’t the greatest looking game, you typically will be moving around quickly enough that you’ll never be looking at any one thing long enough to really concentrate on it. It’s not an unattractive game, but you’ll never find yourself selling it on that. It performs well aside from the occasional slowdown when there are a lot of Titans walking around, humans zipping around, and buildings collapsing at the same time. The Titans do tend to get hung up on buildings when in urban areas. Add in the buildings breaking apart and the Titans falling over with them, it makes the areas where movement with ODM gear should be easiest a touch tricky when a Titan falls over and your line gets detached as it hits a building. These are the areas where the performance might feel a little wonky and the camera might get hung up on a building after a quick detachment when you’re close to both a Titan and building, but the instances are few and far between enough that it’s another area I don’t really feel hinders the overall experience.
Attack on Titan 2 adds enough to warrant coming back if you played the previous entry. While it adds in the social mechanic that slows down an otherwise fast-moving experience, it trimmed enough of the slower parts of the original back that at least help take the sting out of that aspect. You might feel like those parts are less objectionable than I did, so it’s one of those things to consider when playing for yourself. Those parts don’t kill the experience, but take enough of the buzz off that I would make me recommend it without having to add in a “but” when telling someone how good of a time I had with it. If your tolerances for the characters are higher than mine, this it is an easy recommendation. Even with that caveat, Attack on Titan 2 is fun and worth a shot even if you’re not a fan of the property.
