AOT 2 Review - Is the sequel to Attack on Titan better than its predecessor?

nehashetty (58)in #gaming • 6 years ago (edited)

The hugely popular animated Attack on Titan is approaching its third season and revolves around a world in which humanity is in danger of dying out by towering titans of Titans. That sounds like the perfect recipe for a video game, right? However, the first Attack on Titan game was not fantastic: with a lot of repetition, technical problems and a weak storytelling. Now two years later the sequel appears, but does it know how to honor the series or are we again dealing with a colossal disappointment?

The story puts you in the Scout Regiment, a military division that has to save humanity from the ferocious attack of the Titans. Unlike in the first game, you get the possibility to make your character extensively before you join the rest of the cast for a workout. After fighting some wooden dolls in the woods and mastering your ODM ('omni-directional mobility') equipment you go out to seek revenge for fallen humanity and to protect the walls that protect the city. to defend. This time the story focuses on the second season of the animé, but there are also elements added to get newcomers to the lesson.

With your ODM equipment you drive yourself through the environment as Spider-Man and you have to hand out a series of carefully coordinated strokes to the attacking Titans. Momentum is the key here and you want to strategically cut off the limbs of your opponents to prevent them from defending themselves well. By cutting the back of the neck (their weak spot) of a Titan you and the environment are soaked in blood. You cut their limbs or they stumble around and crawl like a worm until they get the chance to eat you at once. The adrenalin shoots up because of the constantly high tempo of the fights and the 'gore' and the biggest set-up let the shivers run over your back.

The control takes some effort to master, especially if you want to maintain speed and link attacks to each other. R1 (on PlayStation 4) hold down and select a limb of your choice and by pressing triangle you fire an anchor point where you then go to. There is the possibility to use a cross for a speed boost (if you have enough fuel), but this requires a much more ingenious response that can do much more damage. New in Attack on Titan 2 are sneak attacks, which can be performed by pressing R2 and taking a Titan in your sights. If you schedule this correctly, you can carry out quick executions. However, if you look too long with your visor, it can ignite in a frenzy at the Titans.

Teamwork is extremely important and you can recruit four accomplices for the battles. By pressing round you can turn on the help of other fighters and with a few presses on the four-point push button you send the fight in when their 'cooldown' time has ended. We enjoyed getting our team members to save us when we almost made it to a halt and they would not get bored on a Titan. An interesting mechanism is that improving your friendship with other characters can bring you upgrades, such as more 'health' or better leadership skills. This is done by engaging in optional discussions between the missions and often giving positive answers during the dialogues.

As you fight, your fuel and the sharpness of your knife will decrease, making it necessary to build camps to replenish them. There are various bases that you can build and unlock in the 'campaign', including cannons that you can put down, mining piles digging for more resources, as well as general supply towers. These are built by using a required number of flare guns, these are available by completing optional side missions indicated with green smoke signals. Although these missions are useful for more tools and even extra accomplices, they often come down to the same thing: killing more Titans.

What we mentioned earlier is easy AOT 2's biggest downside: mere repetition. Many quests in the story consist of repeating the same assignments: switching off the Titans, guiding survivors and protecting buildings. The pieces in which you walk through the city and talk to non-playable characters offer the most variety, but even this falls short since you only talk to characters and upgrade your equipment. Although there is more variation in the game, such as more bases that you can build and other methods to move on, for example horses, but this starts to get bored quickly. Even the killing of the titans slowly becomes sleep-inducing, especially because sneak attacks can be exploited and it is easy to kill a Titan with one blow.

A saving grace is the Other mode, which offers competitive and cooperative game options. Here you can play as 37 playable characters from both seasons of the animé, which are unlocked by completing the episodes in Story mode and each character has its own statistics. Our favorite mode was the cooperative 4-to-4 Annihilation, in which you switch off as many Titans as possible to earn more points than your opponents. There are also Scout missions where you go on an adventure with a friend. Although it is more of the same as in the campaign, it is great to fight with a friend and help each other with higher difficulty levels.

The 'cell-shaded' style that Attack on Titan uses perfectly captures the atmosphere of the animé and reminds us a lot of the Gravity Rush series. The developer has delivered a great performance with the Titans, they look very scary with their lifeless expressions and strange naked appearance. Technically, however, not everything is so rosy. While fighting a group or as you shoot through buildings, the framerate falters properly, which does not help with the accuracy you need. Objects appear and disappear sometimes, and Titans sometimes get trapped in walls and buildings. Hopefully this can be solved with a future patch, since it caused the necessary irritation and the 'flow' from the fights.

Conclusion

AOT 2 a competent sequel that contains all the sensation of its predecessor from 2016 and adds some of its own elements. Unfortunately, it also inherits many of the shortcomings of the first part: sometimes the game is too monotonous and repetitive, and there are framerate problems that affect the required accuracy. We still love to shoot through the environments and rob the gigantic Titans of their limbs, but these moments are surrounded by the necessary frustration. If there are plans to make a video game of the third season, we hope that more can be introduced to revive the formula and provide us with an Attack on Titan game that we have been waiting for for so long.

➕ Enervating fights
➕ Gigantic enemies
➕ Accurate style
➕ Co-op is a lot of fun

➖ Repetitive gameplay
➖ Technical problems

Thanks for reading.