A.O.T. 2 (Switch) Review

I was a little hesitant to play Attack on Titan 2 (for some reason, maybe to do with copyright issues, named A.O.T. 2 in Europe and Australia) because I was worried it would fall into the licensed game trap and be a quickly put together, low-budget cash-in to capitalise on the popularity of its namesake. It’s so hard to tell until you play a licensed game whether it will actually stand alone as a game separate from the license. While it’s not all that varied in moment-to-moment gameplay across its length and has some performance issues, I was surprised at just how well Omega Force was able to capture the feeling of zipping around on grapple hooks and slicing up fearsome titans left and right.

The world of Attack on Titan is an interesting one, full of action and political intrigue. All surviving humans live inside a huge walled city. Outside the walls, Titans roam – fearsome and bizarre giant humanoid figures seeming to harbour little intelligence but the desire to consume humans. It’s into this world that we create our own character who will form part of an elite regiment that protects residents from attack as well as venturing outside the walls.

The character creation system is reasonably robust. You won’t be able to make any anime-styled character you could imagine but it has a wealth of options that lets you create a character that fits right into the A.O.T.’s world. Once you’ve created this character, they follow along the story of both first and second seasons of the anime – interacting with major characters, developing friendships and taking part in nearly every important action event of the story so far.

Ever since starting to watch the series, I had hoped a game could capture the high-intensity action of the show’s combat sequences but had my doubts it was possible. After all – characters zoom around battlefields on grappling hooks at high speed, effortlessly slashing at the napes of Titans and I fully expected the 3D movement would be too complex to translate down to a simple controller. I’m glad to say I was wrong on that front. Your character is equipped with ‘Omni-Directional Mobility’ gear, ODM for short, consisting of grappling hooks to shoot and swing from and gas canisters to provide midair mobility. Think of it as a military issued Spider-Man device. As Titans are gargantuan, this gear is used to fly up to their level and slash at their weak napes as well as to stay one step ahead of their attacks.

Control of your character in battle is surprisingly easy to grasp after you’ve had a little time to get to know your capabilities. Double jumps can be boosted for distance by using some of your gas, grapple hooks can be fired if there’s an object nearby to grab onto and then used to swing around at great speed. If there are no objects around to grapple onto, you won’t be able to use your grapple hooks but can often call a horse to your side to cover wide open spaces. Once you’re close enough to a Titan you can target one of its limbs or the back of its neck and grapple directly to that part. Once hooked on you can move around in the air to adjust your angle and avoid swipes or obstacles, then close in for a slash at whichever part you have targeted. It feels pretty incredible to string all these pieces together. A not-too-uncommon situation had me riding a horse to a built-up area, jumping from it to swing from buildings to cover more ground, finding a titan, targeting it and slashing at it’s nape, swinging away and calling the horse back while in mid-air so it’s waiting for me as I land ready to gallop to the next target. It’s a heck of a thrill.

There’s more than just direct Titan combat in action scenes too. More than just simply slashing through the nearest target and moving to the next, each battle in A.O.T. 2 is a fight between competing priorities. You need to manage your blade and gas reserves, as blades break and gas runs out. You can restock these resources by building bases that generate more of these resources over time. You can build automated or manual artillery to provide fire support in battles, mining bases to obtain precious equipment upgrade materials, and a bunch of others. More often than not you’ll have a major objective that if failed will make the mission a failure, but alongside this will be side objectives that if pursued can result in an advantage in the main objective. If you attend to distress signals you’ll be distracted from the main objective but often gain some new scouts to fight alongside you, as well as resources to construct more support bases. Having scouts at your side is important as they can be commanded to support you through special actions ranging from simple attacks and temporary attack buffs, to a launching a huge net which can capture a Titan to disable it and to later be used as a research subject. All of these competing priorities keep battles exciting, forcing you to make split-second decisions in the heat of combat.

Between action missions, you’re given a short moment to rest and get to know your fellow scouts a little better. It’s a very light social sim experience, consisting of conversations with characters with occasional reply prompts which will boost your friendship to differing levels depending on how your reply is taken. It’s definitely worth pursuing these character friendships. Firstly they uncover small character specific stories, some of which aren’t even seen in the anime or manga, and secondly they will unlock Skills which you can assign to your character for stat boosts and new abilities in battle. During this downtime you can also use acquired materials to buy new equipment, upgrade the stuff you already have, as well as influence political dealings by cashing in your earned respect in battle to push for things like a mandated rest period to boost soldier alertness or morale, or upgrade base towers for future battles.

If there’s anything to complain about with A.O.T. 2, it’s performance. Things can get really bogged down during heated fights. It’s understandable, battlefields are immense and full of little humans flying about around huge lumbering Titans, but particularly when you’re close up with a Titan and using gas to boost for an attack things can slow down pretty dramatically. I never found it impeded the gameplay experience personally, but it did feel like the game was pushing the limits of the Switch’s power. In certain sections the level of detail on environments seems unreasonably low as well. I imagine this is done to give the characters themselves the most graphical detail, but low resolution textures and low-poly buildings can really stand out if you are paying attention. Luckily I didn’t find this a bother during gameplay since you’re moving so quickly anyway but it can drag down the visual appeal of more dramatic cutscenes. In positive performance news though, handheld gameplay doesn’t feel compromised compared to playing in docked mode. Gameplay is generally smooth (aside from the aforementioned slowdown which seems similar between modes) and the game looks sharp in handheld too.

I’ve quite enjoyed the Attack on Titan anime, and I think that helped me appreciate the game much more. It’s hard to recommend to people unfamiliar with the show or manga, since while it follows along with the story, you miss out on a lot of the political intrigue that makes the events more meaningful. But if you are a fan, A.O.T. 2 is a blast.

Score: 4/5