Game Title: Attack on Titan 2
Developer: Omega Force, Koei Tecmo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 3 – 4.75 hours
Download: 13.3 GB

I love Attack on Titan, from the anime to Abridge on Titan to the PS Vita game that Omega Force made to combine musou conquest with spider-man grappling and make ODM Gear feel awesome in a video game.

Of course, when they announced Attack on Titan 2, I was excited, but skeptical at the same time. Attack on Titan’s 2nd season was extremely short, so I wondered how they’d be able to make Season 2 into a game with any sort of length to it.

Now that we’re here, let’s talk about it. Here is my review of Attack on Titan 2 for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Contrary to my guess, this game doesn’t just take place during the 2nd Season of Attack on Titan, but covers the entire saga all the way back to the first appearance of the Colossal Titan in the anime’s pilot episode.

Instead of putting you in the shoes of the various protagonists of the anime, you play as a nameless protagonist that trains with the 104th Cadet Corp with Eren, Mikasa, Annie, and the rest of the Attack on Titan crew.

The way they made this work was having this character go up through the ranks, being present and involved in the events of the series, allowing for a custom character but also not doing anything to break the continuity of the series.

Gameplay

Like the first game Omega Force made, Attack on Titan 2 is an action game with musou elements thrown into the mix. Across the game, you’ll be making bases for resources and slicing your way through lots and lots of enemies.

While the gameplay looks very similar to its predecessor, AoT2 does add a few things here and there. For one, you can make a Custom Character / CaC to play as. It also added Friendship Events for major playable characters, allowing you to see into their backstories as well as them giving you skills to equip and increase your stats based on their character growth.

Far more important, though, is the ability to save characters from dying. Once you beat the game, you can replay Story Missions and rescue all of the characters that would otherwise die with new, optional story branches that have you taking out the Titan(s) that killed them. This lets you keep them around for future missions and maxing out their Friendship Events.

As far as game modes go, you have Story Mode and Another Mode. Story Mode has you playing through the story scenarios that span both seasons of the Attack on Titan anime, while Another Mode is a Multiplayer-focused Mode that lets you play as any unlocked playable characters, from Eren to the newly-added playable form of Petra from the Levi Squad.

The way Story Mode works is similar to the first game. You have your Base of Operations, where you can upgrade equipment, talk to NPCs and grow bonds with them via Friendship Events, etc. Here is also where you can go on Missions, be it Story Missions or Scout Missions, side-quest missions with multi-stages that can be tackled in this mode or Another Mode with either CPU Allies or Local/Online Co-Op Partners.

The basics of combat is mostly the same as before, apart from special AI attacks and boss You have huge environments and you get around by either riding around on a horse or by flying through the air with your ODM gear like you’re Spider-Man. This aspect is what makes these games so great for series fans. A lot of thought was put into the physics of how the ODM Gear works, from it realistically grabbing onto
nearby objects to latching onto parts of Titans.

For those who didn’t play the original game, you have different kinds of objectives, mostly having to do with killing Titans, which are boss-like enemies that are also the only enemies that appear in the game. Instead of the typical musou fair of mashing attack buttons to wipe out mass hordes of enemies, you strategically latch onto body parts of Titans and angle yourself as you fly through the air to do more damage with the better angles.

While this is a fresh deviation from musou general gameplay, it still retains a repetitive feel in the fact that there is a huge lack of variety in enemy variety, outside of unique story bosses like the Female Titan. But the reptition doesn’t stop there. Roughly 67% of the Story Mode is the events of Season 1 of Attack on Titan and almost all of those are the same missions you participated in in the first game with small changes, so it almost feels like the same game for the first 10 hours of the game.

In terms of content, you can complete Story Mode in around 16 hours, which includes the special Original Story Ending past Season 2’s Ending made around the CaC protagonist. Once you clear the story, you unlock Inferno Mode, a Hard Mode to play through, along with the ability to go back and rescue all of the characters who died during the Story, along with special “Super Boss” encounters in the Story Missions.

All in all, I’d put Story, a fair amount of the Scouting Missions / Another Mode, and rescuing characters to around 20 hours, give or take.

Controls

Controlling the game isn’t too hard, plus the game explains every control to you as the situation arises.

You move around with the Left Analog Stick and rotate the camera with the Right Analog Stick. The D-Pad / Arrow Buttons are used for using items or issuing commands to AI partners. The four triggers are all used as well. L toggles AI Commands, R locks onto the body part of a nearby enemy, ZL swaps between Battle Items and Capture Items, and ZR zooms into the scope to use Sneak Attacks.

Then, the face buttons. X is used to latch onto enemies and attack them, Y is used for activating your ODM Gear, A interacts with your horse, and B is used for jumping/gliding.

Presentation

Graphically, this game looks pretty good. There’s a lot of detail and there are very few, if any jagged edges, which are mostly only noticeable when you’re playing in handheld modes.

Performance is definitely above the iffy frame-rate of the Vita version of AoT1, but it’s not perfect here. When you have a ton of enemies and allies on screen at once, the frame-rate drops a fair bit, and there’s some slowdown when you start charging at a Titan once you grapple onto them. It’s very smooth for most of it, but not all of it.

Battery Life

I wasn’t expecting much Battery Life, but color me surprised. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 19 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 30 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 11 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 43 minutes

The idea of getting almost 5 hours of Battery Life out of a 3D game like this says a lot with how well Omega Force is optimizing Switch games, at least in terms of Battery Life.