Review for Attack on Titan 2. Game for PC, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 15/03/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 20/03/2018 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 20/03/2018 The version for Xbox One came out on 20/03/2018
Attack on Titan probably is one of the most popular manga of recent years, also characterized by its anime television counterpart taken from the manga of the same name by Hajime Isayama. Thanks to its success, various video games inspired by this world threatened by giants have also been released since 2013. One of the most ambitious is definitely Attack on Titan 2, which in addition to proposing one story faithful to the events narrated in the anime, also promises great gameplay and lots of activities to do.
What is narrated in the game, will also resume (in addition to the second season) the events narrated in the first season of the anime, allowing everyone, even newbies, to retrace the main events that revolve around the world of Attack on Titan.
Protect those walls!
The setting of Attack on Titan is comparable to a Middle Ages interpreted in a dystopian key, where the arrival of some giants has exterminated most of the human race forcing the survivors to remain within very high and extremely thick walls of unknown origin. The giants are mysterious creatures between 3 and 15 meters high, they wander naked, have no genital organs and tend to feed on human beings, ignoring any other living being. Humans therefore remained safe within the three main walls: the Wall Maria, the Wall Rose and the Wall Sina, each of which contains districts located respectively to the North, South, East and West of them, which present greater defenses, (including soldiers and special cannons) given the tendency of giants to concentrate in places where there are more humans.
However, the appearance of a giant of about 60 meters has upset the peace in the districts of Wall Rose, creating one breach in the city of Shiganshina thanks to which the giants managed to enter and kill part of the population. This event alerted the three military corps present, namely the Garrison Corps (which defends the walls and the cities); the Corps of Gendarmerie (maintains public order and acts safe within the inner circle of walls); The Research Body (Go beyond the walls to fight the Giants, explore and learn more about their nature). The protagonists of the events can be summarized in Eren Jaeger, Mikasa Ackermann and Armin Arelet with which we will often be in contact, and unlike other games based on the anime, we will not play the role of one of them but we will impersonate a soldier whose gender, appearance and name we can choose.
Three-dimensional movement
The grandeur of the giants, over the years, has forced mankind to study a complex system of displacements, to be used both for escape and for fighting. This system is called ATM (three-dimensional movement) and consists of three main objects: The gas to guarantee the thrust, the grapples to be thrown, the gear mechanism that allows the immediate winding of the ropes. Together they form precisely the ATM that allows soldiers to move quickly in the event of a fight and above all to reach extremely high points, so as to be able to hit the weak point of the giants, located in the nape of the neck.
In Attack on Titan 2, this system has been implemented with intelligence, allowing the player to learn in a few minutes the basics that regulate the three-dimensional movement, allowing him to move easily from one point to another and at the same time create combined evolutions and kills. However, the use of the ATM will be limited by the quantity of gas present in our cylinders, consequently we will have to check the quantity of the latter often, and if necessary replace the cylinder.
During the most intense fights, however, it could happen that we do not have spare cylinders and therefore our movements will be much slower and inaccurate, thus forcing us to reach safe points where it will be our task. build small camps where stocks of cylinders and blades will be regularly deposited. In addition to the storage camps, the game gives us the possibility to build other structures as well, including those of defense that could come to our aid during particularly difficult fights, sometimes determining the outcome of the battle itself.
Enjoyable and fun gameplay
In addition to killing the giants, in Attack on Titan 2 there will be many other things to do, thanks to which we will be able to get rewards and thus to enhance our character. At the end of each mission, we will in fact be rewarded based on our skill on the battlefield, thus obtaining experience points, objects and money that will be essential in case we want to buy or improve our equipment.
The progression of the character is instead based on the classic levels that will allow us to unlock the skill points, which can then be spent at will to equip particular skills that we can change at any time without losing the maximum skill points. The skills can be unlocked by continuing with the game and especially through close s with our companions, there is in fact a friendship system that increases the level of affinity with a character, all based on the answers we will give during the dialogues. Each friendship level will unlock different skills that can be equipped and used to improve our stats.
During the fights we will also be able to recruit some of these companions, for a maximum of teams of four (including us). They will present one next to the name rating which can vary from D to S, allowing us to choose which companion is best to recruit, especially for the different orders that can be given to him, in fact some will only tend to blind enemies, others to attack independently while some will follow exclusively our directives.
Thanks to these systems we will then be able to organize our fights and coordinate actions in order to complete the missions with the least possible number of losses. In fact, we will be able to order one of our companions to cut an arm, a leg, or damage the eye of a giant, and at the same time we will hurl ourselves against the nape of the giant to kill him.
Technically not perfect
From a purely technical point of view, we were only partially satisfied, especially from a graphic point of view. If we look at the overall realization of the game, everything works optimally and manages to entertain at all times, especially for large-scale fights, in fact it will often happen to have an entire district available to fight and move. The game engine always manages to maintain excellent fluidity, enough to guarantee a perfect gaming experience, at the expense of a fairly evident aliasing and some decidedly not very clean and defined textures. If we take into consideration the individual characters, we can only congratulate the developers: they have been made with extreme care, tracing the colors and features of the original work in an optimal way.
Fascinating is the system of destruction of the environments that helps to animate the fights and to give the player more and more intense emotions. The problem, however, lies in the fact that this system is far from problem-free, it will often happen to be faced with major collision problems with giants which will destroy buildings in a way that is anything but credible. This also adds to the poor management of game memory, which prevents an overload of objects on the screen, causing the almost instant elimination of destroyed objects, giants and often even non-player characters.
It all results in an exceptional experience that is often ruined by some bugs and problems too, it will often happen to be in safe areas and notice some character that suddenly disappears in an inexplicable way. We found another small problem in the mini-map, which in "normal" situations is perfect, while when we are in small areas, such as those of the interlude between one mission and another, it is grainy and almost illegible, however certain that it is exclusively a bug and that it will be fixed in the next patches.
Attack on Titan 2 is a game that fans of the series cannot miss, it will allow you to relive the events related to Eren, Mikasa and Armin firsthand. the combat system fully mirrors that used in the manga and anime, so it will be necessary to kill the giants by cutting the back of their neck, all moving through the ATM which can be enhanced or replaced with more performing models. From a technical point of view we found some small problems related to collisions and some poorly defined textures, but overall we are more than satisfied with the work done, in fact the general yield is excellent and problems are hardly noticed in the textures given the continuous threat from giants in practically any situation.
► Attack on Titan 2 is an Action-Hack and Slash game developed by Omega Force and published by Koei Tecmo for PC, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 15/03/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 20/03/2018 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 20/03/2018 The version for Xbox One came out on 20/03/2018
