Koei Tecmo’s first Attack on Titan game was a surprisingly great adaptation of the hit anime and manga series, with fast-paced and unique gameplay and better than average online co-op. Less than two years later, Attack on Titan 2 has arrived on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Switch, and Steam. The sequel features another strong campaign and several new features, but its online co-op mode is less than titanic.
Before you can access Attack on Titan 2’s online co-op and competitive modes, you’ll have to spend 45 minutes or so creating your own custom character and completing a single-player tutorial mission. The character creator is fairly robust, though clothing and body types are limited to options that fit within the Attack on Titan world.
This custom character becomes the sole protagonist of the campaign, a big departure from the first game. The campaign narrative follows the story of the first two seasons of the anime, which means several of the same beats (and even the tutorial) are repeated in the sequel. But since we witness the story from our own character’s perspective, it ends up feeling different enough.
Attack on Titan 2’s core gameplay closely matches its predecessor’s, in that you play as a scout (soldier) tasked with eliminating gigantic, carnivorous, and derpy monsters called Titans who threaten humanity with extinction. You’ll still swing around cities, forests, and ruins using the Omni-Directional Movement Gear (ODM), gas-powered harnesses that fire grappling hooks into the environment and propel the wearer forward. It feels great, not unlike swinging around in a Spider-Man game.
Virtually every mission involves finding all of the lumbering Titans on a Dynasty Warriors-style map and eliminating them. Once in range of an enemy, you’ll switch to combat mode with the press of a button and then latch onto the foe’s arms, legs, or neck. Zoom forward at high speed and hit attack at the last second to deliver a blow, damaging or severing the targeted limb. Amputee Titans still pose a threat, so you’ll need to strike the backs of their necks to stop them once and for all.
Attacking multiple parts of a Titan in a continuous fashion (without hitting the ground) has gotten harder in the sequel, thanks to slightly revised controls. But the combat still feels great after you get over the initial learning curve. A couple of new moves called the hook drive and sneak attack aim to add depth to the combat, but you’ll probably rely on the core attacks for the most part. Players can now erect a limited number of offensive and defensive towers on some maps as well.
Between campaign missions, players will sometimes visit a base camp filled with NPCs from the show. Attack on Titan 2 has a brand-new relationship system that encourages you to seek out and interact with your fellow scouts. These conversations lead to amusing vignettes and conversations that flesh out the characters and world. You’ll also make dialogue choices (and even send gifts) that can level up your relationship with the various NPCs. This, in turn, unlocks their unique skills and stat boosts for your custom hero. It’s a fun system.
Early reports that Attack on Titan 2’s campaign would support online co-op have proven to be inaccurate – the campaign is strictly a solo affair. After completing the campaign tutorial, you’ll gain access to the Another World mode. There you can play as your custom character or 30 unlockable characters in both co-op and competitive online modes.
Shockingly, Another World is a titanic step down from Attack on Titan’s well-designed multiplayer mode. Other players can no longer visit your camp (hub area). To launch a co-op Scout game, you’ll select a mission and then be transported to a tiny staging area. From there, you can wait up to three minutes (with nothing to do) for other players to join your game. The host can skip the timer, thankfully, but its very presence and the lack of interactivity in the staging area disappoint.
The cooperative structural issues don’t stop there. After completing a scout mission, everyone gets transported back to their own solo camps. There’s no way to stay with a party and complete multiple missions – the host must start a new game and invite/wait for everybody to join every single time. What a step back from the first game, in which everyone stayed in the host’s camp between missions.
Even worse, only the host player gets credit for completing co-op missions. Sure, everyone earns XP and materials, but they won’t unlock additional missions like the host. A local co-op game can get away with that disrespectful treatment of additional players, though it always sucks. But in an online co-op game? It’s unheard of.
All of this is a huge shame, because the actual cooperative gameplay remains as fun as ever. 2-4 teammates enter an area, split up, and wipe out the Titan population. The team then regroups for a boss battle. If a player gets knocked out by Titans, everyone has a few seconds to revive their comrade before failing the mission. So playing with friends is fun, but the co-op structure and progress are just totally busted in this sequel.
The structural issues might be less of an issue for Attack on Titan 2’s two new competitive modes, given that partying up is less essential for competitive gameplay. But one of those modes, Annihilation, is a team-based race to kill the most Titans, so getting to stay together as a party would’ve been appreciated. The other mode, Predator, allows everyone to play as Titans and compete to kill the most humans. Both competitive modes are accessed from the Another World solo camp.
Attack on Titan 2 is a bust as a co-op game (and I couldn’t find opponents for the competitive modes either), but it’s still worth a buy for Attack on Titan fans. The campaign is better than ever, with the new friendship system providing a welcome respite between battles. You don’t even need to have played the first game (or watched the show), because the first season’s story is retold before moving on to the second season’s narrative. Attack on Titan 2’s engaging story and exhilarating grappling-based combat make for a standout anime-based campaign – just don’t buy it for the multiplayer.
[Ed. Note: After concluding our review of Attack on Titan 2, our readers sent us some information on how to play campaign missions with a friend online, albeit by taking some very specific steps that are not explained in the game itself. While we have updated the database entries for this game to include these steps, we will not be changing the content or score of this review.]
The Co-Optimus Review of Attack on Titan 2 is based on the Xbox One version of the game. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.