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.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Players are able to take on Scout Missions cooperatively with up to three other players online in Another World mode. Note: It is possible to play the campaign missions with a friend online, but there are some very specific steps each player has to follow in order to so. Players should be in contact with one another via voice chat in order to coordinate this, and it may take a few tries to get it to work. Additionally, only the host gets any story progress when doing this. Many thanks to our readers for sending in this tip. The joining player needs to be in the lobby/hub area of the "Another World" mode The host player then goes to the appropriate NPC in the story mode that starts the next campaign mission (indicated by a red exclamation over the NPC's head) The host player then presses the "Distress Call" button The joining player should then look for the host player's in-game character/avatar within the lobby area (they'll have an "SOS" over their head) The joining player will need to interact with the host player's avatar and join the mission before another player does so
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.