Dear Giant, I’ll explain to you in two
Before diving into the melee, AOT 2’s short demo asks us to choose from a small selection of predefined characters, reminding us that in the
final version of the game you will be able to create and customize your alter ego – there will also be included over 30 playable characters, all drawn from the manga. It starts from the first minutes of the second season of Attack on Tit
an, from the memorable scene of the Castle of Utgard: after the first appearance of the Titan Beast, some members of the Exploration Legion are trapped at the top of the watch tower, desperately trying to withstand the assault of the Giants. The original narrative
remains unchanged, but will be exposed in the game through an unprecedented viewpoint, that of the fresh recruiting cadet, ready to battle the monstrous creatures that threaten humanity, but not before they have faced the tutorial.
The new chapter presents the same Wings of Freedom play formula, a gameplay that gives us frenzied battles and sometimes even too chaotic. In this context, the absolute protagonist is once again the three-dimensional maneuvering device, the basic army
equipment. Thanks to it, we can rely on extreme mobility on the battlefield, as long as you can get confident with an apparently cumbersome control system. By pushing the button, we will trigger the anchorage operatio
n, which we “hook” on the walls of the buildings to rise to the middle of the air and slip straight to the enemy. This solution is exceptionally replicated as seen in the anime, but the system will necessarily require a touch of more attention to the surrounding environment,
Like the fans of Attack on Titanthey will know too well, the only way to get rid of a Giant is to tear his collak: instant KO. Once we have gigantic prey, we will go to the so-called Combat mode, after which we will have to point the sliders against the weaknesses reported by the interface, pointing to a series of critical hits. A walk? Not exactly. The effectiveness of our att
acks will depend directly on the speed of movement and positioning of the character – in short, if we are too slow or distant we risk missing t
he target. It should be added that the Titans enjoy a high resistance to damage as well as a regenerating factor that can also wobble Wolverine, but by cutting off some limbs we can slow them down, gaining valuable time to make the calculations.
In a word, AOT 2 will require a non-indifferent dose of strategy and could be a bit challenging for some players, but never insurmountable. W
hat we find discouraging, however, concerns our old knowledge, which comes back directly from the past of this series: repetition. The few missions we were able to play during the test phase resembled an excessive amount, offering almost identical goals
and limiting or decreasing the number of enemies on the screen. It had already happened with Wings of Freedom’s secondary quest,
but the risk that this problem will reappear in the new episode becomes more and more concrete. Hope is then placed in the main quest and in the boss battle, in which – remember – we will finally battle the Titan Armored.
Even on the technical front we find the merits and defects of the first chapter. Cel-shading graphic style continues to amaze players and d
elight fans of the anime, faithfully reproducing the most spectacular tables and scenes in the animated series. The work done on polygon models is all good, but stumbles into still facial animations. In AOT 2the camera management r
emains a very serious problem, becoming a real obstacle during the combat phases. As for the fluidity, the demo version played on PlayStatio
n 4 did not convince us, giving us occasional drops of framerate in the middle of the clash. For Artificial Intelligence, the situation does not improve – we have gobbled up a Giant who had been completely embarrassed – but we would like to postpone the analysis of this aspect to the review phase.
