The story of AOT 2 closely follows the events of the first two seasons of the anime (and season 3 in the Final Battle dlc), showing them from the perspective of a your ridiculously overpowered self-insert, who gets to interact with most of the franchise’s characters, as well as a kill count higher than then the whole Paradis island military combined, introducing tons of fanservice and dumb power fantasy fun for the fans of the series, which this game, I would say, manages well. The character editor is nothing crazy, but gives all those basic options like eyes, noses, haircuts and boob size, even letting you choose what clothing you wear under your uniform jacket. You also get to edit your character practically any time you want after creating them, so thumbs up for that. You don’t get a lot of insight into the MC’s inner world, but you do get the MC’s diary, which, throughout the game’s campaign, will gradually get filled with notes on characters, events, factions and other bits and pieces of lore. During the game’s campaign you will be introduced to the friendship system, which will let you hang out with various characters from the show, talk to them and help them on their own little story arcs (very similar to Persona’s social link/confidant system). Each character has ten friendship levels, and as those levels increase, you get to see their story arcs progress and unlock perks and abilities for your character. Some of these ‘social links’ will give you a little bit more info about a certain character and their life, some lore details, or silly fanservice ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I would say that the combat is one of the game’s best parts. The way it works is you lock onto a titan’s part (an arm, a leg, or that juicy nape), grapple onto it, close the distance and strike. It might look complicated when you see it on a video or whatever, but it’s a very simple system, that is quite easy to get the hang of. Most of the game’s difficulty comes from titans squirming, jumping, twisting and turning around, as well as trying to grab or bite you, making it more difficult to get the angle on them and staying alive while forced to linger dangerously close to enemies. Another thing is that there is the so-called ‘perfect angle’, which will let you deal increased damage to the titan to the point of being able to one-shot it. When not locked onto a titan, you can use your ODM to fly around freely, on the condition that there are high structures/trees/rocks/whatever around, so you can grapple onto them. Even titans themselves can be used for you grapples, so you can do the Levi season 3 thing and fly around using just them, slicing the nudist bastards while you’re at it. The grappling requires pressing or holding one button and aims automatically (Unless grappling onto a titan. Then you go into that lock-on mode described before), so you don’t really need to worry about aiming your grapples or anything like that, except making sure you are not in the middle of an empty field. Other than flying around and cutting down titans, you will build bases during the mission. Bases give you buffs, restore equipment uses or give you tools like artillery to help weaken titans to allow for easier kills. Speaking of equipment, your blades and gas are finite. The former will gradually dull with each strike, and the latter with slowly run out the more you fly. You can carry a certain number of spare blades and gas canisters, which you can use in the field to reload, but those aren’t plenty and will eventually run out too. To restore them, you will need to build the already mentioned bases, or complete side objectives on missions, like helping a teammate kill a pack of titans or escorting a civilian to a safe place. You won’t have to be the only one helping your comrades though, since you can invite up to four people in your squad. Different characters have different abilities, like healing, cutting off limbs, breaking bosses’ armor, blinding surrounding enemies and transforming into a titan, letting you take control for a short period of time. The mission ranks will determine what resources, and how many of them you will get. Said resources can be used for upgrading your ODM gear which consists of different parts with their stats that can be upgraded. They also differ visually, and holy hell do some of them look goofy. There are blades lit on fire, electric batons, chainswords from Warhammer 40k and other crazy ♥♥♥♥. The game’s RPG mechanics also include buffing your character with different skills, which give you active or passive abilities, as well as stat boosts. The game allows for some freedom regarding you character build, but it ain’t much. Visually, the game is alright. In terms of its graphics, it kinda sucks, but gets carried by its art style, which is very faithful to the anime. Most characters look exactly like in the anime and were brought over into the 3D graphics well, keeping their cell-shady look. The environments are meh. I wouldn’t say they look horrible, just… whatever. Not visually impressive or anything. The game looks pretty low budget, but I’d say it’s good for what it is. When it comes to audio, the game does a good job. Your ODM sounds just like in the anime, attack sound effects are loud and juicy, letting you know when you destroyed a part of a titan. Every time you make a perfect elimination, a chorus sings for you. The characters are voiced by the same cast as the anime, which is great. The game’s soundtrack deserves its own praise. The OST offers a good diversity of tracks, ranging from peaceful ambiance with gentle happy violins and guitars to tense and hype battle tracks with choruses, synths and drums blasting in your ears. The DLC. I’ll talk about it here briefly, because I think it deserves to be mentioned, at least The Final Battle addon, since it adds a lot to the game. Firstly, it adds the character episode mode, which serves as an additional story campaign containing events form season 3, where you play as the characters from the anime. The dlc also adds Territory Recovery Mode, where you progress through the global map of Paradis, battling against titans, recruiting characters into your garrison, levelling up your base and characters. The mode also comes with a new difficulty, not present in the main campaign. Another big addition is the anti-personnel vertical maneuvering equipment (guns) and thunder spears. The guns work differently from the blades and have their own unique quirks and learning curve, allowing for a playstyle that’s different from the blades. They can also be upgraded and have different sets, just like the melee ODM. And yes, there are goofy ahh blasters and bazookas that you can use instead of the regular pistols. Thunder spear are just big boom sticks. You also get to dual wield miniguns, which is as stupid as it is fun. If you decide to buy the game, I heavily recommend getting The Final Battle. It adds a lot to the game and makes it a much better experience. Overall, I’d say Attack on Titan 2 is a great game, at least for the fans of the series. It’s rough around the edges but offers one of the most unique combat systems in the genre, while being an absolute fanservice feast. It is a bit buggy and lacks meaningful content outside of its combat, but if you do enjoy the combat, the game should last you several dozen hours as you grind better gear and build your character to take on higher difficulties. It’s great at getting you into the flow state, where you just zone out and zoom around the map, slicing titans, revelling in that dopamine rush. The game lets you play as basically every character from the show (a little over 30 without the dlc, a little over 40 with the dlc), including every shifter from seasons 1&2, except the Beast (and season 3 with the dlc, except for the Cart titan, though the Beast is in the dlc). Good game. Very overlooked. Buy with the Final Battle dlc.