A Late Look: Attack on Titan 2 - Article

by Mark Nielsen , posted on 14 October 2025 / 3,187 Views

Welcome to A Late Look, a series of articles where I take a belated look at games from yesteryear that I missed out on the first time around. Not quite review and not quite rant, it’s more a casual assessment of what I – the gamer of the future – consider to be each game’s strengths and weaknesses in retrospect.

Now it’s time to give our hearts as we take a look at the licensed game Attack on Titan 2. Despite the massive success of the anime, video game adaptations have been relatively sparse for the Attack on Titan series, with this 2018 game actually being the most recent one. And with the finale of the anime being only… two years ago? (Man, I really am late), now seems as good a time as any to revisit the IP and see if this latest and most ambition video game adaptation is a worthy addition to it.

Strength: Gameplay Straight Out of the Anime

Attack on Titan is one of those pieces of media that simultaneously feels obvious for video games and very hard to replicate well. Let’s be honest, the way they fly around and take down massive titans with tiny swords is quite simply cool, and of course there’s some part of every viewer that wants to try that for themselves, without the risk of actually getting eating part. And, well, short of inventing actual maneuver gear and waiting for the rebirth of the dinosaurs, AoT 2 is as close as you’re gonna get, and it’s a lot closer than you might think.

Inspired in some areas by the Warriors games and Monster Hunter, but also differentiating itself significantly in its core gameplay, AoT 2 has you running, riding, or most importantly flying around the battlefield by shooting out tethers on walls, trees, or titans, and drawing yourself forward. The developers also incorporated nearly every piece of titan hunting gear into the gameplay in some fashion; you have to watch the durability of your swords, the gas in your canister, use flares for mission objectives, etc, etc. On a conceptual level this is already impressive, but it’s also quite well executed. Flying around with your maneuvering gear, while admittedly not quite as polished, is every bit as satisfying as the web slinging in Spider-Man (2018), as is cutting down titan after titan as you get more skilled at the game. They also added the ability to team up with various cast members during missions and command them to use their abilities (even the Scouts' actual commander),and while there could perhaps be a bit more variety in these, it’s still a fun enough element and makes you a little curious who you’ll find next, since it’s often randomized.

Weakness: Repetitiveness

As much as it differs in many areas from Koei Tecmo’s typical Warrior games, there’s no denying that AoT 2 still suffers from their signature flaw: repetitiveness. It’s never a great experience to be genuinely enjoying the gameplay of a game, only to see that enjoyment dwindle little by little, not because the game gets worse, but because it stays exactly the same. Certainly, repetition comes in many degrees, and if you stick to the main story it’s honestly not too bad here. In fact, the pacing of missions and the in-between elements feels pretty good in the first half of AoT 2, but if you start to dip your toes in the optional scouting missions you can very quickly tire of the formulaic gameplay. When the so-called “abnormal” titans are a dime a dozen and every mission is forced to end with the same “boss” titans, there really isn’t much left to set the missions apart except the map it takes place on and which allies you happen to find.

Strength: Interactions With the Cast

When I first read that AoT 2 puts you in the shoes of a custom non-canon character I was skeptical. Characters introduced in spin-off media are rarely the greatest idea, but there’s a very specific reason why they choose to do it in this case, since it opens up the possibility for more interactions with the established characters. This aspect is actually taken so far as to be a sort of bond-deepening mechanic, where you spend time with characters like in Persona, and this could have gone many ways depending on the quality of the writing, but it actually ended up being deeply engaging. AoT 2 has the advantage over non-licensed games in that you already know (and often like) the characters you’re interacting with, and that’s what makes it such a brilliant part of the game. Making you feel like part of the world is essentially one of the biggest draws of a licensed game and to let you interact with its cast adds so much to that in a way that you could never find outside of games. So even if not every character’s little side story is riddled with excitement, having this element here is still a huge plus for the overall experience.

Weakness: Repetitiveness

As much as I hate to kick a dead horse while it’s down, there’s no denying that repetitiveness really is AoT 2’s one major weakness and it shows up in several aspects of the game. It's evident in the side missions and bosses, as already mentioned, as well as several shallow multiplayer modes (where they could have focused their efforts on one good one instead). Even the character interactions I just praised suffer from a slightly formulaic structure, with some sort of mission always shoehorned in there, more often than not to help that character restore their confidence or some such. And if you’re the ambitious type looking for end game gear it requires extra grinding in a game that’s already slow paced to begin with - unless you go straight for the main story that is.

If there’s one major piece of advice I have for anybody looking to engage with this game, it’s actually to not tire yourself out on optional content before you complete the main story, because the game (thankfully) lets you return and do any of the content you’ve missed after you complete it, even things that had previously been inaccessible due to story events. So there is that shining light which can improve a first playthrough immensely, but it doesn’t change the fact that the game does have a bit too much of the same going on.

Strength: Great Retelling of a Great Story

If you’re playing this title, it’s more likely than not because you’re a fan of the source material, and while games that retell a story from the source material have maybe sometimes gotten a bad rep, I honestly think there’s nothing wrong with it if they do it in a way that feels worth reliving – and AoT 2 most certainly delivers on that. With cut scenes that are both plentiful and visually stunning, and a surprisingly well-done integration of your own protagonist character without ever deviating too far from the source material, AoT 2 quite simply delivers exactly what you’d want in this regard by feeling like a more novel and in no way inferior way to re-experience the first two seasons. If there’s only one regret it’s that the main game stops there and the (very expensive) DLC covering Season 3 apparently deviates from the main game by discarding the idea of a player protagonist.

Conclusion

While Attack on Titan 2 is undeniably a flawed experience, it came much closer to the dream of what an Attack on Titan game could be than I had imagined or expected. The gameplay is impressively designed to fit the unique combat of the series, and the Persona-inspired elements of deepening your relationships with the cast was a surprising but extremely welcome component. These two elements are really what make the game shine; you feel both engaged in the world and like a part of the story, which is the perfect recipe for a licensed title. It’s a bit unfortunate that it's brought down by smaller flaws, like the pacing and lack of gameplay variety as the game progresses, as that ultimately places it among many other games that could have benefitted immensely from just a little more time and budget. We can hope for a spiritual successor one day that gets just that (and maybe some better multiplayer?), but in the meantime AoT 2 is definitely still a game well worth experiencing for fans of the series.