Attack on Titan was an anime phenomenon when the show launched back in 2013. There are many extremely popular anime such as Naruto, Dragon Ball Z or One Piece but in recent years nothing has blown up quite as big as Attack on Titan. Other than 2012’s Sword Art Online, A.O.T is the only anime in recent memory to hit lasting mainstream appeal although, compared to SAO, video games based on the series have been few in number and of fairly low quality.
Whilst Attack on Titan has done extremely well in both its anime and manga forms, the series’ video game adaptations, which until now only consisted of a few visual novels and an awful 3DS game, have never stacked up the competition. Naruto, SAO and Dragon Ball Z get games every couple of years but companies seem to have left Attack on Titan behind and those who do try seem to do a fantastically terrible job at bringing AOT to life in a video game format, until now. Omega Force, the minds behind the Dynasty Warriors series and the upcoming Berserk Musou game (which I am extremely excited for), have attempted to bring the gorgeous, dystopian world of Attack on Titan to life and for the most part, they succeed.
The Attack on Titan game (A.O.T.: Wings of Freedom) recreates the events of the anime’s first season as well as its OVA, Record of a Fallen Soldier—this time placed in a chronological order. Scenes from the anime have been replicated with fantastic quality featuring some of the best anime-style character models I’ve seen in a console game. Eyes, hair and faces are all ridiculously clear and smooth, looking better than some professional 3D anime. (Looking at you Berserk 2016). Fans will be delighted at the amount of authenticity on show during these cutscenes as Omega Force replicates every frame to a high degree of quality.
The story of Attack on Titan follows the events of an angsty teenager called Eren Jaeger who, after his mum got chomped on by a Titan, vows to kill every last one of the huge, naked beasts. For those unaware, AOT takes place in an alternate past (or future, it’s not really explained) where humanity is hunted by giant, unintelligent naked Titans who do nothing but gawk at things and eat people. Members of the region’s Survey Corps, Military Police, and Garrison are equipped with gas-powered Omni-Directional Maneuver Gear which allows the user to attach to surroundings or even the Titans in order to move around and get close to the nape of the Titan’s neck, the only place that can kill one of the beasts.
Combat is the main meat of the game which, judging by Omega’s work on the Musou series, should be a given. Gameplay-wise, Wings of Freedom plays like a kind of reverse Dynasty Warriors where instead of taking out hundreds of enemies in one swing you have to position yourself around one huge enemy to try and hit its weak spot. This is where the series’ Omni-Directional Maneuver Gear comes into play. The device uses two hooks combined gas propulsion to allow the user to swing around the environment at high speed. Much like the forever-loved PS2 game, Spider-Man 2, Attack on Titan requires objects in the environment for you to propel yourself with, although, you can always attach yourself to a Titan if you’re brave enough.
Movement and combat are instantly fun, although tricky to get a hang of at first. Positioning yourself around a Titan to slice its nape can take some getting used to and some Titans may require you to chop off their limbs before you can try to kill them. There are also different classes of Titans, classified by height and abilities. Most Titans, while varying in height, are just the normal horrifying standard enemy with giant eyes and a wide, gaping mouth but others, called Abnormals, may have special abilities of strengths. Some Titans may harden their nape or other limbs requiring you to take out their other body parts before you can dispose of them, some can sprint or will jump around, destroying buildings and making it harder for you to move around.
Human characters also have a lot of variation to them. Each playable character, out of ten, has different skills and stats relating to their personality. For example, Mikasa—the badass of the group—can strike an opponent numerous times without needing to swing back around for another approach, Armin—the coward of the group—is bad at combat but can order teammates to attack certain parts of a Titan’s body. Every one of these characters can also be levelled to unlock new skills and costumes. Some of the skills can range from carrying more items such as weapons and gas canisters into battle—as they get damaged and run out frequently requiring you to find supplies—to filling up your super move meter which, for characters other than Eren during later parts of the game, for story reasons, allows you to call in a huge squad of teammates to help eliminate the surrounding enemies.
From a technical standpoint, Attack on Titan seems to be all over the place. Whilst character models and environments look great in movement, shadows are very low quality with obvious stair-stepping occurring across faces during cutscenes and texture quality on floors and walls are quite low in quality. Pop-in is extremely noticeable and occurs mostly in field maps—where you have to ride a horse due to the lack of objects to attach your ODM Gear to. Trees, grass, and even the gigantic Titans pop into view very frequently which pulls you straight out of the experience. During sections where you play as a Titan—saying anything else on that matter is spoiler territory—the pop-in gets even worse as towering over everything seems to put the engine under pressure.
Frame rates are often lower than desired as well. While it never becomes unplayable, Attack on Titan does drop frames hard when lots of Titans are in a small space, such as a large crowd in the city area. This doesn’t mar the experience much and seems to get better over time and later on in the game it rarely ever occurred despite there being more Titans in the area than before, however, when large amounts of Titans do appear, hilarity ensues. While I always thought of the Titans as funny yet creepily haunting, which Omega Force absolutely nails, Titans occasionally fall and bump into each other in attempts to grab and devour you and your teammates. While normally this would be horrifying, clipping is a very prominent problem with Wings of Freedom leading to hilarious moments where you can see a Titans head pop-out of a building or, my favorite, out of the behind of another Titan.
While from a technical standpoint Attack on Titan is a bit on the weak side, it does nail the feel of the show’s combat. It tells the story in a more abridged format and does include a lot of extra survey missions—which can be played in co-op with three friends—that can unlock an epilogue which, sadly, isn’t worth playing through the large amount of survey missions to get. Diehard fans may be disappointed with the game’s approach to the story, however. While it does hit important plot points, it only really treads through the basics, skipping out much of the political intrigue and also sections of the manga such as the death of a certain character. Wings of Freedom replicates the series well but only when it comes to two things, the movement and combat.
Swinging across towns and through forests is exhilarating for quite a while and slicing Titans is extremely fun thanks to Omega Force’s stellar job at replicating the feeling of the shows action scenes but playing through the campaign, epilogue and all of the survey missions shows just how limited Attack on Titans combat is. Only taking place over a small number of maps and each mission being near identical—kill Titans or defend something whilst going across the map to do side missions which are, frankly, just more of the same—Wings of Freedom does start to feel repetitive after you’ve sliced the nape of your thousandth Titan.
Summary
Wings of Freedom replicates the feeling of Attack on Titan with fantastic movement and combat, however, with a limited amount of maps and loads of content that feels near identical, A.O.T.: Wings of Freedom does start to feel repetitive, although it does take a long while to get there.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.