A few months back, we looked at all the games coming out based on this year’s hit anime Attack on Titan. Last week, the most anticipated of these, Attack on Titan: The Last Wings of Mankind for the 3DS, hit store shelves in Japan.
The Last Wings of Mankind has two game modes. The first of these takes you through the story of the anime — complete with non-3D clips of the anime — and lets you take on the roles of Eren, Armin and Mikasa at various points in the story.
The second mode allows you to create your own character and take on a variety of titan-killing missions, either by yourself or with up to three other friends. As you play, you’ll get better gear and unlock various AI partners to join your party.
These missions take place across various locations from the anime’s story and generally affect the gameplay in interesting ways. In the cities and forests, you can swing between buildings and trees Spider-Man 2 style, but in the open fields you’ll need to manoeuvre via horseback.
When it comes to actually fighting titans, the gameplay does its best to make the battles easy to control yet challenging — with varying levels of success. When approaching a titan, your character automatically locks on to the titan’s non-fatal weak points — e.g. the Achilles tendon or eyes. When you press the Y-Button, you shoot a grapple straight at the titan and start to reel in. As you zip towards the titan, you press “X” to start your attack — which in turn begins a quicktime event where you must press “X” again when the moving circle is inside the stationary one. If you succeed, it is a critical hit and the titan stumbles or falls down. Automatically, the lock-on then switches to the weak point at the base of the neck. If you time it right, pressing “X” again allows you to immediately continue into another quicktime event, this time aiming for the next closest titan.
Of course, the titans don’t just stand there waiting for you to kill them; and as you reel in, you are able to dodge left and right to avoid attacks. Dodging mid-quicktime event allows you to do one of the series’ flashier spinning attacks that will easily cut through any attack the titans may throw at you. All in all, it works pretty well — though there is more than a little bit of a learning curve and the camera comes with all the issues you’d expect.
To see what Attack on Titan: The Last Wings of Mankind looks like in action, check out the video above.
Attack on Titan: The Last Wings of Mankind was released on December 5, 2013 for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan. There is currently no word on a Western release.
Leave a Reply