Attack On Titan 2: Final Battle expands into the third season today
Big trouble in little castles.
While the manga may have fallen down a dark and nationalist hole, Attack On Titan's escalating human-on-giant war makes for some fun games. Attack On Titan 2: Final Battle is a re-release of Omega Force's Attack On Titan 2, bundled with a new expansion covering everything in the anime series so far, adding some interesting new modes besides. If you already have Attack On Titan 2, the expansion is available by itself. Below, a feature trailer showing off some old stuff, some new stuff, and a lot of warped-looking giants getting chopped into slightly more manageable pieces.
The Final Battle expansion lets you play through the story of season three from multiple perspectives. There's another five playable characters to throw into the meat-grinder. Because of the manga's escalation into World War Titan, you get to play around with the Thunder Spear rocket-tonfa weapons, and a new anti-personnel mode for zipline-duelling with non-giant people. I'm sad they didn't go all the way into the manga's later nonsense and weird titan-centric tech, but with that comes an increasingly uncomfortable story arc.
The other major component of the expansion is Territory Recovery Mode. Similar to the dynamic campaign modes for some Dynasty Warriors games, it lets you do all your hacking and slashing without worrying about that pesky plot stuff. Go out, do missions, earn money and XP to level up and buy upgrades and expand your map further. There's some light strategic elements to it, too, with a limited number of actions possible on the world map before the titans come a'knockin', so you've got to shore up defences and recruit soldiers while you can.
As with many of Koei Tecmo's anime tie-in games, the complete Attack On Titan 2: Final Batle re-release costs a hefty (if not titantic) £55/€70/$60 on Steam, which is especially unfair for Europe. The upgrade pack for people with the original version costs a similarly skewed £35/€50/$40. The original version is no longer sold, but there's a free demo on its Steam page here.