Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin): Humanity in Chains overview

Undoubtedly, Attack on Titan (shingeki not Kyojin in Japanese) has become one of the manga and anime larger phenomena of recent years. While its publication on paper and vignettes leads from the 2009 active (it launches monthly rate and the number is still open), it was not until the arrival of the anime in 2013 when it really became famous and its popularity soared.

This adaptation not only attracted some extremely high production values, but was also extremely faithful to the facts of the sleeve, avoiding the dreaded fill meter with which have many series and imparting the same frantic pace in its development that the comic. In fact, initially only it is going to have a season, but after its huge success already confirmed a follow-up.

As usual with any product success, whether manga, anime, comic books, TV series, book or film, its adaptation to the world of video games was immediate and in 2013 Spike Chunsoft announced it was working on a title for Nintendo 3DS called shingeki not Kyojin: The Last Wings of Mankind. Time passed and did not receive any news. Moreover, it ended by announcing the game with more content and more polished gameplay.

Finally, last month, Atlus surprised us all during an edition of Nintendo Direct announcing that this game would end up coming to Europe (we have to admit we were not expecting), but only in digital format. However, a problem with late licenses has prevented the game release this month, as American users, who has forced them to delay and change its name to Attack on Titan: Humanity in Chains to shingeki not Kyojin: Humanity in Chains.

For those who do not know the story of Attack on Titan, to say that is set in a world in which humanity is facing extinction because of some giant humanoid beings known as Titans, who feed on humans, spreading terror with each of their attacks (the series does not skimp on pints of blood each time they come into action, with a high number of deaths). As if that were not enough, have a great capacity for regeneration and the only way to defeat them is to attack their weak point, located on their necks.

This forced the survivors to take shelter behind the massive walls of a city divided into many districts and separated by several walls, keeping the lower classes closer to the outside, while the nobility and high officials have protection the most central areas. With this starting point we follow the story of Eren Jaeger, a young man with a mysterious past who swears revenge against the Titans and kill them all after the destruction of his district and the murder of his mother, leading him to enlist in the army with his friends to carry out this goal.

The game features a story mode that will take us to relive all the events we saw in the first season of the anime, so it will not advance beyond that point (the sleeve and is way ahead). The interesting thing is that we experience the anime from the point of view of several characters, so that not only embody Eren, but we can also play the story of Mikasa, Armin, Levi and Sasha, with interesting attraction that unlock the equipment and weapons each for the World Mode (discussed below) to complete.

The stories are not too long and the plot is told very sharply and quickly, inserting pictures of anime with some animation sequences, it seems clear that it will be necessary to have seen the series to find out what is happening at all times and put us in action.

Both this and the World Mode have a structure of short missions designed to play on a portable game consoles as Nintendo 3DS, so it will be rare that pass level five minutes. They have to meet different objectives, such as kill a specific number of titans, rescuing injured or performing an escort units. There seem to be too many, but this is something we'll have to see for ourselves when we can get hold of the final version.

In regard to gameplay, saying that they wanted to replicate with all possible fidelity tools omnidirectional movement of the series (some devices with a pair of hooks that allow users to move through the world as if they were something like Spider-Man), so we spend the most time in the air making all kinds of aerial maneuvers, while dodging the devastating attacks of the Titans. Although eye, because our gas reserves are limited, and we need this resource if we want to stay not sold on the ground unable to move us in the air.

One detail that seems to not care too is that the hooks used to "fly" can be caught in the sky, so we will not need a building or a fulcrum to use our tool omnidirectional movement, thus allowing us to move through the scenarios as we want. Yes, here it is a small exception, since one of the three maps of the game is a huge meadow where we can just use this device against the Titans, forcing us to ride on horseback to have some mobility.

Like the series, here the only way we'll have to kill the Titans is knocking at your weakest point. To fight against them has resorted to using a simple QTE. When we are looking at a titan and have a shot, Brand Y button will appear on the area where we are focusing on. If you press it, your character will shoot there and we have to calculate by pressing the attack button to synchronize with a series of circles that appear on the screen.

The operation of these circles is very simple, because we have one red and one blue quite thick, thin and very big it will become increasingly smaller. Our goal is that both will be that both are aligned when you press the attack button. Depending on the area in which we get a hit or other effects. If, for example, we hit in the neck and over with a critical hit, chances are that the Titan in question does not re-raise, even if he moves too much and did not get up there, there we may want to attack his legs first to stop his movements and make him an easy target.


An interesting detail is that in some missions can play as a titan, completely changing the way we play for punches and kicks against other giants, and so kill them in the most brutal way possible, but we'll have to wait to check for ourselves how satisfactory is get behind the wheel of these beings.

Finally, we have the World Mode, which seems to be the way in which we spend more hours playing, as it will allow us to play with up to three other players via the Internet. Here we can create us a character with a somewhat fair editor of options to get to complete many missions of increasing difficulty.

The interesting thing here is that there is a progression system similar to that seen in games like Monster Hunter, forcing us to get materials that create us new weapons and improve our current team. In fact, here we have the possibility to use guns and traps of all kinds.

Graphically the game is unlikely to be any wonder, with very discrete modeling and animations improved, although like all Nintendo 3DS title, until you see it on the screen of our live console can not say how bad or good is its technical section.

What it is going to fail and that is likely to become the best section of the game is its soundtrack, because it makes use of them and great compositions created by Hiroyuki Sawano (Guilty Crown, Kill the Kill, Xenoblade Chronicles X) for the series, something we should take note other games inspired by successful manga and anime (yes, I look at you, Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, One Piece, Naruto). All a great detail to ensure we want to play with headphones at full power. Furthermore, to finish top it off, we will also have the fantastic original Japanese dub, so we can find few drawbacks to this section.

In short, no Kyojin shingeki: Humanity in Chains not aiming to become the great game that the series deserves by developing its story mode playable or its benefits and techniques, but at least promises to offer many hours of entertainment in its World Mode playing with our friends while massacred a titan after another in this fascinating world. Now we just wait to know the release date and see for ourselves just how worth it for the legion of fans that boasts this anime.

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