Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable is a Quest port of the critically acclaimed series, and in Early Access it offers fun combat and a repetitive campaign. Read our full review in progress.
Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable – Quest 3 gameplay captured by UploadVR
As someone who is not a “huge fan” but is familiar with the anime series, I was initially intrigued by Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable. Given how well-known the VR fan game is, I was curious to see how the official game would embrace the setting. UNIVRS has adopted an Early Access approach, releasing the first two chapters ahead of the winter release of version 1.0. It shouldn’t be too long now to “beat” Unbreakable. While the game has some great moments, some shortcomings hold it back.
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Overview: The official VR game based on the anime and manga series “Attack on Titan.”
Platform: Quest (reviewed on a Quest 3)
Release Date: July 23 (Early Access), Winter 2024 (Full Release)
Developer: UNIVRS, Inc.
Price: $5 for early access (first two chapters only), full release price TBA
Thankfully, Unbreakable requires no prior knowledge of the source material; all necessary background is clearly explained in a short opening segment. As the Titans continue to ravage humanity, players take on the role of a rookie in the Scout Regiment, accompanied by familiar faces like Eren, Mikasa, Armin and Levi. Other members of the Scout Regiment will appear during missions but will not aid the player in combat.
Unbreakable starts with a tutorial to familiarize you with the simple controls. The Omni-Directional Mobility (ODM) gear allows you to navigate around the city better using anchors, with a limited gas supply giving you control over your direction in the air. This lends itself well to VR’s motion controls, and moving by being pulled to these anchors gives a great sense of physics when swinging your Titan around.
Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable – Quest 3 Screenshots
The ODM doubles as a weapon, letting you slice through these grotesque, naked giants with a blade that slowly degrades and breaks, forcing you to search the city for ammo boxes. Taking them down by carefully aiming for the back of the neck feels good at first, and hacking off limbs to slow them down feels just as good, even as their arms and legs gradually regenerate.
Completing missions earns you points that unlock different ODM blades that you can equip at your base, though it’s worth noting that some blades aren’t currently available in this Early Access build. Different stats like wire length, durability, and attack power add a lot of variety to suit your style. It would be nice to be able to equip them without having to go back to the hub every time, but this isn’t a huge issue.
Despite these fun moments, Unbreakable’s campaign has so far felt disappointing. Both chapters have five stages, each of which can be awarded up to five stars depending on your performance, but I didn’t feel like replaying them at first. Missions usually require you to kill a certain number of Titans within a time limit, and even with the slightly trickier Abnormal Titans thrown in, they quickly become repetitive. Despite the latter’s change in behavior patterns, I rarely found it rewarding.
Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable – Quest 3 Screenshots
Other types of campaign missions involve simple supply gathering while avoiding giant enemies, or defending a strategic location from waves of enemies for a certain amount of time. Defending a location adds a welcome layer of strategy, as Titans appear from different angles and you have to think about who to distract and who to destroy, since you can’t realistically kill them all. I don’t think they’re particularly balanced, as Titans quickly refocus, but these stages were likely designed with the upcoming co-op mode in mind.
Movement on foot uses artificial stick-based movement with no teleportation options, and movement direction is based on either the headset position or the left controller. You can also sprint by swinging your arms and swinging them behind you while running in a “ninja” style, selected in the options menu.
There is no specific “left-handed mode” to choose from, but inputs are mirrored between both controllers. You can choose between Japanese or English for both voice and text language. You can also choose your avatar’s skin color. Player height is manually adjusted using a slider. Both seated and standing modes are available for gameplay.
You can also adjust UI elements like ODM gear display, Titan HP, subtitles, etc. Camera rotation is snap-rotation only, and wind line effects and camera vibration can be turned off. Other than that, it’s a sweat-inducing, physically demanding game, and unfortunately you can’t pause mid-mission. It’s also surprising that there’s no vignette in this fast-paced game.
Unbreakable’s presentation also needs further improvement, but we understand that a game designed for standalone VR has its limitations. Character models for big names like Levi, Mikasa, and Armin look fine on the Quest 3, but the Titan designs are understandably difficult to see. We did experience performance issues in some missions, with noticeable drops in frame rate.
The environmental art is poor, leading me to believe UNIVRS is hoping players will be distracted by the Titans and not check their surroundings. The flattened fruit stand at the beginning is reminiscent of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the damage to the buildings seems like it’s been lifted from the N64 game, and the grass looks like it’s been painted over all the way to the floor. It’s not all bad, but it’s a shame considering how well the Quest made use of cel-shaded visuals.
Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable – Quest 3 Screenshots
Unsurprisingly for an Early Access release, it didn’t take long to experience everything Attack on Titan VR has to offer. It took about an hour to complete each chapter. It’s unclear at this point how many more missions we can expect. The Early Access roadmap only mentions “later chapters” and a cooperative mode coming in version 1.0. It will be interesting to see how the cooperative mode plays out. Unbreakable is a lot of fun when played with friends.
Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable review in progress – final verdict now
The Early Access version of Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable is thrilling, but has some shortcomings that prevent us from giving it a glowing recommendation right now. Unbreakable’s current highlights are undoubtedly the fun combat and well-thought-out aerial maneuvers, but the campaign is marred by repetitive missions, easy difficulty, and occasionally lackluster environmental visuals. There’s still work to be done before version 1.0 is released, but slaying titans was still fun in the Early Access version.
UploadVR uses a 5-star rating system for reviewing games. A breakdown of what each star rating includes can be found in our review guidelines. As this game is still under review, it is currently unscored to reflect our approach of being comprehensive with post-launch updates. We will revisit this review once Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable has been fully released.
