EDIT:Get the Northstar launcher mod to avoid DDOS and get extra content.


That game is great. It’s unfortunate Redditors excessively shill it to the point it’s kind of a meme because it vastly improved and expanded the original game’s ideas in an almost perfect way.

This review is strictly about the multiplayer part of the game. the singleplayer part of it is pretty good, even great at times. It’s a very memorable experience, and for that alone I would recommend it, but I prefer focusing on what you will eventually spend most of your time on once you’re done with that.

Before we get to the game part, let me tell you that this game is littered with technical problems of all sorts, from crashes to seemingly random disconnecting from servers. Good news is, over 90% of it is entirely client sided, bad news is, lots of those problems are pretty hard to troubleshoot because they may require you to try solutions found only in other Source engine games, notably Apex Legends or the first Titanfall.

For reference, unless I don’t reset my Windows Audio Endpoint Builder and my Windows audio in Services once I booted the game, I am almost guaranteed to have my connection to Titanfall servers time out, because somehow hexacore AMD CPUs have this sort of issue on TF2. Or better yet, one of my friends has had issues with random crashing in games for months, and to this day we found no real solution to it (although we suspect this has to do with hardware problems).

Also, despite being released on Steam, it still relies on the Origin launcher, EA's massively dogshet excuse of a game launcher.

Point is, if you buy this game, expect a noticeable chance of having to solve problems to make it work properly. It’s worth the trouble though, otherwise I wouldn’t be recommending the game.

Let’s get to the fun part.

1) Gameplay.

For the sake of clarity, pilots refer to players not seated in titans.

Originally, I would’ve said that it’s COD with parkour elements, then as I was formatting this review, I realized there’s actually one. While it does actually share COD’s low TTK gunplay and some aspects of pilot customization, unlike ~2017 era COD, it is in fact, fun.

No gameplay element is a gimmick left as an afterthought made to please shareholders. From pilot abilities to titans to gamemodes to guns. They all flow organically in an ever-shifting dynamic that is entirely left to player skills.

What I mean by this is that no encounter between anything is the same , with some rare, yet annoyingly common exceptions . This also means the skill celling is incredibly high. So much so in fact, that you’re almost guaranteed to lose against experienced pilots as long as you don’t acquire at least a minimum of technical knowledge and mechanical mastery. My only advice here if you have issues with this is to keep on improving as you play the game and experiment in private matches/PvE.

You could be:
-A Stim pilot going at the speed of stupid plasma shotgun in hand,

-A grapple pilot slingshotting himself across the map quickscoping other pilots/npcs with a 14.5x114mm AP sniper rifle,

-An Ion titan lasering down airborne pilots like you’re fending off a German air raid in ‘39,

-My favorite, being a Holo-pilot wearing bright colors cloning himself to troll titans to death with remote detonated sticky C4 and a magnetic grenade launcher,

-Be a dimension shifting space cowboy ricocheting rounds on pilot heads (phase shift pilot with the primary and secondary Wingman) or a dimension shifting mecha weeb whacking people with a massive hunk of metal (Ronin titan),

-Or break several times in a row the Geneva convention in a single click with a titan that shoots and throws thermite and inflammable gas (Scorch).

In space, no one can hear you grill.
I could go on with examples.

Fights between titans and pilots are surprisingly balanced once you start understanding the tools at your disposal. The bolder and stylish your actions are, the greater the payoff. Every playstyle is viable so long as movement is involved. Unfortunately, some are much more viable than others. The game has some balancing issues that may or may never be addressed since development shifted towards Apex Legends.

Instead of being raw badassery, you could also:

-Play a hitscan SMG (CAR) that barely requires you to point at someone and hold M1 to get kills,

-use a hitscan 3 shots-to-kill pistol that can not only automatically fully lock three shots onto your head in under a second, but also fires for you once it’s done locking every bullet. (Trivia: this piece of trash used to be a primary in the first game, now it’s only a pilot powerup that deletes your secondary once you use it. If someone locks you with this, I hope you play Holo-pilot, cloak, or are fast enough to run behind cover).

-Mix all the above with a stim pilot.

While those things are awful to fight against, it won't necessarily be what you'll face most of the time in matches, because it’s such a boring playstyle that most players grow out of it almost right away or leave the game. It’s an impressive feat that no other shooter I played so far managed. You’d think everybody would play those guns, but no.

All and all, it’s… really good?

2) Community.

It’s pretty solid too. Network chats aren’t particularly alive but in a good chunk of your games, the chat gets pretty lively. The community isn’t very big when it’s not on sales, but they are very dedicated to their game and it’s not hard to find a group to hang around with that’s regularly on the game. This commends some respect.

Unfortunately, you will still encounter toxic crayon eating sweats with the CAR+SP+Stim combo (amusingly, some of them play Tone because they mistakenly think that the most predictable titan in the game yields the best results against good players). Almost nobody likes those people though.

3) Conclusion.

Oh yeah, and the game’s really beautiful considering it was made on the Source engine. It has a very distinct and unique sci-fi mechano-industrial style to it. It reminds me a lot of Neill Blomkamp’s work mixed with Rob Cunningham’s with a bit of Chris Foss’ sprinkled on top. It’s great and it’s got atmosphere to it.

It’s a shame Apex went with a more generic Overwatch-y clean toon future artstyle, because for a bloodsports-themed Titanfall game, it would have done it wonders.

Respawn stopped development on this game once Apex went on to become an international success, so if you intend to buy it, don’t expect new things.
Who knows though, recently they’ve been adding more and more TF lore on Apex, maybe something will happen soon.

It’d be a shame to miss out on this game regardless.

PK.

2023 EDIT: I'm so glad to be right.