But the story, structure and core mechanics have all been fundamentally changed, with results more mixed than a blender full of liquorice all-sorts.Īragami 2 sees the friendly neighbourhood vengeful spirit whisked away to the secluded Rashomon Valley (don't try asking for directions, you'll never get a straight answer), arriving in an idyllic village whose inhabitants are afflicted with the same curse as our nameless anti-hero. It's still a stealth game in which you play a supernatural ninja. The word 'different' is highly contextual, of course. I can't help but wonder how developer Lince Works ended up making something so different from the previous game. It's one of those games that isn't especially great, but is fascinating from a critical perspective. And in a few ways, it's barely a sequel to Aragami at all. In some ways Aragami 2 is a better game than its predecessor. As a single-player experience, or just to those who get annoyed by goofy glitches, this probably isn't worth the stress.Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, PS4, Xbox One I want to recommend Aragami 2 to anybody looking for a new co-op game, but the caveat is that they don't mind putting up with jank (at least right out of the gate). Speedrunning is good fun, and trying to kill every single enemy without failing just before the end can be a blast. Co-op is fun despite being a bit brokenĭespite those issues, Aragami 2 is still a fun game, but only when you view it as a playground, rather than taking it all that seriously.It means stealth is the only option, and while that can still be fun, it kind of defeats the point of learning to fight in the first place. While you're meant to attack and parry your opponent until their health or stamina is depleted, the latter making them vulnerable to an instakill or knockout attack, the online peculiarities mess with that.įor example, you may have to parry attacks facing away from you or resign yourself to getting hit by enemies who don't even seem to be attacking. However, for those joining someone else's game, there are plenty of issues to contend with.Ĭombat is basically impossible because animations don't work as intended. Hosts are unlikely to be afflicted by anything more irksome than the odd floating body. This is the kind of game that screams co-op, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that assessment.īut while co-op is certainly fun, it doesn't always work. Thankfully, I managed to find someone else who was playing Aragami 2 ahead of its release, and we made a point of trying the co-op as much as possible. There's not a huge amount of variety in Aragami 2's quest structure, and if I wasn't playing through so much of the game with a friend during review, I'd likely have become very bored with it all. Realistically, you either end up with missions that have you going somewhere and interacting with something, missions where you have to kill someone (or someones) somewhere, and missions where you have to rescue someone. The missions themselves aren't all that varied either. Yet that same person will teleport away to a different part of the village after the first conversation, leading to a lot of time spent not stabbing people in a game where stabbing people is the fun bit. I don't loathe this as a story-telling device, but you'll occasionally have to chat to multiple people, or even the same person multiple times, in these sections. But the elder talks your ears off in-between each mission, providing exposition and context about the next mission while (maybe) revealing other bits and bobs about the world. The story of Aragami 2 goes beyond simply saving your village as you'll have to uncover the plots of the evildoers who are targeting you are brewing. Aragami 2 Review: Not Quite the Master Assassin After playing through the final build for this review, though, I'm not quite as excited, and I find myself mostly conflicted about the game. The ability to fight your way through enemies if you failed to be sneaky enough makes for more exciting gameplay than just outright failing, and Aragami 2 starts to almost feel like an immersive sim in all of the ways you can do "things." That's not to mention the abilities you can unlock the further you get.īasically, I felt as though there was a lot of potential in Aragami 2, and that was all before I even had the chance to try out co-op, which is often where games like this shine.
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