You have a real sense of tension with each level that you enter, and you seek to perform your grim task with minimal flair, making sure that you can evade detection and reach your goal with as little or as much blood as possible on your hands. There’s a great deal of satisfaction in the way you can execute executions, from your standard “stab in the back” to “death from above,” “kunai in the neck” and “oh shoot, looks like you slipped and fell to your death.” In the primary game, you eventually get to unlock a raven that can scout the area for you and give you the lay of the land prior to setting out, allowing you to carefully watch some guard’s patrol patterns and visualize the best places to wait for the time to kill. You learn to leap from shadow to shadow, sometimes even using your magic to conjure temporary dark spots to use as leap off points. The gameplay itself is the star and primary enjoyment of Aragami, and it’s done so well in both the base game and the built in DLC/side story, Nightfall. Seriously, I grew up on games where you just killed people and that was it, what’s up with all this “being subtle” nonsense? This is addressed in a different part of the game (which we’ll get to in a moment), but, in the meantime, being able to survive most of the stages without raising some serious concern at least once is next to impossible, at least from my clumsy hands. This last one is kind of a rub, as it becomes incredibly difficult after the first couple of levels to kill anything and not leave a body behind. You get points by killing guards undetected, fewer points by killing them after they see you, and you lose a whole mess of points if you set off the detection alarm and someone finds the body of a dead guard. The meter refills by hiding in the shadows, of which there are a suspicious amount even within well lit temples and homes. You have a “shadow meter” that’s represented by the pattern of a cloak on your back, and the meter depletes as you use your shadow techniques and also step into the light. The Aragami, being a creature born of shadows and darkness, fits perfectly into the role, including how it inflicts supernatural consequences into this world. Additionally, you get a fair amount of exposition through both cutscenes and eavesdropping on different members of the Kaiho clan, so don’t worry about losing the thread of the plot.Īragami is a stealth action game, meaning that you get to kill a lot of people but you gotta be subtle about how you do it. If you already feel like something is up, you’re completely right, but I’m not going to force the horse to drink, you can probably piece things together yourself as the plot unfolds. The Aragami is a bit spacy, and feels like it may have memories of something that happened before being called into existence, but Yamiko urges the spirit to focus on the task at hand: destroying the Kaiho clan and freeing Yamiko. The Aragami is summoned by a woman named Yamiko, who claims she has been kidnapped by the Kaiho clan, who has wiped out all of her people. However, the adrenaline rush and the calculating, sometimes violent path to the end is a real joyride, and you can’t dispute the guilty pleasure that comes from enacting some “justice.” That’s the main focal enjoyment of Aragami: Shadow Edition, and, for whatever else you might encounter in the story, the action cannot be denied.Ĭoming to us from Lince Works, Aragami is the tale of an aragami, which is a mythical spirit of revenge that may or may not actually exist. Sure, in the moment, during the days and hours that lead to the moment of triumph, you may feel righteous and holy, but who’s to say that those feelings will resonate once the deed is done? Much like Maria from Deadly Class, sometimes striking the final blow of revenge leaves you hollow and without purpose, an anticlimactic ending. Vengeance is a sticky, messy and only sometimes satisfying mission.
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