{"id":1990,"date":"2021-09-18T17:30:29","date_gmt":"2021-09-18T22:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/ggndev\/?p=1990"},"modified":"2022-05-14T08:40:38","modified_gmt":"2022-05-14T13:40:38","slug":"aragami-2-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ghostgamer.news\/aragami-2-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Aragami 2 Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I didn’t want to write the teaser headline attached to this review. It hurts to write it, but it has to be said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stealth gaming has been hit pretty hard over the years with the pretty much de facto death of Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid and Assassin’s Creed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we got Aragami, which felt like a casual blend between Splinter Cell and fantasy ninja fun. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was a nice, short stop-gap to keep the stealth genre from disappearing in the tall grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Aragami 2 was announced, it was exciting. When they noted that it would include coop, it was.. Hesitantly exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that it’s out, however, I’m not excited. In fact, I’m generally disappointed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aragami 2, as in “Too Many Changes”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At first, everything feels fine. You get a story here that I have no doubt most people will ignore because, honestly, we don’t play it for the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ghost of Tsushima, anyone?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Once you start learning how to use your fancy shadow abilities, however, things start to go downhill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original Aragami had a nice “blink”-like (if you haven’t yet, check out Dishonored) ability that was fantastic. You could blink across a map, blink through gates, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aragami 2 changes this to a “teleport to only certain ledges, which you’ll hang on instead of automatically be on top of”. In some ways, this works: shadow leap to a ledge below an enemy and retain your stealth. Where it fails, however, is the fact that many places you’d WANT to leap to just aren’t an option. Natural ledges? Nope. A ledge below you? Nope, you’ve got to jump down to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and then some rope paths you can traverse? Be careful, because if you jump to them and try to mantle up, you’ll instead.. Leap over it to the ground, which is a great way to ruin a stealthy approach to an objective by landing on the ground around a group of enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this is an RPG, which means gaining XP and new skills to play with. There are plenty to choose from for a variety of playstyles, but they don’t always work as well as you’d expect. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used invisibility (which a number of skills provide) to evade pursuing foes (after failing to mantle a rope path) and ended up being perfectly visible to them, apparently. I’d combine invisibility with the tall grass and it wouldn’t matter: They knew exactly where I was and started swinging immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Yes, there is tall grass, a requirement for any stealth game now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Of course, when stealth fails, you’ve got the fancy Sekiro-lite combat with parry, dodge and stamina to deal with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Know what’s fun? When the target lock engages automatically and then forces the camera to be on the other side of a wall, so you can’t see what your enemy is doing at all.. which happens a lot when backed into a corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting discovered is really no big deal as long as you can get to a good spot to retreat to: Thanks to double jump, dash and shadow leap you can get away easily, and cooldowns don’t take long before they go back to their usual spot (with just an extra bit of awareness). This takes out a bit of the challenge, except for the aforementioned rope mantling gripe that caused me to restart one mission so many times I almost said “Alright, that’s enough of this game for a review”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not all bad, however. Your shadow vision is basically like Sam’s night vision in Splinter Cell, and is something you’ll swear by. Other abilities, both passive and active powers, enhance the experience and do make you feel like a pretty sweet ghost-ninja.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Whoops, accidentally got noticed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now, I do want to touch on one thing briefly: Coop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t try it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a friend who was possibly going to pick it up so we could try coop, but after playing through it, I can already get a good idea of how it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use one person as a distraction while the other moves to an objective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Occasionally take down 2 guards at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rush toward objectives to finish a mission quicker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coop is absolutely not required because the game just plain isn’t that hard to do solo.. Which is good, because there are no difficulty options here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I may give it a shot further down the road with someone after a few patches come out, but for now, know that coop just isn’t as important as they made it sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n