Aragami review full#

The game takes place in a fictional world called Rashomon, where the player takes on the role of an Aragami, a legendary assassin with supernatural powers. Aragami 2 builds upon its predecessor’s strengths and delivers an even better gaming experience. It is the sequel to the 2016 game, which was critically acclaimed for its beautiful visuals, intriguing storyline, and immersive gameplay. When a game is already trying your patience, that kind of thing can push it over the edge.Aragami 2 is an action-packed stealth game developed and published by Lince Works for the Nintendo Switch console. For example, during a co-op session, my friend and I couldn't complete a mission because the resources we had to gather were missing the 'pick up' button prompt, forcing us to hard restart. Bugs aren't frequent, as I only encountered a handful during my time with Aragami 2, but the effects are pretty severe when they do crop up. These range from harmless, chuckle-worthy stuff, such as guards running laps as if they're in an intense ring-around-the-rosey match to inexcusable game-ending things where you clip out of a level and have to restart the whole mission to progress. Not even co-op can save Aragami 2 from its disastrous glitches, though. Even combat isn't so bad when someone else is there to pull aggro off you and share the load. Synchronization came so naturally that it wasn't long before all it took was a quick countdown before an attack because we knew what the other was thinking. If two guards split off from each other, I'd strangle whichever veered left while the fool that went right got blitzed by my friend. In the beginning, my friend and I would usually congregate just beyond a group of enemies’ line of sight, carefully scanning ahead of us while coming up with the best means to take multiple targets out at once together. Outside of a handful of short tutorials, the entire campaign is available in online co-op for up to three players, and it's a blast. If that were the case I probably would not have resorted to madly sprinting towards a mission's finish line near the campaign's last few hours, often fumbling quieter sequences and resulting in more tiresome fighting.Īs is true of nearly every game that supports it, having buddies by your side goes a long way in alleviating Aragami 2's more tedious sections. It feels like developer Lince Works wanted to draw out the campaign to reach an arbitrary hour count, but Aragami 2 could have nearly half of its missions cut and would be better for it. There's just a staggering lack of variety across the board. Worse yet, virtually every objective is either just a boring fetch quest to nab random items or assassination contracts with no substance. Sure, you might be gathering intel now instead of rescuing prisoners like last time, but visiting a stone quarry for the umpteenth occasion aggravates beyond belief. Missions have a nasty habit of returning to the earlier levels ad nauseam, upwards of five times in the most egregious instances. There were more scraps in my future, sadly, especially as I steadily lost patience with Aragami 2's excruciatingly slow pacing. I came to avoid combat at all costs for these reasons alone, even forgoing lethal takedowns when possible out of the fear that they might somehow trigger more tussles later on. Considering guy-with-sword is the only enemy type to encounter for the vast, overwhelming majority of playtime, you'll likely grow tired of fights, regardless of the outcome. Only two or three hits will send you belly-up, so it's best to sprint, hide, and wait for the guards to get back to patrolling, particularly if two or more are on your tail. Frustration sets in quickly when parrying fails, and then enemies wail on your defenseless carcass. I'm relatively confident the parry maneuver is partially to blame as it often doesn't, well, actually parry incoming sword-swipes. Combat in Aragami 2 is bizarrely swampy and awkward for a game about ninjas, where the timing of both hits and misses feels off, as if the animations aren't keeping up with the fights themselves.

Aragami review full#

Of course, there are times when a plan goes awry, and things devolve into duels that are about as enjoyable as pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks in knee-deep mud.