Aragami

Aragami is a stealth game that caters to hardcore fans. The game does not make a great impression for newcomers as it is punishingly difficult. After surpassing the initial difficulty bump, the rest of the game is a series of levels featuring the same two enemies in traditional Japanese style gardens and temples. Aragami is developed on a modest budget, there is no facial animation, no voice acting and the game does not convey any personality or emotion in the characters. The narrative, while interesting, is a very predictable revenge tale. After the first 3 chapters you kind of see everything there is to offer. The only reason to keep playing is if you are a masochist and enjoy trial and error gameplay.

You play as Aragami, a shadow spirit summoned by Yamiko. Yamiko has been captured by the Kaiho, an army of light wielding soldiers. Yamiko informs Aragami that the Kaiho have pillaged her people and that she has summoned Aragami to help her. To do so, he must collect a number of talismans that will free Yamiko from her imprisonment. The catch is, Aragami must rescue Kaiho before dawn because he will cease to exist once the sun rises.

The game plays like a typical stealth game. Usually the objective is to navigate to the end of the level or collect a talisman for Yamiko. Paths are sometimes blocked by light barriers or raised bridges forcing the player to make detours to remove these obstacles. The levels are populated with Kaiho sword and bow wielding soldiers who can kill Aragami in one hit. The challenge is to adeptly avoid and assassinate these foes using Aragami’s range of stealth skills. There are also collectible scrolls in each map that can improve Aragami’s skills and reveal additional lore.

The main hook in Aragami is the shadow magic mechanic. Aragami can use his shadow magic to gain the upper hand on foes. He can blink to nearby shadows, mark enemies to track them through walls, throw kunai to assassinate foes from afar and more. Aragami charges his shadow magic meter by staying in the darkness while being near light sources drains the meter. If Aragami gets caught by a Kaiho warrior, there are a few seconds of reprieve before instant death. This makes the early game exceptionally harsh due to the lack of abilities.

The difficulty makes a 180 once Aragami gains the ability to lure enemies. The game becomes a stunningly simple game of patience. It's easy to cheese the AI by luring a foe to a secluded area one at a time. The only issue with this playstyle is that it can take several minutes to clear a map and one small mistake will reset you back to the last checkpoint. An alternative method to playing the game is to deftly speed past enemies to hit the next checkpoint before getting caught. I found this way of playing more fun as it demanded a higher skill ceiling and mastery of shadow stepping around enemies. Players who don’t have the patience of a Buddhist monk or the twitch reflexes of a progamer will find the game utterly frustrating.

The game also has technical flaws. It maxed out my GPU constantly even though nothing visually impressive was on screen. The game purposefully lacks a UI with all of the vital information conveyed on Aragami’s cloak. The problem is the cloak often gets obscured by the environment or wraps around itself ruining the whole experience. There are a couple times where the shadow stepping physics is busted and blinking to a platform causes Aragami to slide off it. There are other occasions where a platform can be clearly shadow stepped to, but the game refuses to let you blink there for unknown reasons.

Overall Aragami will only appeal to a certain niche of gamers, the kind who enjoy both hardcore stealth and speed running. But even accounting for those players, there are much better and more fun stealth games out there (the Dishonored series comes to mind). As I was playing through Aragami, I found it shockingly bland. The game certainly has some highlights, it looks artistically nice at times and some of the skills like the Shadow Trap are fun to use. Unfortunately the rest of the game lacks the novelty and variety to keep it engaging.