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Aragami 2 review: a breezy ninja stealth ‘em upFlow ninja flow
Flow ninja flow
Aragami 2 - Story TrailerWatch on YouTube
Aragami 2 - Story Trailer
Movement is not just the best thing about Aragami 2 - it is the only truly great thing about it. But, oh boy, it is so freeing that it makes the entire game. “Nice rope, nerd”, Gary scoffs at gaming’s recent obsession with grappling hooks, then teleports onto your mantlepiece and boots your commemorative plates to death. Jump. Double jump. Air boost. Ledge grab. Fly up to Torii gate. Plunge your sword into an unsuspecting neck.Dishonored-blink back up and drop behind the guard who just came to check the body. Do it all before the first grunt knows he’s dead yet.
“Love stealth, me, but it takes ages. I’ve only fifteen minutes before my face explodes.” Is this you? No worries. You could be in and out of most of these 51 missions in under ten. Or, you could hang around for half an hour collecting gold and silently offing the entire map.Or, you could go back and speedrun earlier missions for a better rank and rewards. The downside to this is that there are only around a dozen actual locations, but some are huge, and the game does a good job repurposing them with different patrols and the like.
The loneliest numberAragami 2, like its predecessor, features co-op, here for up to three great mates. “Stealth co-op!” I said “Colour me the intrigued colour! Think of the possibilities!” Unfortunately, while the game features matchmaking, if anyone was online, they are better ninjas than I, because they were all invisible. I did not get to try it out.
Oh, right, yeah. Magic! Gary is also magic. Here are some Gary magics: Gary can whistle. Not very magical, but quite useful. Gary can summon a shadow Gary to stealth kill two guards at once. Pretty magical, imo. Gary can do a ‘get over here’ and suck guards directly towards Gary’s fist. I call it the ‘Mike Dyson’. There’s plenty more, some geared towards stealth, some towards violence. My fave is still a well-timed smoke bomb, though.
I said up top that movement was the only truly great thing about Aragami 2, and I’d like to clarify that. The game does feel, in a world of Hitmans and Desperados, a touch light. The distinction between being lightweight and light-on-its-feet is important, though. A remedy to cerebral, complicated stealth sims is certainly not unwelcome. Something that feels just as suited to a fifteen minute jaunt as settling in for a long sesh of nailing that perfect ghost run. It absolutely channels highlights from the past three decades of stealth-action, but it also files a lot of the bumpy bits off. Immediacy over complexity.
So level design is - some fun verticality aside - nothing remarkable. Missions are forgiving, as is the ranking system. AI is just smart enough to lend stealth a satisfying power fantasy, but never enough to provide head-scratchers. Presentation isn’t all roses, either. The writing is plain. I fell through a few floor textures, and the stealth-kill from cover animation is utterly borked. Visually, it’s more consistent than the original, although the cel-shading is much less distinctive.
Still, if you’re the type of player that got all the Tenchu feels during Sekiro when hardcore own-name enjoyer Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa called his horse ‘Onikage’, I reckon you’ll have a cracking time with Aragami 2. It really does remind me of PS2-era stealth, just with fantastically responsive, flowing movement, and snackable pace. Again, it’s not a sim: it’s a toy. And that’s just peachy. We all need to grab a plastic katana and leap around the house like a dickhead sometimes.
