Aragami 2 Review
Played on Xbox One (base)
Developed by Lince Works
Released 17th September 2021
In 2016, Lince Works provided the gaming community with a comprehensive, linear stealth game, that even with its flaws, resulted in a decent experience. Fast forward 5 years to a mechanical improvement but a conceptual downgrade of the original, in the form of a sequel.
Story
The story of Aragami 2 is weak. It follows the previously established species of Aragami: undead souls that have been robbed of their humanity in exchange for control of the shadows. You play as a warrior who is obligated to not only save their clan from the curse but also save the Aragami, enslaved by the Akatsuchi clan. My first problem with the game is that its drab, uninteresting storyline is a humongous nosedive from the original's semi-developed one. The original game had an airtight, self-contained narrative that happened to miss some of the best aspects of good storytelling. This game not only tries to be incredibly ambitious with its drawn-out, 15-hour campaign, but it also fails to deliver any great moments, let alone memorable ones. This gets to the point that the 'emotional' or ‘climactic' cutscenes start sucking because the narrative and visual factors plaguing this game deter from their potential success.
Gameplay
The gameplay is by far the best part of this game, purely because of its mechanical improvements. Overall, Aragami 2 holds a great basis for stealth gameplay, but the progression that took place can't be said the same. I get very mixed feelings about this as the new open-world feature is fantastic, adding modern forms of versatility in gameplay, but more often than not, they're not designed well enough to keep the player experimenting. Instead, it gave me a greater urge to perform jumps and runs that essentially skip the whole level. There are also many other reasons why the levels aren't engaging.
First of all, there is repetition. There are around 10 sections to the map that are all fairly similar to each other, but this monotony is stretched out even further since across the 50 missions in the campaign, there are levels copied and pasted from one another only differing slightly in their objectives. Even then, these follow one of three pre-sets: eliminate X amount of enemies, kidnap/rescue an insignificant character, or steal X, X amount of times. I had to force myself to play this game in 30-minute bursts, starting back when the game was released because of how quickly I got bored of its “originality”.
The second reason why the levels fail in captivating the player is because of the enemy roster. Overall, there are many interesting enemies throughout, yet it's nearly impossible to experience this awe in the open-world environment. As mentioned previously, it's easy to skip through large portions of the game, and as a result, you'll rarely be able to encounter the small differentiation in enemy types. The invisible scouts are great counters to the player's stealth, and the death-sensing warlocks provoke a neutral or alternative playstyle, but these falter in how rarely they appear.
Finally: the core stealth. It truly is an improvement over the original with the various styles of gameplay now actually accessible. You can now even engage in duels with the enemies, but the inconsistent stamina, poorly telegraphed parrying, and more make these encounters utter trash. Back to stealth: this is the highlight of the game. Being able to chain assassinations or post decoys around an area was awesome but got tiring quickly, as nearly every ability was a recycled idea from a different game, creating a greater depth of unoriginality.
Characters
The characters of the game are weaker than I thought compared to when I initially beat the game. Every character that was either shown for a small duration or was an integral part of the narrative has disappeared completely from my memory of this game. The reason was that the character development for everyone was dull, boring, and not innovative enough to make me attracted to their personalities and backstories. This in turn was one of the more detrimental issues that ruined the story for me as I had better things to do than even pretend to care about these characters that had a persona emptier than a void.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere is poor. Other than the combat and stealth sound effects having the visceral, brutal tone that is required, there are barely any positives I can give. The visuals as a whole feel inoffensive. Nearly every character and area design looks as if they were imported from the first game, and this lack of care and polish makes me believe the developers either didn't care enough about the project or were too scared to make any changes that would turn players away. Graphically, it doesn't win me over, especially when the base Xbox One rendering of the characters’ textures feels half-assed and the loveable Okami feel of the first game is lost, in exchange for an unfinished Absolver mod design.
Story- 2/10
Gameplay- 5/10
Characters- 2/10
Atmosphere- 2/10
Terrible
The poor execution of all these new ideas gave demise to a title that could’ve been tiers above its predecessor.
