The presentation is superb, the cartoon style appreciably dark and chunky, and it borrows very heavily and sensibly from Dishonored in its delivery of the teleportation (right down to the same arrow doodah when teleporting up to roofs). Ultimately, as fun as it may occasionally be for short stretches, Aragami eels thin as Oxo cube gravy, a sort of tech demo for Dishonored concepts, rather than a complete game in and of itself. But of course the best stealth games are those that make the stealthy play so much more fun to employ that sensible players will default to it anyway. And I get that this wouldn't be right for Aragami. I should qualify that the counter to these arguments is that allowing players to react to failures of stealth risks creating a game that can just be blustered through, an option to go crazy with your sword, not playing as the developers intended. The importance of staying hidden is, ironically, removed by death simply setting you back to the last checkpoint, from where you just try again, making failure feel like nothing, rather than something. In Aragami, get spotted close up and you'll die, what with literally not even having an attack button. It's interesting how this dissection of the formula reveals the importance of the ability for things to go wrong, leaving you to inelegantly bluster your way out of a situation. This rather beautifully presented stealth-me-do pares the concept down to its barest parts, all but removing the "oh shit it's all gone wrong" moments of stealth games, and fixating only on the standing in shadows and standing in some other shadows. In fact, Aragami ignores pretty much everything except for teleportation and backstabs. As you progress you gain abilities that mean kills don't leave behind enemy-alerting dead bodies, options to distract guards, and so on, each new ability feeling like something that would have been nice to have had from the start to make the early game an awful lot more appealing. The result is a game that reduces the stealth formula down to simply teleporting from shadow to shadow (or magically casting a shadow on the ground if there's not a convenient one to hand) and choosing between killing the enemies or just nipping past them. So sight is what you must most keenly avoid. To do this, you are required to cross stretches of very occupied land, smothered in enemies who'll kill your with their wicked light weapons on sight. She appears to you as a sort of ghost, nattering away distractingly while you're trying to avoid getting noticed, compelled to move toward wherever it is she might be hidden by the evil Kaiho. It seems Ms Glowy Damsel is trapped somewhere by some baddies, and she's performed the ancient ritual to incarnate you, but for some reason has done it so you're summoned bloody miles from her. Īn aragami is a vengeful spirit, summoned to help someone in a pickle. Where is the game that shows our penchant for wicker work? When shall I see the portrayal of every ninja's natural instinct for Polynesian cookery? Yet again, this is all ignored in Aragami. There is so much more to our art than teleportation and sneaky backstabs. As a professional ninja, I'm constantly frustrated by the representation of my noble traditions in video games.
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