Aragami (2016)

This title is a third-person stealth action game which you play as Aragami, an undead assassin with the ability to manipulate shadows, offering a fresh and engaging approach to stealth gameplay. The game emphasizes avoiding direct combat, using powers like shadow teleportation, invisibility, and summoning shadow creatures to navigate levels undetected.

The art style is heavily influenced by Japanese aesthetics, featuring stylized environments and characters. The soundtrack complements the visuals, enhancing the immersive and atmospheric experience. Levels are designed to reward patience and strategic planning, though some critics noted that enemy AI can be simplistic at times, which slightly reduces the challenge in certain scenarios.

Although it is a very simplistic and short game, it is still very enjoyable for fans of stealth games, not all of them need to be overly complex to have high quality. Overall, Aragami received generally favorable reviews for its innovative mechanics and artistic direction. While it has minor technical flaws and occasional shallow design moments, it stands out as a memorable indie stealth game.

What truly helps the game maintain its appeal is how consistently it commits to its core idea, you are fragile, outnumbered, and powerful only when hidden. Unlike many action-stealth hybrids that eventually pushes you toward open combat, it remains focused on tension and positioning from beginning to end. Each successful infiltration feels earned, especially when chaining shadow teleports across rooftops or slipping past patrols without raising a single alarm. Even with its modest scope and occasional rough edges, this game succeeds in delivering a focused and stylish stealth experience.

Gameplay: 8/10

Presentation: 6.5/10

Story: 6.5/10

Overall Score: 7/10

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Story= plot, engagement, characters, world-building

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

Though I am taking into consideration that a smaller team worked on the development of the game. It stands out as a strong Indie title but still struggles to compete in its design with other bigger stealth titles. The levels are very linear until some levels near the end give you more unique paths. It is fun to challenge yourself to never get caught or to eliminate all enemies to earn medals at the end of each level. A big part of the story is predictable about 3 chapters in. The foreshadowing is pretty in your face. Overall by the end, the story does have a satisfying conclusion though.

A fun stealth game with a well-paced difficulty curve that really pushes you to try out different skills and strategies. Feels similar to Dishonored, though it's a little less built up in terms of the level design and skill tree. That being said Aragami brings some novel skills to the table, so it certainly doesn't feel like just a simplified Dishonored clone. It's also pretty much a pure stealth game--if you get discovered, running is basically your only option, as your offensive skills are limited and enemies kill you in one hit.

While it plays well for the most part and allows for some experimentation and cheese, the mechanics can be a little wonky. Aiming your Shadow Leap and trying to get the camera where you want it in particular can occasionally be tricky, but these tend to be minor frustrations at most.

Storywise you can see the "twist" coming a mile away which completely destroys the narrative tension they're trying to build, but it has a relatively satisfying conclusion. Mainly you're going to pick this up for gameplay though.

Also, fair warning, you're definitely going to want to pick up those scrolls even if you think the Kage / Shadow Kill combo is all you'll ever need. It's not, believe me.

This game, in my opinion (I haven't played much indie games), is the peak of indie games. The graphics are so beautiful, definitely usable for backgrounds and fits the game so well. The characters, the story, and the universe are SO WELL WRITTEN, I would pre-order a book on the lore and story as soon as they'd announce it. The mechanics are so fine tuned, there are very little, small, minor bugs (if ANY) that would inhibit enjoyability or playability. The different abilities makes hard mode more possible and achieving medals and all the skins doable while having a blast. I haven't tried the multiplayer so I can't speak about that, but the fact they thought about adding a multiplayer function into a story indie game says they really care. The medals, scrolls, and skins you can unlock can draw in completionists like me even more into the game. Replayability is pretty good as well. One of the best games I've played, ever, hands down. Definitely top 5 if not top 3.

Aragami Nightfall Review:

PROS New kill animations, very cool New maps Sick new abilities Extra lore is always awesome New time limit

CONS Animation is low quality, both in cut scenes and in game (Mouths don't move, characters tend to slide rather then walk) Only 1 Shadow kill animation Ability diversity is poor, unlike the base game without the enemy seeing ability, getting oni is super hard

I'd just buy for lore and achievements

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.

I like stealth games and Aragami had a promising beginning. But after few levels I realized that stealth here is very poor: enemies are unbelievably stupid (but they need only one hit to kill you), and it's often easier to rush through the whole level to the point. Story is just a collection of the worst ninja anime stuff, it's became boring since the first dialogue. Level design is average and like everything else in the game feels like small indie project (basically, it is).

I wouldn't even bother finishing this game, but it has a cooperative mode, so it was the only reason to beat it to the end. Aragami was entertaining in some moments, but mostly I wanted to finish this game as soon as possible.

Aragami has stiff animations, fiddly controls, and a predictable story, but it nails it where it counts--gameplay. The main conceit is that your stealth abilities cost shadow essence, which can only be recharged by lurking in shadows. This creates a satisfying stealth dynamic, one that the level designers play with in various ways. The abilities are fun and well balanced, and the progression and difficulty feel just right. The look is pretty simple, with flat, cell-shaded textures, but that's a style I like and it works well with the shadow dynamic, but your mileage may vary. I have two major criticisms:

• The ability you have selected and the number of charges it has are displayed on your cape. This is a terrible design choice! The cape flows dynamically, but the physics are stiff and unpredictable, which means that more often than not you can't see how many charges you have left. I often had to stand up and shake my character back and forth to get the cape to drape properly so I could see how many charges I had.
• Your primary ability is a Dishonored-like blink, but it is often very difficulty to locate blinkable surfaces. I found it almost unplayable with a controller, though I usually play third-person games that way. Switching to mouse/keyboard made a huge difference, but it was still sometimes difficult to find a landing spot, especially when I was being chased and needed to move quickly. Overall, though, if you like stealth games, this is a fun one. It's not big-budget, but in some ways it benefits from that because it focuses squarely on the gameplay without getting bogged down in overly ponderous systems and story (I'm looking at you, Thief 2014!).

I love stealth games. Entering an area filled with enemies and slowly and methodically advancing without a trace; learning their patrol patterns; luring them with noises to get pass them; using the environment in my favour to ultimately steal some valuables and vanishing with no casualties and no evidence of my presence. That's like drugs to me.

Aragami promises to get me my fix and it partially delivers. You play as a vengeful shadow spirit summoned by Yamiko, ostensibly a girl from the Nisshoku people trapped by the Kaiho army, to free her and ultimately enforce revenge against her oppressors. I say "ostensibly" because, even though I didn't finish the game (more on that later), right from the start Yamiko hides important information and doesn't seem to know the most basic things about the rite she performed. So her story seems more than suspect.

As a supernatural entity, you can teleport across shadows (think "blink" from Dishonored) and have other abilities that use "Shadow Essence" which, in turn, is recharged by staying out of the light. Your enemies are light adepts that can kill you with a single hit but are otherwise pretty dim. As expected from this kind of games, they move in strict patterns and don't seem to notice anything more than 3 meters away from their noses. They also seem oblivious to the obvious sings of intrusion, like light barriers (whose use is self explanatory) being destroyed or amulets being stolen.

Moving though shadows has the potential of being very satisfying, but this game manages to butcher the whole experience by having very unpolished controls. The teleport ability is your bread an butter, but most of the time it doesn't completely work. Instead of aiming in the general direction of where you want to jump, you need to point with pixel-perfect accuracy. More than once I was aiming correctly and the subtle movement of the camera ruined my jump. The main reason I didn't finish this game, then, is that I grew frustrating of being caught not because any failing of mine but because I couldn't make the teleport ability work fast enough.

These are not the only technical difficulties. The checkpoint system seems broken too, because even ir you quickload, objects that you take from the environment are gone, but not the objective attached to them. Pressing "c" shows the location of your objectives and other important places, but it violently moves the camera towards it and takes it from your control for almost a second, which is not only annoying, but could be deadly in the wrong moment. In summary, this game is in desperate need of some QA cycles.

This will be your mission, half of the time.

Even worse, as you advance through the stages you quickly realise that there's not much to this game. Except from the settings, which are different and interesting, the levels offer virtually no variety. The game sets in a boring routine: destroy the energy stones that power the light barriers, grab the McGuffin talisman, repeat. In the process, die a couple of times due to flunky controls.

That doesn't mean that there are not times when Aragami shines. As I said, the environments are interesting and offer more than one entry point. There are secret passages you can use if you are the non-violent type and high point from where to kill your enemies from above if you prefer a river of blood behind your path. Shadow Abilities allow you to lure enemies into traps, be invisible and disappear dead bodies.

Aragami could have shined as an stellar stealth game, but being mortally wounded by technical issues and dull repetitiveness, it's merely a shadow of it's true potential.

6/10

It's okay. Review over.

Nah, the presentation is really cool and I like Aragami as a character. I enjoy that your power levels are shown on the cape, and the music is decent. The stealth isn't terrible, but it shows its flaws in how limited it is. You unlock new abilities as you progress, but it's not enough, and too much time is spent with simplistic stealth action. For example, you can't jump, you can't do a whole lot really besides stealth kill and teleport. Sometimes the marker when you want to teleport is wonky, which is endlessly frustrating.

There's a mechanic there, where you recharge by moving from shadow to shadow. It's a decent idea but when you strip everything away, it's just an okay stealth game. Enemies will kill you if they see you, so it really urges complete secrecy.