#shadowessence

I’ve recently come across a video game called Aragami by Lince Works which I was able to buy pretty cheap on Steam. It’s a 3rd person stealth game which lets you play as an assassin operating solely in the shadows.

Note: The spoiler warning refers to spoilers of the story and other detailed reviews of the gameplay and mechanics that might give away a little too much. The spoiler-free part of this review will include basic information about the gameplay, the overall style, design and quality of the game as well as encountered bugs.  -Spoiler-free-

Gameplay/Mechanics:  The gameplay was very fun. I love stealth games and figuring out the best ways to kill my enemies without alerting anyone - When I played the game, I felt like the developer team must have consisted of people who love the stealth parts in other games and wanted to come up with something that’s just that; stealthing all the f**king time. You do have skills that you can upgrade by finding collectibles in the areas. That was fun and kept the game interesting because you had new ways to deal with your victims. And it made up for a pretty simple objective: Proceed to gather talismans and either kill everyone, noone or some of the guards on your way. The controls were easy and intuitive, although I would have liked to exit the menu with esc, not only with the space bar. But that’s a ridiculously small thing to complain about. Also, there are actually boss fights! The characters looked cool, the animations looked cool. To me, the game appeared like one of those very cheap and often dull but fun games that you get for a few bucks or less. But this game is surprisingly qualitative, and I see it as a little gem. I never heard of it before which I think is a shame.

Design/Environments/Interface: I loved the simple design of the interface. It fit the atmosphere of the game and everything worked absolutely smoothly.  The game looks like someone drew everything in Japanese style, it reminds of an anime. I liked that - and there’s only Japanese voice acting as well. All other languages are only available as subtitles. Dialogue is relatively rare.  The environments are diverse enough to offer a lot of variety which is definitely refreshing throughout the 13 chapter setup of the game, and they are generally very beautiful and they’re in many cases underlined and accentuated with chapter-specific soundtracks as well. 

Bugs: I have only encountered one potential bug: When you scroll through the skills wheel to pick a different skill, I often couldn’t move the pointer to the one I wanted. This only happened when I was running while accessing the skills wheel though, and to be fair, I only noticed it during one session. After I restarted my PC the other day, I did not encounter it anymore, so that might have been a local issue, not one of the game.  Other than that, there was one thing I assume the developers are aware of that still bothered me a little. You can use a skill to make enemies in the area visible; they get marked with a white little flame. That flame doesn’t disappear when you kill them, it continues floating in the air. That can make figuring out which enemies are still alive and which ones you’ve already killed pretty difficult and confusing. I’d advise the developers to fix that.  I did encounter a lot more minor bugs in the DLC however, but none that would have spoiled the gameplay experience much. I attached a screenshot.

DLC “Nightfall”: I’d recommend this DLC to anyone who enjoyed the base game. It’s a lot of fun - you have a different although similar skill set and a companion who can help you out. The DLC adds a lot of background information to the story established in the base game. It also includes pretty new environments and new soundtracks which I really enjoyed. 

-Spoiler-

The story was very simple but well made - But I admit that I often confused the names of the characters. If you carefully watch the flashbacks when the Aragami - that’s you, the summoned assassin - finds a talisman, you can quite easily understand that it’s not at all like Yamiko, the Shadow Empress, the one who summoned you to free her, says and that something is very awry with her version of the story. 

I loved the twist at the end of the game although I had expected it after the first few chapters already. The lady who summons you isn’t as innocent as she pretends to be, she’s actually the villain, and you’ve killed the wrong - your - people all the time. It’s a simple, yet interesting concept.  When I met the raven Kurosu (btw, I love that name), I was expecting it to play a much bigger role in the future. But Kurosu is only a “tool” that technically scouts the area to tell you where enemies are - and marks them, which is one of the skills you can become proficient with. So, Kurosu is mostly there for the world-building and an explanation, but it also plays a little role at the end of the story.  I used all of the skills that were available. I definitely had my favorites, like Shinen and Kunai - placing traps or killing people with a shadow dagger from a distance - but I used all of them at some point, and they really helped killing guards easily. 

The scrolls were very well hidden and I admit that I had to look up their locations sometimes, which I did because I didn’t want to miss out on the skills (I didn’t plan to replay the game). 

TLDR;  I had a lot of fun with this game and it took me several hours to complete. It’s not super sophisticated or anything, but it’s fun and interesting, and it’s definitely qualitative and worth the few bucks it costs. I think it should be much more known.