Aragami: Shadow Edition

Genre: Stealth Action

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Online)

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Review:

Aragami is a Stealth Action game where you play the titular Aragami, a vengeful spirit summoned to help free an imprisoned princess and take out the leaders of the force that captured her. This game has similarities to the Thief series, the Dishonored series, and especially the Tenchu series, although it does some things differently from any of those.

The primary way this game differs from those is that as an Aragami, you are literally a spirit of darkness – not only does light reveal you to enemies, it literally saps your power. Likewise, you have supernatural abilities tied into darkness, including the ability to create pools of darkness to hide in, and to teleport to any shadow you can see within range.

This makes for some really fun gameplay experiences, such as throwing out a pool of shadow, teleporting to it to silently execute an enemy, absorbing his body into the shadow to leave nothing for others to find, and teleport away before being discovered. At times like this, you feel like a bad ass supernatural force stalking your prey.

The downside is that unlike those other games I mentioned before, that badassery completely evaporates whenever you get caught. I’ve seen it said that a stealth game needs to be fun both when you’re hidden and when you’re caught, and this game stumbles with the latter, as enemies can one hit kill you with ease, and you have very little ability to fight. Even fleeing the scene becomes difficult as there’s no jump button so the slightest obstruction could cause you to halt while you wait for your shadow meter to refill so you can teleport to safety.

The game also has a 2-player online co-op mode, which allows for some wonderful opportunities when you team up to flank enemies, or use shadow powers to help one another. It’s just a pity that the Switch doesn’t allow voice chat like other platforms, because coordinating actions would’ve been a lot easier.

Graphically, Aragami looks pretty damn good on the Switch. While not quite as good-looking as other versions of the game, this game’s characters look very nice, with a slightly cartoony art style the makes them distinct and memorable.

The Shadow Edition of the game includes all prior DLC for the game including the expansion, Nightfall, a prequel intended to be played after the main campaign.

All in all, Aragami is a welcome entry in the stealth genre on the Switch, which doesn’t seem to have many games like this at the moment. It definitely has its flaws, but overall it’s a solid Stealth Action game worth owning.

tl;dr – Aragami is a Stealth Action game where you play a vengeful shadow spirit stalking enemies and avoiding light sources. It’s a fun game for the most part, though it falters whenever you’re caught. Worth a look for fans of the genre.

Grade: B

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