While I liked the cel-shaded look of the original, this sequel’s enhanced visuals are more detailed and look very good overall despite a bit of low-res texture work. These can be as simple as gaining a bit of health from executions or much snazzier upgrades like teleporting to enemies to deliver an instant kill.Īside from the gameplay enhancements to the original formula, Aragami 2 also features updated graphics. You’ve got passive and active abilities that you can unlock with skill points that you earn as your level increases. This is entirely up to you and doesn’t necessarily make a dramatic difference in how stages flow, though.Īragami 2 gives you a wide range of abilities, and though the leveling system isn’t necessarily complex, it’s a lot more smartly designed in this sequel, giving you plenty of options to enhance your character how you see fit. Most of the time, you also have a choice between killing and knocking out your enemies.

You can even engage foes in combat, which isn’t as polished as it could be but still features intense, timing-based mechanics. You can bring the pain from above by jumping down below them. You can do the traditional stealth game thing of sneaking up behind enemies and eliminating them. Speaking of which, you can dispose of enemies is some clever ways. If you’re hanging off a ledge and there’s an enemy right above you, for example, you can stick your blade in that jerk and pull him over the edge. You’ve got double-jumps, you can climb along walls, and you can perform all manner of exciting executions on foes. You’ll still be sneaking around and surprise-attacking fools just like before, but in Aragami 2, you can move around the map much more freely. For the most part, this aspect of the game is pretty similar, but you now have more actions and more control over your character than you did previously. Having just played the original Aragami recently, I was expecting everything to carry over, so I was a bit surprised when even the controls had been slightly revamped. Well, if the first Aragami plays like a pseudo old school classic, then Aragami 2 feels like a next-gen successor.Įverything is much more developed this time around, from the leveling system to the abilities to the stage designs. That’s not to say the game feels dated, but rather it’s fun and polished yet still mildly scrappy. In fact, the first Aragami is the kind of game that could’ve entered “greatest hits” territory on PlayStation 2 (even though it was released in 2016). And though it doesn’t necessarily break new ground for the stealth genre, it’s still an impressive effort and a great adventure.īefore we dive into Aragami 2, I want to take some time to talk about the first game, which was a solid stealth offering clearly inspired by the Tenchu series. This is a wonderfully realized sequel to what was a solid game to begin with. Aragami 2 is developer Lince Works’ second foray into this particular stealth-action universe, and it does an awesome job of taking what worked in the original and enhancing pretty much everything about it. It’s easy to appreciate a sequel that improves on every aspect of its predecessor.