This was a title I played almost 10 years ago and I might've even heard of the crowdfunding campaign the game had prior to that. I played and enjoyed it but didn't think super highly of it. A decade later with the stealth genre being more niche than ever before and it's sequel being such a big flop that the studio went under decided to make me come back to the 1st game again. Aragami does have it's issues and certain groups of people could put it under heavy scrunity but when it came to being a modernized version of the Tenchu franchise and fuffling the fantasy of being a badass stealthy ninja, it does it's job well.
The story while having some interesting lore and has decent presentation for an indie game with a moderate is mainly just a backdrop for all the over the sneaky and murder shennaigans you will partake in. There's also an interesting twist late game but I did there was some voice acting for me to pay attention to the cutscenes better. Still, it's fine for contextualizing the gameplay.
Aragami is of course a stealth game where you play as a shadowy ninja spirit. Some of it's marketing and asethetics can be comparable to Mark of the Ninja. Since stealth is first and foremost the name of the game, that means you have to sneak around and when caught, there's no combat option of any kind when an enemy sees you and hits you with their light attack, it's an instant restart however due to reasons I will mention later, it's not that big of a deal.
I've made comparisons with aforementioned Tenchu and there's similarties to be found with the vertical levels and the very stylish and swift stealth kills. There's also comparisons to be made to Thief and Splinter Cell with darkness making you harder to spot. It also has Dishonored's blink with the teleporting ability.
What makes Aragami so much fun is how all these abilites work in tandem to create the badass stealthy ninja fantasy. See some shadows? Teleport there. You can't spam this because when you are in the light, you have to go back into the shadows for your shadow powers to be used again. You also create a temporary shadow for a few seconds to teleport into and get a quick kill. Combine with chaining shadow teleports with the stylish stealth kills and it just feels awesome to go on a sneaky over the top murder fantasy.
Remember how I said that if an enemy sees and hits you with their light attack it's a checkpoint restart? You can even chain teleports into a front kill and quickly prevent the enemy from calling in his reinforcements if he doesn't use his horn. It does depend on how dark the areas are and how close by he is to other enemies.
The checkpoints are plentiful so there's not too much content you have to do upon death but there are weird some crutches the game gives you. When you get caught, sometimes there is a Metal Gear Solid 5 style slo mo that allows you to quickly prevent the alert from happening. Considering how overpowered and reliable killing from the front while teleporting is, this was an unnesscary addition.
Level design is mostly solid with them being decently open stealth rooms where you get from point A to B. A stand out being The Mausoleom of the Fallen. An issue is that many of the objectives can be very samey. It's either get from point A to B or destroying light orbs without anything else to break things up. This is something the Nightfall DLC does better since it adds different kinds of objectives like looting or killing guards or finding light orbs to open doors.
I got to give Aragami a lot of credit for having boss fights in a stealth game that actually uses the base stealth mechanics instead of turning into an awkward action game. It's something the genre was always lacking in. The only exceptions to this being Mr. Freeze from Batman Arkham City and Vulcan Raven from Metal Gear Solid. I did wish that teleporting from the front kills weren't so reliable on them since it's more about waiting for the right opening, teleporting and pressing the stealth kill button with a very large hitbox for it to activate.
The guard AI can also be too forgiving which I don't mind but it's been said that playing on normal is too easy as a result even more so if you get the shadow powers. I did what I normally don't do and did self imposed restrictions of no shadow abilities. The base moveset is fun enough without them. The Nightfall DLC did make the shadow powers more accomdating with the level design. The explosive kunai gets more use and is encouraged due to guards always walking into each other or stationed together.
There are some issues when you have to use the teleport powers during scripted sequences, the teleport indicator takes too long to activate or have a mind of it's own. Remember the Mausoleum chapter? No joke the hardest part of the game was scripted sequence where you have to get past 4 levels and avoid multiple light lasers.
Overall, Aragami is a solid attempt at revitalizing the ninja steath game.
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