There's just a staggering lack of variety across the board.
Worse yet, virtually every objective is either just a boring fetch quest to nab random items or assassination contracts with no substance. Sure, you might be gathering intel now instead of rescuing prisoners like last time, but visiting a stone quarry for the umpteenth occasion aggravates beyond belief. Missions have a nasty habit of returning to the earlier levels ad nauseam, upwards of five times in the most egregious instances. There were more scraps in my future, sadly, especially as I steadily lost patience with Aragami 2's excruciatingly slow pacing. I came to avoid combat at all costs for these reasons alone, even forgoing lethal takedowns when possible out of the fear that they might somehow trigger more tussles later on. Considering guy-with-sword is the only enemy type to encounter for the vast, overwhelming majority of playtime, you'll likely grow tired of fights, regardless of the outcome. Only two or three hits will send you belly-up, so it's best to sprint, hide, and wait for the guards to get back to patrolling, particularly if two or more are on your tail. Frustration sets in quickly when parrying fails, and then enemies wail on your defenseless carcass. I'm relatively confident the parry maneuver is partially to blame as it often doesn't, well, actually parry incoming sword-swipes.
Combat in Aragami 2 is bizarrely swampy and awkward for a game about ninjas, where the timing of both hits and misses feels off, as if the animations aren't keeping up with the fights themselves.
#ARAGAMI SWITCH SKILLS FULL#
Of course, there are times when a plan goes awry, and things devolve into duels that are about as enjoyable as pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks in knee-deep mud. Which there often is! Few moments in Aragami 2 are quite as satisfying as witnessing your wild schemes come to fruition in a fell swoop. If you're lucky, though, there'll be a lamp post close by that's eager to send them off counting sheep. It comes in handy when there's a posse of baddies hanging around a choke point, where individually taking them down is nearly out of the question. My favorite is Dark Flame, a skill that, on command, will turn lamp posts into explosive clouds of sleep-inducing gas. That fabulous self-expression only amplifies once shadow skills come into the fold and wildly expand on how you can approach levels. At least, as a silver lining, you don't need to know what happened in the first game to enjoy this one. It's all just shallow set dressing to justify why you're throat-punching armored guys around the countryside. Despite Aragami 2 sewing compelling seeds involving themes of spiritualism, the story never blooms into anything meaningful in the 15-hour long campaign. It seems a rival clan known as the Akatsuchi wants to wipe any competition from existence, no matter how war-crimey things get. Set in an entrancing, war-torn feudal fantasy land known as Rashomon, Aragami 2 puts you into a stoic hero's spiffy tabi boots as they try to save the Kurotsuba clan from a miasma of death and disease. Even so, a lackluster story, painfully repetitive missions, and one too many bugs keep Aragami 2 from being a tale worthy of legend. This sleuthy third-person adventure is an utter delight when you're exploring its brilliant serpentine levels or disposing of evil-doers by way of some creative supernatural powers, both of which are even more fun while hip-tossing your way through the campaign in co-op with a buddy. Ninjas and the stealth genre are like PB&J sandwiches: even with stale bread, it's usually a mix powerful enough that it can overwhelm any unpleasant flavors - though Aragami 2 is the exception that proves that rule.
0 kommentar(er)
