I played on the middle difficulty and it certainly provided quite a challenge. This all adds a layer of tension whilst you play and it keeps you constantly moving and calculating your next steps. This makes for careful planning to complete the levels unscathed as being spotted or leaving a corpse in the open alerts the enemies and they can be pretty effective at hunting you down. With Aragami stealth is the real key for success, especially as enemies can instant-kill you at close range and most of them have a ranged projectile that again is a one-hit kill. My personal favourite, which once fully upgraded, summons a dragon-demon that devours the enemy in a spectacular fashion leaving no trace of them whatsoever. The techniques range from a shadow clone to distract enemies, to being able to throw kunai knives.
You can find Shrines placed sparsely throughout the level which will refill the techniques. Some of these will rely on using your ‘Shadow Essence’ whereas others have an infinite use.Īs you progress, you can unlock powerful techniques that are limited to two uses but they can’t be used against bosses and you can only have one equipped at a time, though you can switch between them. These two abilities are accessed at the very start of the game but as you progress through the levels you can find scrolls to unlock a variety of different offensive and defensive abilities, such as being able to hide bodies, become temporary invisible and tag and track enemies. You can also create shadows to draw power from and keep you hidden for a very short amount of time.
Instead, you are able to use a teleportation ability to move on top of ledges and buildings and to be able to quickly travel out of a tight spot. Strangely as an assassin, you can’t jump in the game. This brings me nicely to the abilities at your disposal. Cleverly, these runes also act as a visible magic meter for your ‘Shadow Essence’ which will deplete when you use your abilities and refill when in the shadows. His dark ninja-esque outfit is contrasted with a bold red hood and cloak that is patterned with sigils that depict the technique you have equipped and they glow white when you are hidden in darkness and fade to black in lit areas. His character design is memorable with having no visible facial features except for startling white slit eyes, with dark bandages hiding the rest of his face. What really appealed to me the first time I set eyes on the game was just how much of a badass assassin Aragami is. Thus the journey begins to take down the evil Kaiho army whilst also learning about your past when fragments of your memories are awoken each time you find a talisman. Yamiko explains that she and her empress have been captured before asking Aragami to help release them both by finding six talismans to unlock their prison. The main games 10-hour story is set over 13 chapters and puts you in the shoes of the protagonist Aragami, a vengeful undead spirit that is summoned by a mysterious girl named Yamiko. This is because Nightfall throws you in the deep end with a complete set of abilities and tricky level layout from the offset which the main game instead gently eases you into. If you are picking up Aragami for the first time it is recommended to play the main game before Nightfall even though its story acts as a prequel. Two years later and the game returns with the Shadow Edition which now features a new story expansion called Nightfall as part of the package. It wasn’t quite Tenchu but it helped to go a long way to fill the void. If you are like me and have been patiently waiting for a new Tenchu game to wet your assassin stealth appetite then your prayers were somewhat answered back in the latter half of 2016 with the release of Aragami.
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