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You play the game as a spirit who has been summoned to aid a girl named Yamiko, who has tasked you with cutting through the Kaiho, a bunch of light-powered dudes who have captured her. While, in theory, you’d be able to simply move through stages trying to avoid conflict and get to your goal without getting your hands too dirty where would the fun be in that? Going into full ninja killer mode tends to be a bit more fun, but you’ll need to keep in mind that the moment you’re seen you can generally count on needing to go back to your last checkpoint. Everything in the game revolves around your ability to remain in the shadows and make proper use of your growing arsenal of abilities to move around, dispatch guards, and avoid the light or giving yourself away. In the early going this is a bit tougher, as you’ll only be able to jump between shadows and sneak up for kills with your sword. As things move on you’ll gain some new and very useful abilities like being able to create temporary shadows on surfaces to give you more options for approach, make bodies disappear (since you, for whatever reason, can’t drag them), and some ranged and remotely detonated weapons as well. It’s a bit unfortunate that gaining access to these skills and weapons takes a while as grinding through the earlier stages with just the basics can be a bit tedious. Aside from it taking a bit too long for you to gain access to all of the goodies that help give you far more options for fun there are some other quirks that stand in the way as well. The controls and where you’re able to jump to can be aggravatingly picky and are a major contributor to the feeling that once you’ve been spotted you can usually just expect to die. The cursor you move around to choose where you want to go will indicate whether or not you can make a hop to a specific area but on some surfaces and in situations where you’re trying to use it quickly it can be inconsistent to say the least. Combine that fact with some areas having checkpoints spread out a bit too far and there’s definitely room for some frustrations and having to repeat yourself. If you’re really into stealth titles there’s no doubt the Switch comes up short with the genre as a whole. That should make Aragami: Shadow Edition pretty appealing despite its shortcomings. If you’re willing to be patient with it and unlock some of its goodies it gets to be a bit more fun, just don’t be surprised to find some frustrations along the way.
Justin Nation, Score:Good [7.0]