Aragami 2 improves on what Aragemi 1 did so much that I almost can't believe they were developed by the same studio. This game is SO much bigger, and better than the first game in both gameplay, graphics, sound, story, and animations. However, I should caveat that with the fact that this is still very much a lower budget game, but it knew where to use its money.

Aragami 2 is more of a spiritual successor to the original than a direct sequel. There are no references to the original game in the story, and unless you utilize the "legacy mode" difficulty, it doesn't play much like the original either. Of course, you still play as the eponymous aragami and this is still a stealth game, but that's about all that really connects these two games, and that's for the better.

First, the story of Aragami 2 is a MASSIVE improvement on the first game. This story is significantly longer, has WAY more characters, and is a lot more interesting. There is still a minor issue of the game escalating things in a manner that just kind of happens, but it's a lot more forgivable in this game because the building blocks are there along the way. Also, the game doesn't suddenly turn a character into a BBEG just because, the enemies you fight here are a lot more interesting. They also introduce some far more sympathetic characters, and even a surrogate daughter of sorts, and they manage to write them all in a really endearing way. I liked all the characters I was fighting for, and when I failed, I felt bad. Nothing in this is world changing, but it IS solid.

This review is based on getting an S rank in each level on Hard difficulty, so your mileage may vary a bit, but I did play a few levels on lower difficulty and I find that aside from being easier, the game is exactly the same, so it shouldn't be TOO different from what I did if you choose not to do the whole game on hard. I also only played this in single player, so I have no idea how well the multiplayer works on either the network or gameplay side, but I can imagine that this would be fun with friends, if you're friends are patient.

So, Aragami 2 is a stealth game through and through, if you ever get caught, you're going to be quickly swarmed by enemies, and even a single enemy later on can easily kill you, so you really can't afford to get caught. To help you avoid detection, you have a bag of tools that grows over the course of the game. You'll have access to both inate abilities that refresh over time and single use items that you can purchase, and it's up to you what gets unlocked and used. I didn't use the single use items at all during my game (until I needed to use some trophies) but you may find them invaluable to get you through sticky situations. however, I can attest that they are entirely not needed. The abilities on the other hand are invaluable and you really need to decide on what abilities you want to have, because you aren't going to be able to unlock them all unless you grind for a long time. Now, these abilities are where Aragami 2 starts to show some cracks.

This game is a stealth game, if you get caught, you're unlikely to survive, but the developers decided to give you a "combat system" anyway, and you can choose to invest your precious ability points into combat perks that you likely won't use for the majority of the game. This is especially because the combat in this game isn't very good. It boils down to you being able to attack, parry, and run away. However, running away doesn't always work. The parry system is hard to get a hang of, and later enemies will mostly ignore your blows, so I cannot stress enough how much you should avoid the combat as much as you can. Unfortunately, there is a single mission in this game that forces you into a fight. In most cases, you can simple attack an enemy from out of sight and get an instant death blow, but this enemy requires you to speak with them and then you have to fight them. I suppose you could run away and knock them out later, but I didn't try this. I did beat them on my first attempt, so I don't know how annoying they might be for others, but I think it's a cardinal sin to include forced combat in a stealth game.

The other cracks that can REALLY hurt your time with this game are some bugs. First, a bug that occurred for me relatively frequently is that when I held down the E key to pick something up, it would fill up the little timer and then do nothing. This is really annoying when you are trying to hide a body, pick up some gold before a guard turns around, or even worse, pick up an item that alerts nearby enemies if they're too close. I normally just needed to hold E again to resolve the issue, but this shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Another bug is that sometimes enemies will be alerted to you instantly when it should take them some time to see you, or in my case, once an enemy saw me when I was literally invisible and not moving. On other occasions the guards could hear my like I was running when I was crouched ( and therefor silent) and some enemies would move directly to my location when they should have had no idea where I was.

These issues didn't ruin the game for me, but they DID ruin a few attempts at a mission for me, and I really hated that.

Finally, this game is MUCH longer than the first. The first game took me a little over an hour to get through, especially once I ignored killing enemies, because there just wasn't that much to the game, and each level was pretty short. This game levels that all up significantly. First, you start in some smaller levels to get used to the game and how things work, but you'll quickly be dealing with bigger and bigger levels until you end up in areas with dozens of enemies you need to avoid or deal with. On top of that, instead of there being about 6 levels, there are 51 levels in this game.

To achieve this scale with the smaller budget this game works with, areas are reused a LOT, and assets in each level are obviously copied. However, each mission you take on is unique in your goal, what precise pieces of the level are open to you, and what/where enemies are placed. Even though areas were reused, due to these changes, I never felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again. All 51 levels require you to do things differently and learn how to deal with the enemies at hand as well as the goals required. So, this is a massive game that reuses a lot of things, but does so in a way that you probably won't mind. Plus, while areas and items may be reused, you continue to be introduced to newer and more difficult enemies right up until the end.

All told, this game is absolutely amazing and I can't wait for the next one. Here's hoping it happens sooner rather than later.

Edit: I didn't know when I wrote this, but Lince Works shut down, so I guess no Aragami 3. That frickin sucks

I am not recommending this game because of a lot of bugs and etc. when you try to k*ll someone you can not kill them like they got immortality DO NOT PLAY THİS GAME

YES