Recent reviews by Cat®

Although the content is quite good, the UI elements for the two survivors is so atrocious I can't stand playing them.

This is a tremendously unfun DLC with beautiful visuals.

Firstly, gameplay.

Why is there fall damage in this fast paced action-stealth game?
Why do every cutscene have characters clipping either with other characters, or themselves?
Why are there obvious seams in the geometry, and also in characters that appear in cutscenes?
Why is there a piece of equipment, that changes the main character's skin tone from undead to not-dead?
Why are there stairs when guards who investigate suspicious activity will climb cliffs to arrive at their destination?
Why is the difficulty of the game only escalated when it introduces a tier of enemy that can spot you across the map?
Why does the game break the pacing with very long cutscenes that either do not continue the plot, or give some sort of context for the player's actions?
Why are there 3 defence items when 1 would do and the second and third upgrades are both 'more aoe'?
Why is almost every interaction labelled 'eavesdrop' or 'observe' even when you are actually talking, investigating, or writing?
Why are there mandatory stealth missions in this 3-player co-op game?
Why are the mandatory stealth missions in this stealth game so late in the game?
Why do you have the ability to take people down non-lethally when taking them down lethally is more effective and leaving them alive is a risk to yourself?
Why is non-lethal takedowns and option in a game where you are instructed, and indeed forced to, kill to complete the mission?
Why is there one mission where after a long and arduous battle you are instructed to jump down a pit; and if you fail to grab a ledge you instantly die from fall damage? See earlier question about fall damage.

These questions I have no answers for. I hope when the developers was reviewing if their design decisions were conductive to fun gameplay they had sufficient answers to these questions.

Secondly, some constructive criticism of the story:

Stories usually have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Each part creating the conditions required for starting the next. For example: Your family has a magic sword that is the only way to defeat the bad guy, the bad guy shows up and hides the sword and does bad things that give you a motivation to defeat the bad guy. You find the sword, and by having the sword the bad guy targets you for more bad things. The story concludes with defeating the bad guy. That's a very simple story. Aragami 2's story is not that concise, yet has even less substance.

Story threads that could have been cut include the child being returned to the mother leading into the mother exiling herself leading into the mother coming back to eat the soul(?) of the child and then the child having a nap. The story thread where the clan elder is dishonoured by being bad at his job, despite it not being his fault that things went awry, attempting to kill himself, failing, and then acting as if nothing had happened. The part where they return 1\10th of the souls back to the aragami, realising it is not the 10\10ths they need, and then abandoning the plan altogether rather than repeating it 9 more times. The story thread where you are tasked to track down a powerful artist(?) whom you then imprison and continue to do nothing with. None of these story threads advance the plot, or resolve some other plot element. All of them are superfluous as none of them lead anywhere.

A generally good writing tip is also to make it so that your characters do not have amnesia. Characters with amensia might seem like a great idea to suddenly reveal sweeping plot changes, but are in fact counter-productive to your story. If a character knew exactly what they had to do but simply could not remember until some random point in the future; that means every action taken up until that point was a waste of effort; they could simply have waited until the character remembered and saved themselves a lot of effort. It is also generally a good idea to employ the writing technique known as 'setup and payoff', the less said the better. Presenting a character and then telling the player that they are in fact a big deal explicitly by stating it in the text, moments before the character does something tremendous, is simply bad writing. It is more bad than doing the same, and then discarding the characters because they never mattered in the first place. This game is guilty of both.

In short, do not write a story if you do not master the basic storytelling techniques you might find at a highschool level. I recommend in future to read a primer, or watching any movie, or reading any book, ahead of time to give some inspiration for structure. Also, making the final boss Darth Maul is a bad idea. If this was supposed to be funny, the intent was not clear; though the reaction certainly was. In short I would recommend to be mindful of "cause and effect" when writing.

TL;DR-
This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad.

It has been 13 hours, I still do not find this game fun.

An excellent DLC, though not recommended for beginners. Quite heavy on planning but the rewards are greater roleplay and customisation.

Nakai's campaign doesn't work as advertised, probably wont be fixed now that the game is ending its lifetime. Fair warning.

While this game is mechanically kinda great: all that pales in comparison to two problems.

1. A perpetual event means you don't get to choose which of the 3 enemy factions you fight. After 4 days I have still not even seen one of the factions because the event has decided that faction is already defeated. Unlocks are also tied to defeating the 3 factions which means 2\3 of the game is inaccessible to me and will remain as such for the forseeable future.

2. The game is extremely pay-to-win. In the great future where this game has ended development you can grab the game + all the DLC for a reasonable sum. But if you don't you will be miserable. Almost all the fun toys are behind a paywall and almost every weapon found in a DLC is better than one outside it with few exceptions. Buying the DLC lets you use a mech that comes with an anti-tank gun and a flamethrower; these are two separate unlocks in the basegame.

Any of the positive qualities this game has immediately falls away when things outside my control restrict me from enjoying it. If the global war event didn't exist, or let itself be bypassed, then at least you could play to have fun and progress. But can't even do that. Always at the mercy of the global permanent event.

Meh.

EDIT: 11\08 - The limit on which factions you can encounter is now over, for this time. To restart again soon. It took a month. Buyer be ware.

I understand that for business reasons you can't make a Beastmen and Dwarves DLC.
I understand that just because it's a Beastmen and Lizardmen DLC, other factions might get some content too.
I understand that the DLC was just an excuse for a larger patch, and I understand that Lizardmen wasn't going to be on top of the list of improvements.
I understand that the lump of work went into an excellent Beastmen rework, and a good patch overall; and Lizardmen got the short end of the stick in terms of resources allocated to its DLC.
I even understand that Lizardmen were chosen to match with the Beastmen specifically because they needed the least attention and it was just an excuse to get the, primarily, Beastmen DLC out the door.

But what I do not understand is when I pay 10 euros for Lizardmen content; is why the ♥♥♥♥ there are missing animations. The Skink Oracle is a statue and the coatl does not have a landing animation. This would be unacceptable as free content much less paid DLC. Thumbs down until these units have at least the basic quality assurance of literally any other unit in the game.

Several of the new quests are just advertisements for other factions by rewarding you with a useless single randomly tiered ship from their roster. The other factions are, of course, paid DLC. I wouldn't have minded it if they didn't trick me to spend money on it.

It also has some weird bugs when academy ships appear when you don't have Awakening installed. You also can not use the hero added in the DLC without having the advertisement quests enabled.

The quality of writing is such that one of the last pieces of dialogue is subtitled, and I quote:

[awed reaction- like a sharp intake of breath]

Which is a shame because the writing is laid on thick for the entire game. It's a shame that good voice actors are let down by bad writing that hurt an otherwise good game, and indeed good performance.
It took me 30 hours to beat the game and I had fun for almost the entirety of that time but it was despite of the changes between this and its predecessor. Notably things like temperature control is a non-mechanic, the hover bike is worse than the prawn suit making it redundant in a game that features it on the cover, and the game at no point manages to one-up its predecessor. This is like playing a worse version of the first game which still makes it a fun game; but I can't very well give that a thumbs up. In my heart of hearts I want to give it a neutral review, because I did have a lot more fun than I'm used to, but Steam doesn't allow that so it gets a thumbs down instead.

Prawn suit not taking fall damage is A++, please port mechanical changes to the original game.