Buy Hive if you want the deeper game and something that plays anywhere without a table; Gen42 lists 2 players, 20 minutes. Buy Onitama if you want variety between games and a two-minute rules explanation; Arcane Wonders lists 2 players, 15 minutes.
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These are the two abstracts we recommend, they are both published for exactly two players, and neither has a single element of luck once play begins. If you want a pure contest of skill for two people, it is one of these.
They differ on the axis that matters most for whether a game survives on a shelf: depth in one game versus variety across many.
Depth versus variety
Hive is the same game every time, and that is its strength. There is no setup randomness at all, so improvement is entirely yours and the skill ceiling is genuinely high. Like chess, the interest comes from getting better rather than from the box producing something new.
Onitama draws five of sixteen move cards each game, which changes the character substantially -- some sets are fast and aggressive, some are cramped and positional. You are re-solving a fresh puzzle rather than deepening one. The ceiling is lower and the variety is much higher.
Neither is better in the abstract. If you are the kind of pair who plays one game two hundred times, Hive rewards that and Onitama does not. If you want the box to feel different on a Tuesday, it is the other way round.
03Where you can play them
This is a real practical difference and it usually decides the purchase for anyone who travels. Hive needs no surface: the tiles build their own board, so it works on a bed, a rock, the ground, a train seat. The tiles cannot bend or blow away.
Onitama needs its roll-up mat lying flat, and the mat plus cards want an actual table. It is portable in a box sense and not portable in a play-anywhere sense.
