Okami Reviewed

[Zenien]

Okami Review
Clover Studio's adventure finally hits our shores. Is beauty only skin deep, or does this wolf have a real soul?

by Chris Roper

September 15, 2006 - Since our first look at the game, it was quite obvious that Okami would be something special, and very likely wind up as one of the PlayStation 2's last must-have hits. Gamers everywhere have been waiting for this game with bated breath as it has long promised to be entirely original, wholly beautiful and quite possibly the PS2's answer to Zelda.



In large part, the game has met all of these expectations. It isn't perfect by any means, but what it does right it does extremely well. In fact, the game will surprise you in ways that you hadn't expected, even after its beauty has become familiar and even taken for granted. It might not quite be on the level of Zelda, but it's probably the closest thing we've ever seen outside of Nintendo, and that's saying a whole lot.

Okami's design is based around its Celestial Brush, a godly mechanism that literally lets you paint things into the world or directly affect its state, like changing night to day or causing the winds to rush. Nearly every element of the game is tied into this brush in one way or another, and as such, much of its success is based on how well it works and was implemented.

Using the brush becomes second-hand almost instantly. Holding down the R1 button, you use the left analog stick to paint while the right analog stick will pan the camera, even in the brush's paused state of time. The Square button will paint a standard line while the Triangle button is pressure-sensitive, allowing you to paint thin or thick lines at will. You don't really need to use this very often other then when you need to cover a fair bit of the screen, but it's nice that you have this play with the pressure.

Your ability to paint detailed or even perfect shapes with the brush will depend upon your mastery of your analog sticks, but luckily the game gives you plenty of leeway with your shapes. If you need to draw a circle, a fairly long oval will usually suffice as long as you connect the ends. There are occasions where you'll miss this by a smidge and will need to retry, but there are hardly any cases where you'll get penalized for it.

The power that you have with the brush is rather fantastic. You're able to chop down most trees at will to find goodies, spring life back into dead trees, bring out the sun during the night, call upon the winds to do your bidding, yank water from a spring to put out a fire, materialize a large bomb and much, much more. These things you can do at will, but many of the bigger, "world changing" events, like drawing a bridge into existence, only work at predefined areas. While these sections can sometimes feel a tiny bit contrived as you're really just going through the motions and doing what the game wants you to do, many of the brushes other functions work at your whim and do so wonderfully.

Perhaps the only somewhat disappointing part about the Celestial Brush is that most every shape is based on either circles or lines. This means that through most of the game you'll be connecting two objects via a line, slashing through something or circling something else, and these three motions pretty much cover the game's 15 brush techniques. This is very likely the result from a combination of intuitive play and hardware limitations, but just a little more variety would have been nice.

Continued...

 

[Zenien]

One of the most surprising things about Okami is how good the story is, and even more so the dialog. The story progresses in a rather standard adventure game manner in that you have a giant, overarching goal that you need to meet with a lot of little and sometimes unrelated challenges along the way. Even though a fair bit of the elements may seem trivial, you get a great sense of how important your mission is to the world, who and what you are and how you affect the people of Nippon. In other words, Clover Studio has done a great job of making the game's events feel much bigger then just you and Orochi (the game's 8-headed protagonist), even if some of the missions don't seem to tie directly in.



One element that especially helps drive the game's story is the dialog, and Capcom has somehow managed to create one of the best translations we've seen in a long, long time. The characters are funny, witty, sarcastic, sly and generally have a ton of personality, especially Amaterasu and Issun, the bug-sized artist that acts as your guide of sorts. While Amaterasu may be a god, she's also in the form of a wolf and can't speak, but that doesn't mean her character doesn't come across. She'll literally lie down and go to sleep while someone is talking to her, which is both a funny and unexpected action for someone of her stature. Some of the one-off characters you'll run into in villages have passable dialog, but the main characters are absolutely fantastic.

As for the game's missions, some seem a little out of place, as we mentioned, but there's a fair bit of leeway in what you can do. The game takes you from city to city, leaving the world open in case you'd like (or need) to return to a previous area. Throughout the course of the game you'll have the option to stay on the relatively straight path to defeating Orochi once and for all, or you can choose to help out the game's many villagers in one way or another. These side quests will earn you money, items, or most importantly of all, Praise, which you'll use to upgrade Amaterasu's health, available ink and so forth.

Some of these side missions are fairly basic, like playing whack-a-mole or digging for turnips while running from a gardener, but they're also mostly entertaining. Some are as simply as talking to someone, drawing a quick line and reaping the rewards, so it can really pay off to wander around town for a short bit and see what you can do to help. You are a god, after all.

Not only can you set off on random missions from villagers, there's literally a ton of stuff to hunt down and find in the world. Buried treasures, giant plant pods that need blossoming, cursed areas that need life, statues to appease and more cover the landscape. Tracking all of these down would easily double the game's already fairly lengthy play time, so there's a lot to keep gamers going here.

One problem that we do have with the main mission structure is that it can sometimes be difficult to figure out exactly where you need to be or who you need to talk to in order to continue. There are even times where two important and overlapping missions must be triggered in the right order to get things going, which can cause frustration when you know exactly what you're supposed to do on a mission, but can't until you start another, only partially connected task.

The main issue here is that many times you'll need to initiate a conversation with key characters multiple times before they'll give you the next big goal. A green arrow will appear above people that you can learn something new from, but it's possible to miss this and thusly become pretty lost. More than once we had to wander around for a while, moving from village to village, in order to figure out who we needed to speak with to move on. Curiously, there are times in the game where you'll be shown exactly where to go, which makes these "lost" sections seem a little worse.

Continued...

 

[Zenien]

There are a fair number of puzzles to solve in the game, some of which are rather inventive, but they don't really start to challenge you until later in the game. In fact, the first half-dozen hours or so involves a lot of hand-holding and entirely simple battles. The game is certainly engaging enough to stick with it, that's for sure, but we would have liked to have seen the challenge pick up much quicker.



This actually applies to Okami's battles through much of the game. Enemies are generally encountered when you run into moving spirit flags that cover the land, allowing you to pass as many as you want. You really only earn money and other non-essential goodies from them, so you could likely finish the game without ever touching one of them. Should you choose (or happen) to fight, however, you won't have any problem whatsoever as these "random" encounters are incredibly easy to beat. The enemies are certainly interesting, but very few put up any sort of a fight at all.

The game's bosses are much different, however. Big or small, Okami's main enemies are creative, challenging (or at least require a bit of puzzle solving) and, most importantly, fun. You'll happen across bosses that tower leagues above Amaterasu, and only by combing a number of brush techniques will you be able to get by. Some of these are a puzzle in and of themselves, generally testing the techniques that you've learned up to said point in the game. Our only disappointment is we wish we'd encountered more of them, but what's there is great.

Visually, no other game in existence compares with Okami. Its art style is entirely unique, mimicking a moving painting more than anything else. Subtle but awesome visual tricks like blacks bleeding off of one object and into another make even static elements of the world seem alive. Coupled with how dynamic the environment is, being before and after you've affected a number of things, you'll find it a constant playground for your eyes.

The game's animation too is superb. Amaterasu moves brilliantly, her legs and haunches moving like the wind as she strides across fields. Controlling her is a dream, and the visual feedback you'll get from anything you do only heightens this sense. Even when you run out of ink and Amaterasu's signature weapons and flares are gone for a short while, she looks brilliant in motion. It's really the combination of the fascinating art style with subtle movement that gives her such grace.

Closing Comments
Okami is a game we've been waiting on for a long, long time, and for the most part it has lived up to our extremely high expectations. It's beautiful, charismatic, engaging and one of the most original games you'll play anytime soon. Sure, it's not perfect, and we may have picked on some of its flaws a bit more than usual simply because they're a little more obvious when everything around them is so great. All in all, Okami is a game that any self-respecting PlayStation 2 owner should pick up simply because you've never played anything like it before.

9.0 Presentation
Great and informative menu layouts, impressive story and fantastic dialog. Plenty of load points, though most aren't overly long.
9.5 Graphics
Stunning. That's all there is to say.
8.5 Sound
Great soundtrack to perfectly blend with the world. Voices are just mumbles but sort of works.
9.0 Gameplay
The Celestial Brush makes the game and works brilliantly. Most battles are entirely too easy, unfortunately.
8.0 Lasting Appeal
Lengthy main quest with tons of extra stuff to find.
9.1
Outstanding OVERALL
(out of 10 / not an average)

9.1

 

[Conker]

Probably one of the most visually stunning games around. I wish more developers would use artistic creativity to by-pass the god awful graphics power of Sony consoles, games as a whole would benefit. I'll probably try and trick a friend into buying it so I can play it on their system. And you should have left the original corny title

 

[Mr. Credible]

i'll never understand why more developers don't make more interesting looking games... everyone strives for realism, and falls just short, when a game like this comes to the ps2, and is one of the more impressive looking games out there.

i'll be honest, though, i played the demo some months back, and didn't particualrly care for it (i didn't get to even get to use the brush) but i might pick up the finished product and check it out.

 

[imdaly]

i'll never understand why more developers don't make more interesting looking games... everyone strives for realism, and falls just short, when a game like this comes to the ps2, and is one of the more impressive looking games out there.

Remember how ticked off all those people were when Zelda: WindWaker came out?

Yeah, because there's a lot of shallow people out there that think that just because a game looks "cartoony" or "simplistic" that the game will be bad. I'm sure that makes it a "risky" move in developer's eyes when deciding to go stylistic on their games.

It's a shame, really.

 

[Benstamania]

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this game didn't sell well because of it's artstyle.

I hate shallow gamers.

 

[Zenien]

Game Informer gave it two9,5's and GOTM over Company of Heroes (PC GOTM) and Dragon Quest Heroes (HH GOTM).

Gamespy should have their review up soon.

The only thing that bothered me when I played the demo was the garbelled voice effect they used. More so for the flee creature. I wonder if they've changed it at all.

 

[XwolverineX]

Yep, this oughtta be awesome.

 

[Zenien]

Wow I just realized that it's like 2-3 days away (from landing on store shelfs).

 

[Zenien]

PART ONE​

9.0

superb
Gameplay 8
Graphics 10
Sound 9
Value 8
Tilt 10

Okami's visual design instantly stands out, but it turns out to be just one of many inspired aspects of this impressive action adventure game.

The Good: Some of the best visuals of any PS2 game; unique "celestial brush" system adds interesting twists to exploring and combat; epic-sized quest will take you more than 30 hours to finish; good amount of side quests and minigames add lasting value.

The Bad: Combat is a little too easy overall; lots of text dialogue but no speech.
-----------------------------------------
It's only fitting that a game about a god should have an awe-inspiring presentation such as this. Okami is based on the Japanese legend of the sun god, Amaterasu, whom you control throughout the game in the form of a white wolf. A truly epic journey awaits this wolf, who wields divine power quite literally as an artist wields a brush. Despite its unusual premise and other unique qualities, Okami is in many ways a textbook action adventure game. It takes its cues from the Legend of Zelda series in particular and achieves similarly outstanding results. Much like in those games, in Okami you'll traverse a vast countryside filled with intrigue, meet a variety of interesting characters, delve into dungeons chock-full of various traps and fearsome-looking creatures, and become more and more powerful as you go. All the while, Okami's stunning good looks give it the appearance of a cross between a cartoon and a traditional Japanese ink-and-watercolor painting, and perhaps best of all, the game keeps going and going for much longer than most other games like it.

Okami boasts an extraordinary visual style, but there's much more to it than all the pretty graphics. ​

Though Okami's premise and characters are steeped in Japanese folklore, you don't need to be familiar with the source material to appreciate this game--you just need a bit of an open mind. The story plays out like a modernized anime version of a myth, except with a far more original visual style than what most anime brings to bear. The story is simple: Amaterasu, reborn as a white wolf, has a mission to rid medieval Japan of a demonic curse that's swept across the nation. Apparently, it's all the doing of a massive eight-headed serpent that was killed 100 years ago and has been reborn. Will history repeat itself, or is there an even more sinister plot at work here? At the beginning of the game, Amaterasu is joined by a pint-sized creature named Issun, a bold and smart-alecky little guy who does all the talking for the both of them. Their journey begins by purging the evil from a small village but expands to encompass all corners of Japan, and beyond. The story unfolds mostly through frequent, nicely animated cutscenes. There's a lot of dialogue throughout the game, which makes for plenty of reading since all the characters speak in gibberish that sounds just vaguely Japanese.

The story boils down to a conventional battle of good against evil but effectively sets up a series of remarkable, self-contained subplots that are all seamlessly interconnected. During your quest to purify Japan, you won't just battle that eight-headed serpent--you'll unearth the cause of a deadly plague threatening a huge city, help villagers in danger of freezing to death from a relentless blizzard, come face-to-face with an enormous water dragon that's terrorizing Japan's coastline, and more. While the game is a little dense with exposition, overall you'll feel like you've gone on an incredible and long journey once all is said and done. It helps that Okami will take you at least 30 hours to finish the first time through, and that's not due to any sources of frustration during the gameplay, either. Okami is very long for an action adventure game, especially for one that has so much beautiful scenery in it. If anything, the game probably could have shed a couple of hours for a slightly quicker, tighter pace, since the experience can start to drag in a few spots, such as an obligatory fight-all-the-bosses-again sequence near the end. The game's scarce shortcomings are all this minor.

You're no ordinary wolf in Okami, thanks mostly to your ability to paint miracles using the celestial brush. ​

Just running around in the world can be exciting, which is fortunate, because there's a lot of running around to be done. Amaterasu, or "Ammy" as her companion likes to call her, can run very quickly and jump quite high, and when engaged in battle, she fights with a divine instrument on her back that acts like a sword. Since she's a wolf, she can also bark and dig holes, but that's not all. The most unusual aspect of Okami's gameplay is in the brush techniques you'll frequently have to use to defeat foes and reach places no man or wolf could go, and these represent her divine powers.

You'll learn more than a dozen different brush techniques over the course of the game, each gifted to Ammy by one of her fellow animal gods. These let her harness the power of the elements, slash clean through solid stone and other objects, rejuvenate plants, blow things up, and much more. To start using brush techniques, you just press and hold R1 to make the scene instantly switch to look like an ink painting on parchment while a large brush (that appears to be Ammy's tail) comes down from offscreen. Then you can draw these simple shapes and lines, corresponding to your different brush techniques, and miracles happen. For example, Ammy can change night into day if you paint a circle in the sky, or she can cleave an enemy in two if you paint a line straight across that foe. She can create large lily pads that serve as floating platforms in the water, and then summon gusts of wind that will push this makeshift boat along, among a variety of other uses. It's exciting to gain each new brush technique, as well as to discover new ways of putting together everything you've learned.

 

[Zenien]

PART TWO​

You'll need a bit of time to recharge your divine energies if you use too many brush techniques in rapid succession, but overall, you'll be using these moves regularly and often both while exploring and while in combat. The brushwork takes a little getting used to, but you'll have plenty of time to practice. The whole system winds up being novel and fairly deep, since some powers vary in effect depending on how you draw them. The game also has a number of puzzles and battles that make clever use of the different techniques you'll pick up as you go. In addition to learning brush strokes, Ammy will grow more powerful in other ways. For instance, she can learn new fighting moves from an eccentric martial arts master, one of the game's wildest-looking characters; you can increase her maximum health and celestial ink reserves; and she'll find multiple new weapons and many other items during the course of the game. You get a good, clear sense that your character is growing stronger and stronger as the story progresses.

You'll face many fearsome foes during your long journey, though the combat in Okami isn't very frequent or difficult. ​

Though Amaterasu has a daunting mission, the journey in Okami is never particularly difficult, mostly due to the abundance of health power-ups you'll find or that you can purchase. If there's a problem, it's that there's virtually no limit to how many of these items you can carry with you. You also have access to an "astral pouch" that can bring you back to life right on the spot should you run out of health, so with all that aid, it's possible and likely that you'll get all the way through Okami without ever seeing a "game over" screen. This is mostly to the game's credit, and it's still got some fairly challenging puzzles and jumping sequences, in addition to some other surprises in the form of a couple of fun minigames. The game's combat is also entertaining even though most of the fights, even against the biggest and seemingly deadliest foes, are quite easy. You'll encounter all kinds of imaginatively designed foes and get to lay into them with fierce-looking attacks, with some help from that divine brush of yours. The combat is fast-paced and, like everything else about Okami, it simply looks terrific.

Despite the sheer variety of demonic enemies in the game, combat isn't too frequent in Okami. As you explore the wilderness, you'll see packs of demons represented by floating talismans, and touching these will send you straight into the fight. However, it's easy to avoid most such encounters if you want to. While there's a lot of four-legged traveling to be done in Okami, since you run so quickly and the scenery looks so good, it's nothing if not pleasant. You do find means of fast transportation later on in the game, making it easy to cross from one side of Japan to the other in a flash. Much of the game also takes place in various towns and villages, in which you'll be speaking to dozens of unique characters, many of whom are quickly endearing due to the game's good dialogue and fantastic art style and animation. You'll also spend lots of quality time rejuvenating the land, bringing withered vegetation back to life, feeding woodland creatures, and so forth. This aspect of play is far more satisfying than it might sound like, partly because it's through these acts that Amaterasu earns praise, which functions as experience points that you can spend on improving your powers. Not that Amaterasu wouldn't be doing all these good deeds out of the goodness of her heart.

You'll be hard-pressed to find a better-looking game for the PlayStation 2. The game's look is unlike anything out there, with the possible exception of 2003's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the GameCube, less because the art styles are similar and more because the art styles are each so distinctly stylized and skillfully presented. While Okami doesn't include support for widescreen progressive-scan displays, it still looks positively spectacular. The game's visual style is cohesive, original, and flawlessly executed. Every scene shimmers with life, except for the scenes that are covered in the thick, evil fog that dispenses in a flourish of lush vegetation when Amaterasu works her magic. Great character designs both for human characters and for all the weird demonic foes you'll encounter further guarantee that you won't soon forget the unmistakable look of Okami. While the visuals alone aren't what make this such an impressive game, they enrich every moment you'll spend in the game's surreal world.

You don't need a fascination for Japanese mythology to appreciate Okami, but you might come away with one from playing it. ​

The audio is similarly excellent, though you might wish Okami's story was delivered in full speech. The sound effects are great, while a superb musical score filled with traditional Japanese instrumentation and modern melody accompanies most every sequence of play. It perfectly matches both the game's art style and its tone. Speaking of the tone, since Okami is basically a fairy tale, it's rather kid friendly...with the possible exception of the tiny Issun's occasional lascivious comments when he's in the presence of attractive young ladies. The game's good-natured attempts at humor lend it a likable, distinctly Japanese sense of weirdness.

Okami's long quest is filled with high adventure and gives you reason to come back for more once you've finally finished it. You can restart the journey with most of the weapons you've found and abilities you've acquired and try to seek out all the world's remaining secrets and side quests that you didn't find the first time. So there's much more to this game than you've probably come to expect from the typical action adventure experience, and the game is so well crafted from top to bottom that it's bound to impress just about anyone who gives it a chance. Now that the PlayStation 2 is in the sunset of its years as one of the most popular game systems ever released, it's somehow fitting that a game like Okami should come around to help ensure we'll carry a fond memory of the system long after we've moved on.
By Greg Kasavin, GameSpot

 

[Mentok]

I feel sorry for anyone who misses this game Get this instead of the craptacular YAKUZA

 

[Zenien]

Hey Yakuza is a good title. Sequel am get!

 

[XwolverineX]

I feel sorry for anyone who misses this game Get this instead of the craptacular YAKUZA

Just one more reason to ignore Drt.

 

[Avalanche]

Probably one of the most visually stunning games around. I wish more developers would use artistic creativity to by-pass the god awful graphics power of Sony consoles, games as a whole would benefit.

I'm sure there was more to the graphical style of this game than the 'awful graphics power of Sony consoles'.

 

[Mentok]

Just one more reason to ignore Drt.

Im DRT now

 

[Mentok]

Where the hell is WOLVERINE? Im confused now

 

[Hudson]

here.

 

[Avalanche]

Where the hell is WOLVERINE? Im confused now

Serves you right for immitating THWIP*. You'll have people accusing you of being everyone now.

I checked IPs, and you're topdawg!!!

 

[XwolverineX]

Where the hell is WOLVERINE? Im confused now

I'm here?

 

[Mentok]

I checked IPs, and you're topdawg!!!

Oh Noes! x100

 

[Mentok]

I'm here?

Stop getting me confused damn it! GRRRRRR!

 

[XwolverineX]

Stop getting me confused damn it! GRRRRRR!

Sorry.

 

[White_Howling]

I feel sorry for anyone who misses this game Get this instead of the craptacular YAKUZA

was yakuza really that bad?

well i need a game.. and i guess im getting this