Title: Okami

Date: 10.11.2006

Genre: Adventure

Platform: PlayStation 2

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

INTRO
With all of the on-line praise Okami has been obtaining since long before it was released in the US, I had to check it out. After a 9.0 to 10.0 from official reviews everywhere I admit that I had extremely high expectations. Last night, after clocking in 43 hours of game play, I completed the main quest of Okami and came to my own conclusion.

STORY

From the get go the first thing you will notice about this game is a very immersive story. The intro sequence seems to take almost 20 minutes. I will warn you now that if you do not enjoy games that have practically as much text as an RPG, you may have a hard time enjoying Okami. The game is full of detail and character dialogue, which in turn gives us great character development and one heck of a plot.

In old times there was a village that sacrificed a beautiful maiden every year to a terrifying demon. The sacrifice kept the monster satisfied and in turn kept the village safe from destruction. One year the sacrifice of choice was the true love of a brave warrior. This man would not have his true love taken from him, and he went to the demons lair in her place. An epic battle took place between man and devil. The gods found the man's cause worth fighting for and assisted him in achieving victory. One hundred years later man has forgotten about this legend that brought peace to the land. A turn of events unleash the evil demon and his darkness across the land once again. As the sun goddess you must gather together the lost power of the gods and bring peace to Japan once again.

Again that was nothing more than the very bare bones of the intro itself. The story is very well played, epic, and enjoyable.

GRAPHICS

After the long winded intro draws you in to the middle of the cause of the story you are going to immediately notice the beauty of this game. The graphics are cell shaded and as such have a very cartoony look. Unlike the cell shading of the Zelda game Wind Waker these graphics do have a somewhat more mature cartoon tone.

The majority of the story sequences use the beautiful cell-shaded engine. Every character animation, battle, and area look marvelous. Towns and valleys have their own unique look and thanks to the perfected cell shading job feel like the one of a kind location that they all play in the game. You would never guess that you are playing on a six year old system. Thanks to a flawless cell shading look this game graphically surpasses anything I have played on the PS2.

SOUND/MUSIC

The music itself has a very Japanese like feeling that doesn't take long to love. Every action, explosion, splash, and battle all sound great. The game creates a unique audio feel to accompany the beautiful visual experience. All in all they really did a perfect job here. So a 10/10 seems reasonable? Well unfortunately not.

Rather than a game with voice actors or a game with silent text, Okami tried to accomplish something different. A somewhat complex form of jibberish is used to express the character voices as you read their character dialogue. While it is nice that each character seems to have its own tone, pace, and depth as far as their jibberish, it gets old. The truth is that the jibberish is very fast paced and at many times annoying. It would seem that in this native tongue created for the game that "blah bloo blah humm humm hong eh oh awww ohh uhhh" translates to character dialogue of "What next?". I'll admit that 6 hours or so into the game it starts to blend in better because you are used to it. It also helps that you can hold X to skip most of the jibberish most of the time. However it is during those times that you cant skip the jibberish and my friends are over going "What the hell is that annoying garbage?" that I still cringe.

GAMEPLAY

This is where the game hits a grand slam out of the park! I could get long winded on this (like I did with the jibberish). However I will try to point out the highlights and simply move on.

Celestial Brush
You are a god, a god that by the end of the game can control almost anything using the unique Celestial Brush system. As you progress through the game and gather the power of the gods you obtain different techniques. These range from controlling water, fire, and wind to creating a bomb out of thin air.

When you press and hold R1 the game freezes and the world is displayed in a water painting like look. Using the analogue stick and different buttons you free hand paint different effects into the world. Once you have finished your desired effect you simply release R1 and the magic will happen in real time. This results in very creative battles, puzzle solving, and what I call divine intervention.

Divine Intervention
Again you are a god... A god in the form of a wolf... A wolf that to the human eye looks like a normal white wolf... Using your celestial brush to work magic in the world will often times grant wishes and miracles to those that you encounter. My favorite example of this is helping a famous warrior who is all bark and no bite tackle many difficult tasks that he would normally find impossible. You do this by assisting him without him knowing its you. After all you are simply a snow white wolf in the background, you didn't slice that rock in half, it must have been the great warriors sword!

Using divine intervention, creating miracles, restoring the land, and helping people with your godly abilities creates faith in the people, animals, and land. This faith you acquire is much like acquiring experience points in an RPG. You spend the points to increase your wallet size, health, ink, etc.

Interactive Environment
I'll keep this one simple: You can do anything to anything/anyone... No really it’s that simple. You can bite, tackle, set a bomb by, cover in ink, slash at, and use the elements on not just your environment but also on the town’s people... You can slice any tree, break any obstacle... Piss off the towns people, scare them, have some fun... Cut down all the trees in a surrounding area with one stroke of your brush and watch the eyebrows raise and the people jump in shock... Draw a bomb at grandpas feet and watch him freak out as the fuse ticks away and watch him fly high into the sky when it explodes in his face... I have been playing video games since the very first Mario title came out and I have never played an adventure game that was so interactive.

Combat

The world is full of demons, demons, and more demons. You engage in battle with these monsters in a variety of ways (running into a floating demon scroll, running under a cursed toll booth, boss encounters/story related battles). When in a battle begins you are in your immediate area, in other words everything that was around you before the battle is part of your environment while you are fighting. The combat is real time, and you use both main weapons and sub weapons, special abilities, jumping, dodging, and of course your brush techniques. Every enemy has unique attack patterns and weaknesses... An enemy may require you to use your bomb ability to knock off his armor and then attack him... Anyways any more on this would draw away from it being a review, the combat is very good!

Others
This game also features a fun multi weapon system that allows you to utilize multiple unique weapons as both your main weapon and your sub weapon. There is plenty of extra treasure hunting you can do for fun. Plenty of hidden things to find in your environments. And more, and more, and more... This game plays like a charm!

The One Complaint
Difficulty... What difficulty? For the most part this game is relatively simple. There are some puzzles that will take time and some bosses that will take time to figure out. However you have enough health items and enough hints on the sidelines that for an experienced gamer this game is not an extreme challenge. However there is enough difficulty to make the game flow and to keep things fun and original beyond your imagination!

REPLAY

Well if the fact that it took me 40+ hours to complete the game without doing all the side-questing just isn't enough material for some... There are unlockables that require you to beat the game, there is a set of 99 beads hidden throughout the land that if gathered can grant you invincibility, the game will allow you to go through additional times keeping your stats and weapons, etc from the previous completed game... Really the only thing this game could have done to earn more replay would be more unlockables and maybe a second ending?

Pros

+Original and beautiful look
+Deep character development
+Epic story
+Long lasting 40+ hour adventure
+Unique groundbreaking gameplay
+Beautiful music
+Interactive as a video game gets
+Plenty of Replay value
+More unique concepts than you can shake a stick at
+Easily one of the best titles of the year

Cons

-Long intro...
-Jibberish voices can get old...
-Not a challenge for the hardcore gamer...
-Can feel slow at times

OUTRO

In my 20 years of gaming experience this game ranks as one of the best experiences yet! The game combines RPG, action, and adventure elements with never before seen concepts and does a damn good job of it. The truth is that I think the only reason you would not like this game is if you require a very fast paced, text free, get to the killing and explosions type of experience to enjoy yourself... This game is very well paced, and very well done.

If you have ever once found yourself enjoying a Final Fantasy game OR a Legend of Zelda game (two of my stronger gaming roots), treat yourself and go buy this game now, so you can live the experience!

Game Score

A-

Reviewed By: Contributed