Okami is an action-adventure game which plays very similar to the The Legend of Zelda series. Funnily enough, Okami came out just before The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess which bears a massive similarity to Okami where you also play as a wolf with a sidekick. Okami however has it’s own unique style and identity that makes it an incredible game in it’s own right.
The plot of Okami follows the journey of Amaterasu (Ammy), the Japanese sun goddess who takes the form of a white wolf. Ammy is accompanied by Issun, a tiny wandering artist who rides on her back. The game takes place in a beautifully stylised version of ancient Japan, heavily influenced by Japanese mythology and folklore. It all begins with the land of Nippon falling under the curse of darkness caused by the resurrection of the demon Orochi. Ammy awakens from her slumber to defeat Orochi, a fearsome eight-headed serpent demon and restore light and peace to the world.
Reading other people’s reviews, the same topics come up again and again: slow pace, too much hand holding, incredible graphic design and music. It’s very easy to see what everyone means.
The game starts with a slow paced dialogue cutscene using beautiful Japanese illustrations to tell the backstory of the adventure you’re about to set out on. I immediately turned off the game’s on-screen dialogue sounds which I found irritating. The opening cutscene goes on for around 20 minutes before the player takes control of Ammy. It is little wonder why people struggled to stick with this game through the first area. Once you gain the ability to move around the beautifully artistic world, the game teaches you the basic controls before you journey to Kamiki Village. There, you’re assigned the task of restoring life to the land of Nippon from the darkness by utilising your celestial brush.
The celestial brush is the core mechanic of the game. Throughout the game, Ammy collects a total of 13 brushes, each of which functions similarly to the items in Zelda, allowing her to open up new paths, interact with scenery to solve puzzles, or attack enemies. You can use a cutting brush to cut down trees or enemies in battle. Other brush techniques enable the player to change the time of day or create bridges that were previously destroyed. Executing brush strokes is not always as easy as it should be. Either the game will be fussy about what it considers a straight line or as some brush strokes are very similar to one another, you will accidentally conjure the wrong action at a vital moment. All that aside, it’s a great unique feature of the game and can be a lot of fun at times. Curing areas of darkness is a satisfying experience, as you watch cutscenes of the darkness being washed away by greenery and flowers. Afterwards you’re able to freely run around the area and explore all the secrets.
You can use Ammy’s different brush strokes to reach certain areas. Some are inaccessible at first but may have better luck if you return later with more brush strokes. Annoyingly most of the time the items are just ones for you to sell at merchants. It is very rarely a cool item you can benefit from immediately. It makes the effort spent getting to the item chest feel like a bit of an anti-climax.
Battles in Okami are quite simplistic. You can either attack enemies with physical attacks using one of two equipped weapons or use certain brush strokes on enemies that require them. You can gain more abilities through the course of the game such as additional combos and dodge. The equipable weapons allow you to set Ammy up to suit your fight style. Do you prefer fast less powered attacks or slower more powerful ones? Upgraded weapons are either given to you as you progress the story or purchased from merchants.
To improve Ammy’s stats you can do good deeds around the land of Nippon to be rewarded with “praise”. This will either be feeding animals, doing tasks or eradicating darkness from areas. With these praise points you can spend them on either more ink, more health, bigger wallet or reserve health.
The graphics for the original game and the HD remaster are very unique and are wonderful to admire. I like how it’s unique to Okami (as far as I know).
The other element that people talk about a lot is the soundtrack and it is absolutely beautiful. Easily one you could stick on in the background and listen to while doing other things when not playing the game. It’s all inspired by classical Japanese works.
The dialogue speed varies from scene to scene and there isn’t anything that judges what scenes should have fast dialogue or not. This was one of the very few games that I started to feel a tightness in my chest from frustration due to how slow the dialogue is.
Okami is a relatively easy game to play, Issun who is Ammy’s accomplice through the game will point out exactly what you need to do. If you are struggling with a brush stroke for the first time, he will eventually show you on the screen how to do it. The battles are quite easy too and stat improvement items are plentiful. Players complain about how this game holds your hand is but I liked it. It’s clear Capcom just wanted players to be able to experience this game no matter the skill level. This is my gameplay preference. “Stray Beads” are one of the game’s collectable items. If you collect all of them it gives Ammy unlimited health and a massive attack boost. This can be considered overkill, particularly when certain enemies can already be taken down with relative ease.
The game uses another Zelda trope of leading you to believe you have fought “the big boss” but in reality, you’re only a third of the way through the game. By that point you have 9 of the 13 brush strokes, you’ve explored many areas and got most of what the game has to offer. By that point I would have been happy if the game had ended there. This false ending made the rest of the game feel like it dragged on a lot slower than it should have. The slow dialogue, battling bosses multiple times and that you need to do a lot of ground traversal didn’t help with the pacing either. People complain about the pacing at the start of the game but I thought the last two thirds of the game was worse.
There are mini-games in Okami which are unfortunately not optional. The compulsory mini-games are either fishing or digging. The fishing mini game is pretty standard but the underground digging game is very much like Dig Dug meets Lemmings. This game requires the player to complete it 5 times. With each one getting harder and harder. It frustrated me so much I nearly binned the game several times because of it.
