Okami

"Okami: A game good for dogs and humans alike."

In the last few years, I've noticed an interesting little trend in the world of games: all the really great games come from small companies nobody ever heard of except for one little series. There's Bungie, Valve, Rockstar, Bethesda, Bioware, Silicon Knights, and, as of a month ago, Clover. As a guy who has played a lot of games and beaten about an eighth of them, it's always refreshing to see somebody try something new. Then I heard about Okami, a game where the do everything new. I saw how they departed from normal fights and allow you to fire beads from your mouth and spawn a bomb right on the enemy's head. I saw how it's possible to manipulate the game world itself through the use of calligraphy, which is something I've always wanted to see in a game. I saw how new parts of each and every stage open up each time you learn something new, even when that seems impossible. And, of course, I saw how they departed from the usually "you're a farmboy/knight-in-training/man with amnesia out to save the world for some reason" routine. Instead of a farmboy or any of that, you get to play as............a dog. Now, you'd think that playing as a dog or playing with a paintbrush would just be a desperate plea for attention for their game, but to my surprise, this actually works. This is one of the finest games I've played all year because of all these things. If you don't believe me, lets go into it in a little more depth:

Graphics:
This is the first thing you'll notice about the game. It looks stunning. It's like the sun god met with Van Gogh and had him paint the world of Nippon. *tries to avoid a Disgaea joke* The entire world does, indeed, look like a painting that a dog walked into. This is even reflected in things like the setting sun, where the sky turns black as if painted over, or when Ammy jumps and a trail of black is left behind for a second. The painting aspect is also explored when meeting the enemies. They look a lot like if Da Vinci made a painting called "The Band." Now, to get away from the word "painting", I'll discuss the other interesting aspect of the game's graphics. You see, you can paint over the entire landscape, turn trees into giant flowers, and sever a group of enemies in half, and yet THE GAME HAS ALMOST NO LAG! This is shocking for the PS2, that can't even run Psychonauts properly, but it's true. And any game that can do all of this deserves a high score here.
10/10

Sound:
Okay, Okami isn't gonna win any awards for sound, at least as far as voices go. There's not much coming out of the mouths of the characters except various sounds coming out of a synthesizer. I can still say that this manages to prevent the game from having BAD voice acting, per se. The noises that represent the speech allow you to visualize good voices, because they sound like there should be good voices there. Plus, I don't think any one person could give Issun a good voice. But there is one thing I don't like about the voices.
This is one of many games with the infamous silent protagonist. I don't care if it is a dog, it's also a sun goddess, and they should've given us something.
On the other hand, the music in the game is totally fitting with the environment. There's cheery music when it's cheery and sad music when it's sad. The sadder it is around you, the sadder the music becomes. And when Mr Orange starts dancing, the music becomes upbeat and trippy to follow suit. In all, this game isn't bad for the ears.
9/10

Story:
How to sum up the story without spoiling anything? Okay, how about this: the dog has to restore a wrecked world to it's original state, then kill a giant mythic beast brought back from the dead. If you think that spoiled anything, it didn't because that much is said in the first 15 minutes. But I will tell you that the story is a lot bigger than that. To put it simple:
9/10

Gameplay:
Gameplay in Okami is very good for a game that stars a dog. Outside of gameplay, you have several abilities. These include the ability to dig and ram things, which actually are a lot more useful than you'd think. There's also the celestial brush, which is used to paint passageways, mow down obstacles, and affect the environment in various other ways. Inside of battle, you are given one of several different weapons, based on your style of gameplay. You have your mirror, which is either used as a blade or as a shield. You have your beads, which are either shot at enemies from a distance or used as a whip to rack up lots of hits. Lastly, you have your celestial brush, which can sever enemies and light them on fire. Whichever you prefer. The enemies themselves are very trippy, with varying styles of fighting and different weaknesses. But gameplay goes a bit farther than this. In the overworld, there's various things around to extend your gameplay. This includes portals to the enemy zones, where you fight off against 2 or 3 waves of them to cleanse the area around you. You can also manipulate the environment with your paintbrush to reach new, more interesting areas with lots of goodies for you to collect. And there's a whole pile of little subquests that can keep you entertained for a long time. The only drawback to it is that the enemies can get a little too easy to beat when fighting them a lot, and since all they give you is money, which is common, you won't have much reason to fight them. But that's water under the bridge for this game.
9/10

Lifespan:
You know how I said that Okami had a lot of little sidequests? Well I wasn't kidding. If I remember, there's the demon gates to beat, about 100 stray beads to find (which are hard to find, BTW), blackened areas and trees to purify, little animals to feed, 13 different paintbrush powers that each can affect every area in the game in some way, villagers to help, clovers to dig up, and about 100 other little small things to deal with wherever you go. This also includes several things I don't even know much about, like these odd statues of cats that ask for offerings. This all adds up to a game that can last you a very long time if you try to do everything. And even if you don't, there's still a huge experience in what you have found.
10/10

Characters:
The cast of characters of this game is very odd, to say the least. This also makes them very memorable, as they are each odd in different ways. There's Amaterasu, of course, who is the sun goddess in the body of a dog. Sakuya is a wood sprite who is very.......colourful. Then there's Issun, who is a 2 inch tall calligrapher who, to put it simple, jumped out of Sakuya's dress at the beginning of the game. That's how weird he is. And there's Susano, who acts as the narcissist of the game. He's so confident in his abilities, he's willing to sleep through most of the events of the game and still says he did something. And after this, there's a whole cast of weird guys to entertain you for the duration of the game.
10/10

Overall:
This game has a lasting appeal that hasn't been shown by a game in quite some time. It gives us the power to affect everything around us in a considerable way, as well as a powerful engine for the game to run on without any slowdown. And, of course, it stars a dog and a flea. What better pairing is there than that? And now, with the hopes that it won't be sullied by a sub-par sequel:
10 + 9 + 9x2 + 9x3 + 10 + 10x2
= 94/100
= 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/25/06