Okage: Shadow King

"Fun at first but boring and frustrating later on"

In Europe you don´t find many RPGs for the PS2. Most of them are only released in Japan, only several come to the USA and some of them find their way to Europe. This is sad but since I am able to play US-games with my console it is not a problem.

So I went through a list of US-RPGs and saw a game called Okage: Shadow King. I have never heard of this game before and read some reviews. They sounded pretty good so I got this game for 35 Euro.

Graphics (6/10)
When I started playing this game I liked the graphics very much. They are detailed and the characters all look unique in a way. Unfortunately, if you see some wider area the graphics blur quite much. But it could be worse.
Unfortunately the world this game plays in is very small. You will see a grassland area, a desert, some snow lands and that´s it.
The dungeons look good at first but they are quite repetitive. Later dungeons have more levels, but they all look the same and play the same way.
Monsters look okay, but there are not too many different monsters in the game. A pity!

Sound (7/10)
I liked some of the music in the game - most of it was not disturbing, some music was nice. Unfortunately the best song was played only in the final dialogue of the game. There is some voice-acting as well - but only a narrator tells you something not too important.

Story (3/10)
Here this game lacks quite a lot. At first this shadow king Stan seems to be a funny guy but he soon starts to get on your nerves in the game.
There is so much dialogue in the game and the characters talk so much nonsense. Eventually you will start to read the text only superficially and click to finally be able to proceed with the game. But you will not have a chance to avoid all stupid dialogue: Many passages in the game are solved by talking to people and getting items by people. It may happen that you have to run around and talk for more than one hour without fighting monsters. This is not a bad thing in RPGs with exciting storylines but in Okage you will be soon bored like hell.
And the game does not always offer hints on what to do next. You have to find out by yourself. Luckily gamefaqs.com has walkthroughs for all games so you can proceed without too big delays.
Finally: Your hero never speaks. Well, this is a common feature in video games but I really hate it. This way the hero does not have any personality, but everybody envys him and wants to be friend with him. I really don´t know why!?!

Controls (8/10)
The controls are pretty good in this game. I would say: RPG-standard. No complicated menus, not too many actions to do. Battle system controls are okay as well - perhaps you have to press the x-button a little to often to execute your commands.
In most RPGs when you have to give items to other people your characters do this automatically. In Okage you have to scroll through your inventory (up to 10 pages, I think!) and find out what this guy before you wants to see! Pretty complicated and frustrating if you are not really sure about what to do!

Gameplay (5/10)
I like this standard battle system - your heroes choose the actions they want to perform and a round starts. Enemies and allys hit. This works good indeed.
But: Most time in the game you will spend talking to people, walking across whe world (often filled with monsters too weak for you) and you will very often have to find out what the hell to do next!?! All of these are boring things to do.
You will see a dungeon in the fourth or fifth hour you play Okage for the first time. In the dungeons you have to kill dangerous pots in order to proceed. Later you will have to press buttons. This is fun for most of the time - but there are only 5 or 6 dungeons in the whole game! And since this game lasts only for 18-22 hours you will only spend 5-8 hours in dungeons or fighting monsters.
Leveling up is fun - they use the Suikoden-system: 1000 Exp. per level but it is more difficult to get levels later on. But if you fight very difficult monsters with inexperienced characters they will gain numerous levels in a single fight. I like this system, it is easy to build up characters you did not use for a long time.

Challenge
This game is easy at first. You gain levels quite fast and proceed very well. But later it may happen that you move to a new area where it is almost impossible to win a single battle (but if you do you get 3 levels at once). I talk about this icy area. And in several dungeons you will find a special kind of monsters which can kill you (sleeping spells!) and you can´t do anything against that. This is bad - especially if there is only one save point on the top level of the dungeon.
Boss fights are quite easy - you always have to take out several monsters guarding the real boss and then bash him. Not a problem at all.

Overall (5/10)
Okage is not a bad game at all. It just could have so much better! If the programmers had enlarged the world of the game, if there were more dungeons, if there were not so many stupid riddles and if people would not talk so much nonsense this could have been a very nice RPG. This way it just was a game I will have forgotten in 1 year already. There are better RPGs out there - much better RPGs!

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/03