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Wake Up, Furball!
I’ve only platinumed (achieved 100% completion in) two games in my life. The first was Prototype 2, for one reason or another, when I was fifteen. The second, ten years later, is Okami. The way I see it, there’s only two reasons to strive to conquer all the achievements, items, sidequests, and secrets of a video game. The first is that It’s incredibly easy to, as there’s no online multiplayer achievements and the game itself is relatively straightforward, as the case was with Prototype 2. The second, which applies to Okami, is that the experience is so rich and gratifying that you want to taste every last drop of gold. Whatever the reason, as Oki, my favourite character in the entire game, says: “When one tries to master something, it ends in either success or failure. But it is in the attempt itself where you find the true value.”
In Okami, you play as the white wolf, Amaterasu - sun goddess and mother to us all (as you’ll be told dozens of times by other deities) - after being born again when a nameless darkness returns to the world. You must defeat the nine-headed dragon, Orochi, by restoring your celestial brush powers which let you manipulate the elements and reality itself, with the help of Issun, a wandering artist. But, as we’ll see, this task lies merely in the foothills of a truly mountainous quest…
‘The Stuff of Legend’ - Story and Gameplay
After a true test of patience in the form of a TWENTY MINUTE UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENE (a bitter taste of things to come), you’re placed in a painterly and vibrant world, filled to bursting with gods, monsters, dragons, curses, demons, warriors, and heroes. Straight out of the spirit gate, you’ll realise that Okami doesn't demand snap reflexes or hours of grinding, chasing infinitesimal increases to your stats. Instead, it rewards observant players, curious players. It asks for investment, not number-crunching. It offers its hand to take you on a journey; it doesn't knock you to the ground and kick you while you're down there.
There's charm here, and wit, and threat, and fear. I genuinely laughed and cried while playing Okami. I'm not sure how many times I can say I did either while playing a majority of today's titles. Above all, there's love. From Amaterasu's constant goofy doggy expression, to her victory howls, to the vibrant cast of dozens of memorable characters and enemies, this world is brimming with charm.
That said… while the story is on an epic scale, actual combat is embarrassingly easy. You can just whale on enemies and short of having to use your ink slash on them to drop their defence here, or blow your divine wind to sweep away their elemental barriers there, there's not really any strategy. Bosses have obvious weaknesses, and they're certainly a highlight of the game's battles (not to mention excellently designed, both aesthetically and mechanically), with each requiring you make use of the celestial power you just gained to defeat them. The weapon system is really fun, if a little basic. Choosing from a variety of Divine Instruments in three flavours (Reflector, Rosary and Glaive), you can equip a primary and sub-weapon to change up your fighting style on the fly. Some allow you to pepper enemies with a shotgun blast of beads, or stipple them all over with dots from your brush to unleash a barrage of ink bullets.
There are also some certainly… let’s say dated writing choices ("This babe's stacked to the ceiling" upon meeting a female character, and "Let's get hammered!" before you are shrunk by a magical mallet both stand out as real clangers) but I suppose we can chalk those up to products of their time. But somehow, a product of its time is not something Okami feels like.
In all honesty, Okami's biggest misstep (which we’ll get out of the way now because it is a MAJOR SPOILER) is a tonal one. The tightly woven story - which feels like it's going to encompass the beginning, middle and end of the entire game - takes a bit of a backseat after the first twelve hours or so, when it abruptly ends, and you discover you're barely a quarter of the way done; your antics from this point on are no longer framed by the powerful legend of Okami's opening segment (remember than twenty minute cutscene? Yeah, imagine my dismay when I realised it only covered the narrative for 25% of my playthrough). Pair this with the fact that the rate you collect brush powers drops dramatically (with only four of thirteen left to collect once the 'true' adventure starts), and I personally found my investment taking a nosedive. Until the final goal is revealed (which is, annoyingly, a meagre boss rush), your exploits are merely framed as "exploration". They're just as polished, involved and unique as the first section, but there's no driving narrative force behind them, so it feels aimless and much more contrived whenever a character pops out of nowhere and says "Welp, think you'd probably better go back to this area and do this thing now!"
In trying to think of standouts, then, my thoughts go straight to Oki, an antihero found protecting the snow-capped peaks in the game’s final area. This character has taken a mythical sword from its resting place to try and take into his own hands the defence of his village from armies of encroaching demons. Only when the blade glows silver will he finish his quest. This all sounds epic enough, but did I forget to mention that he and his people, the Oina tribe, can all turn into blazing-eyed, sword-wielding wolves at will? The twin bosses of this area and the culmination of the story before the true final conflict are wonders to behold. Lechku and Nechku are two demonic clockwork owls with lightning powers, and - without spoilers - Oki’s part in this battle is both heroic and heart-wrenching.
But then I think a little harder, and beyond these examples, dozens of charming locations, characters and events spring to mind. Five whole minutes of climbing a cat god’s tower into the sky (Okami’s very own Metal Gear Solid ladder climb moment); being shrunk down to defeat Blight, a pestilent spirit, INSIDE the Emperor’s digestive system; the hidden village and luxuriant hot springs of the Sparrow Clan and their one-eyed leader; or the princess who leaves for her true birthplace beyond the stars aboard a BAMBOO ROCKET. Even simpler but no less touching moments abound: a potter trying to craft the perfect vases for you to offer at a series of guardian statues; a messenger who challenges you to a series of races; hunting down the nine Canine Warriors, the quest to catch every fish in the land, the nightly monster bounties in each main area, the list goes on and on and I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. In my first playthrough (and my only, as I was so hooked that I chased 100% immediately), I racked up over 50 hours of play time. None of that’s empty, either; each and every minute - besides those spent waiting for dialogue to progress, as I’ll detail in the below section - was packed to the seams with the pursuit of one of the game’s dozens of goals and collectibles.
All of this just goes to show that this is an absolutely monumental game, even by today's standards, and undoubtedly for the time. The world is vast, the side quests many, and the dungeons plentiful.
‘Brushing Up’ - Critiques
First gripes first: I’d love it if the constellations to gain new brush powers were a bit more of a puzzle. They’re lovely moments and essential to the mythology, so dotting a few stars at the end of lines like a child’s activity book doesn’t really do them justice. The puzzle sequence really needed to be flipped on its head - you could briefly be given the brush power while standing beneath the constellation, and must solve a puzzle USING it to gain the power permanently. Instead, the game has you play dot-to-dot and your blabbermouth Navi stand-in spells out how to use the resulting technique.
Partly as a symptom of this, some of the ‘dungeons’ are kind of lame. A static windmill where you find a key on the first floor, fight the same enemy you fought on the way in on the second floor, then copy spirals that are already on screen at the top isn’t compelling or inventive. But that’s a small drop in the massive, golden ocean that is the rest of Okami’s locales.
I know I mentioned content, but the game is also STUFFED with padding; this is a veritable double-quilted winter blanket of a game. Half of the cutscenes mean absolutely nothing, besides building character charm, which wears off exponentially the longer they ramble; it's only the scant slivers of text in red which actually matter, and even then these are already painfully obvious solutions to the game’s many so-called puzzles.
There's entirely too much talking. Just to learn a new ability, you have to go to a Dojo, talk to the Sensei, and choose a move. He then talks again and goes through a transformation cutscene, then you enter the training floor, he speaks to you again, a dialogue box pops up on which you have to select 'yes', he talks to you AGAIN, you perform the move, he talks to you AGAIN and then, when you finally leave, he talks to you AGAIN. None of this is an exaggeration, and if this paragraph seemed overlong and tedious, then it’s demonstrated the issue perfectly.
Adding insult to injury (and tedium to accomplishment), I audibly groaned every time a treasure chest contained a single-use item I recognised, for two reasons: first, it meant the game would need to grind to a halt to provide an unskippable explanation of its function for the hundredth time. Second, it just didn't feel worth the hassle I'd gone through to find the hidden treasure in the first place. You can buy literally all of these items from the game's multitude of vendors. This added a sour touch of gambling to exploration which dampened the sense of wonder. Will I actually find something unique and useful, or another copy of the fifty items sitting in my inventory which I'll never use once?
‘Old Wolf, New Tricks’ - Final Thoughts
Despite my gripes, there are vintage games (and it pains me to refer to things released during my own adolescence as ‘vintage’) which make you realise where all the modern classics got their inspiration. There’s shades of Okami in such modern juggernauts as Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. Okami’s brush mechanics remain a unique if occasionally janky mechanic, a carryover from experimenting with the Wii’s motion controls.
Ultimately, the worst things I can say about Okami concern the game's good moments, which only pale in comparison to its great moments because these in turn are quite so enrapturing. The linear paths of the Windmill and Water Dragon dungeons only seem short and lazy in comparison to the lengthy, weird, and wonderful Emperor's Palace and Oni Island. Even the former has one of my favourite boss fights in the entire game, the flaming, centaur-like demon clad in samurai armour: Crimson Helm.
I've since found a lot of my critiques detailed here on forums, yet I (like them) still absolutely adore this game. Ironically, I think Okami's age actually caused me to forgive more of its flaws; instead of its more dated design choices standing out even more starkly, I gave a lot of them a free pass.
Let me remind readers that I played this game for the first time in order to write this review. None of my experience is blossom-tinted, like the golden rays from a sun goddess, by nostalgia. Good lord, I can only imagine how fond I’d be of this title if I had played it as a teenager (Alice, if you’re reading this, I’m still sad we never managed to get the game to work on your old PlayStation, but I’ve played it now and you were right, it’s incredible!). There’s genuinely dozens more secrets and features to discover here. I haven’t even mentioned the hundred golden beads and the endgame reward for combing every last cherry grove and windswept field to find them all. Okami is, truly - and fittingly, as a game where you wield a celestial paintbrush and are accompanied by an insect-sized wandering artist seeking the skills to craft his magnum opus - a masterpiece.
