A very charming Playstation 2 JRPG. I'm honestly surprised it got ported to the Playstation 4, since it feels like no one ever played this. I'm glad more people can now play it! Don't let this fall under your radar.

I don't want to get into spoilers, since I feel as though the game and it's twists are best experienced seeing for yourself. I will say it genuinely surprised me, as I didn't expect a game like this to pull the rug out from under me story wise.

The gameplay is good, but nothing all that special. Dungeons range from incredibly easy to absolutely tedious with nothing in between. Bosses are incredibly unbalanced. Battle system is fairly fun.

I think the game could use a good remake or remaster to touch up on some of it's faults and give it a good second chance.

Zener Works set Okage: Shadow King apart from the ranks of JRPGs by featuring bug-eyed, lanky characters and a goofy premise, where the protagonist must join forces with an evil spirit that nobody takes seriously. As the casual tone of its dialogue choices also prove, this work belongs to a long line of clownish and lighthearted JRPGs that mock the genre's love for bombast, 'cool' stereotypes and predictable story beats. Other fields of writing were even more emblematic, turning - for example, what would normally be anonymous villager chatter into odd remarks and funny tangents, in a tradition that stretches from Working Designs-ified Lunar to EarthBound, from Grandia to Marl's Kingdom. While no character particularly shines, their witty and sometimes cartoony approach pairs well with their equally crude early-PS2 look.

On the downside, combat is too slow and shallow to match that level of entertainment. Both the party members (whose archetypes borrow a thing or two from FFIV) and the strategy (attack command until it's dead, save resources for healing and crowd/boss fights) had more in common with the early 90s than 2001, while its battle start & victory scenes take forever to pass. These problems, along with a verbose and confusing second half, severely hurt a game that - for the most part, exhibits the humor and personality of the masters.

It is now January 21st, 2021. I have just defeated the final boss of this game. I am numb. I have no desire to do much of anything at the moment. David Bowie is sweetly serenading me with his sultry voice as I type this out. Because as much as I don't want to put any effort into typing out a review right now, I feel obligated to before I forget. This game has destroyed me. The mental strain and frustration I felt throughout most of it is something that I hope I don't have to experience ever again. That said, why the 3/10 then? Surely, this game deserves the lowest rating possible for breaking me, right? Well, not necessarily. There's a lot to dislike here for sure, but I can't bring myself to completely hate it.

I'm not going to get into plot details here (because to be quite honest, the game lost me around Chapter 5 out of 7). I can say, however that if you are a fan of zany and some light dark humor, you might still find the dialogue and story to be silly enough to keep your attention. I was all for it at first. I liked the 'Tim Burton-esque' art design and the characters are mostly cute and likeable, with the Shadow King (shown on the cover) being a great source of comedic relief. Quick laughs and nice art direction can only get you so far, though. Almost everything else about this game fails to deliver to a certain degree.

I feel like this review would be far too long if I decide to thoroughly explain everything I found wrong with this title. Instead, I'll list some of its glaring issues:

- Boring and repetitive dungeon design
- Simplistic battle system that gets redundant real quick
- Optional overworld encounters are not so optional... (more on that later)
- Unintuative party switch system (where you have to backtrack to an inn just to switch out party members)
- Limited areas to explore which leads to...
- Excessive backtracking with an annoying quick travel system
- Ridiculous difficulty curve during later boss fights (Unless you grind a ton and/or stockpile a lot of consumables, you are at the mercy of the terrible RNG)

That last point is honestly the biggest source of my frustration with this game. Up until the 4th boss, I think, the game had been relatively easy. As long as I just fought whatever enemies I came across, it seems I was ready for anything. But then the game decided it wasn't gonna be a scrawny little 'kids' RPG anymore and became Dark Souls (please excuse the overused comparison). But yeah, it seemed that suddenly your whole adventure became a game of chance, where winning boss fights relied on obtuse tactics or sluggish grinding and item stockpiling. What little sense of enjoyment I had was gone after that. Basically, what I'm saying is that the game was enjoyable up until it wasn't...

I was actually gonna go into detail about one boss in particular... but I don't wanna spoil it. All I can say is, you'll know when you get there if you decide to play this. Good luck. I say that assuming you were playing this game casually and not grinding from the start, of course. But anyway, I finally got to Chapter 7 earlier. The final chapter. I was almost done. I felt relieved... but that didn't last. The final dungeon is one of the most complicated and annoying examples of poor level design I have ever seen. It's not fun. It requires traversing a drab maze of bookshelves and tight corridors where everything looks the same, which makes it hard to navigate. You're expected to navigate this God-forsaken place while struggling with the aggressive enemy AI. I mentioned earlier that I was gonna talk about those pesky encounters. They are especially bad here. Basically, the way that encounters work in this game is that enemies first appear as these clouds with eyes on the overworld... but they appear randomly and at close proximity. The longer you avoid them, the more aggressive they get. You'll eventually get touched by one because you have no time to react and move out of the way, and in the case of the final 'dungeon,' you often have nowhere to go because you're trapped by the narrow corridors.

By the time I finished the game, my in-game playtime was around 21 hours or so, but that doesn't account for the amount of times I had to restart battles (at one point just to get a stupid rare drop for a Playstation trophy). It would have also been less if I didn't have so much downtime trying to figure out what to do at certain points. Talking to people, walking around in circles, backtracking, blah blah. It's a shame that I had such a bad time, because again, the aesthetics and presentation were interesting in certain areas, and I can't deny that bosses could still be exhilarating whenever I was properly prepared. But the game has too many issues that make it a very incompetent RPG. To all of its fans, I salute thee. You guys are warriors and it makes me wonder if maybe this is all just a skill issue.

P.S. Ending was pretty cute, though.

Very charming rpg that was surprisingly enjoyable. Pretty comedic story with a lot of oddities. And a very unique yet great soundtrack. The only thing lacking is the gameplay where it is very plain and basic with some dungeons being pretty tedious.

I would describe this as the most 7/10 game you can play. Does not mean it is bad and would recommend this if you want a unique experience.


I remember my sister got this game when I was a kid because the cover art looked cool. She did not get far, but somehow this game's uniqueness stuck with me. I vividly remember being in awe with the big green open world area in the beginning of the game. The industrial gear themed second town. And the weird shadow guy who helped you out throughout the game.

I forgot what this game was and relearned the name few years ago. To my surprise, it was on the ps4 classic games section in the online store.

Honestly I was blown away by the charm of this game. It has a heavy Tim Burton style, which is already unique. I found myself laughing at many of the jokes in the game. And the world design was so creative.

My biggest surprise was the music. Three songs stand out to me: Theme of Triste, Theme of Rashello, and Highlands. Especially Highlands. They are so catchy and so well strung together that it really makes me sad that this is such a niche and not well known game. What blows me away too is that there are indoor and outdoor versions of each town song that smoothly changes when in and out of buildings. The number of games that do this is extremely little.

The story was fun. In a way I can describe it as "what if Shadow of the Colossus was lighthearted and goofy". You have to defeat demon kings around the land to restore your shadow's power, who is actually the true demon king Stan who took possession of you. But, no one takes Stan seriously and there is some good comedy behind that.

It does get pretty meaningful near the end. The biggest theme of this game is the fear of being forgotten. And in my opinion the way it was done was really good (won't spoil).

The gameplay can be a slog. It is your basic turn based rpg, but with 0 gimmicks. It can be pretty difficult as if the main character dies in battle, it is game over.

I highly recommend you give this game a chance. It ended up becoming one of my personal favorites because of how unique and charming it is from a typical game. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if all this sounds interesting then give this hidden gem a shot.

Undertale who???

A classic fantasy rpg with Tim Burton aesthetics, quirky writing, and just a generally fun vibe. The story of a young generic protagonist boy getting sold off in a deal with the devil cause his parents will do anything to make sure their daughter won't become a comic relief character. Thus, you and Evil King Stan are thrust off onto an adventure to get rid of any imitators to the throne of evil so that Stan can take that evil power for himself.

There's a LOT to talk about with the story, but its important to address the gameplay. Iiiiits not great! Aggressive encounter rates from tedious enemies. The real issue with this is that the xp gained from enemies constantly shrinks the higher your level is and you'll be returning to this maps with the same small fry enemies pretty frequently. The dungeons are REALLY confusing and hard to navigate, forcing you to make a lot of return trips to the top level of a dungeon to heal up and replan your attack. Its often very frustrating and results in beating your head against the wall a lot. There's also often unclear story triggers and information on how to progress. Completely unplayable without a guide in many ways.

Despite that, I found it really addicting. Basically didn't put it down for the whole week, lots of sleepless nights as I finished schoolwork as quickly as possible to get back to it. Apparently the difficulty curve gets pretty bad, but I spent so much time running around in this world I was really high level by the end of the game. I had suspected that I was done with rpgs earlier this year, but with this and Fate/Extra I've learned that a solid story pace makes it really easy for me to commit to a long rpg in a much shorter time frame than six months. An exciting gem and worth a look! Stop here if that's all you need!

------------Mid-game spoilers from here on out------------

The core plot twist of Okage is so incredibly good. Its doing these big deconstruction ideas about video game world back in 2001 and its doing them really well.

The game initially lets you think some of its early gimmicks are jokes. There's brief mentions of a Classification System, which seems to determine who's a Evil King and who's a Great Hero. It comes off as just a new version of Heros' Guild or Villains' Guild and you brush it off. But the parents concern that their daughter could be a "comic relief character" instead of a "noble princess" is very real. The classification system controls your fate, your personality, how you THINK. The entire world has been created so that an old weird father can play games with his daughter for eternity, in endless battles of good and evil for her entertainment. The characters can barely grapple or understand the truth because its too existentially horrifying to process. They have to rationalize it as "the protagonist boy will help us destroy the system so that we can win... something" because that's the only way to cope with being NPCs. And the protagonist doesn't come off lightly either: your generic heroic mime hero is so unmemorable, so easily projected onto, that he vanishes from everyone's existence for an entire chapter. You'll left wandering through someone else's playground, characters reciting generic NPC town lines for someone else's story. You don't even get random battles anymore. You just wander this barren landscape, unable to impact anything in this fantasy world. Only by giving your protagonist a more firm personality can he manifest in the world again and create actual change in the world. It just... works! Its really high concept and totally delightful. A feast of gaming ideas. What a good ass time.