This isn’t the greatest game I’ve ever played. There’s a lot that’s objectively wrong with it: its translation is kinda shoddy, its battle system is overly simple and doesn’t do much different from its contemporaries, it’s a short RPG, its graphics and effects are somewhat lackluster, its story is fun but not especially chock full of deep layered characters, and it can be pretty clunky at times.

Yet despite this, I think Okage: Shadow King is a fantastic experience bursting with passion, humor and creativity.

Its art style and character designs burst with a nightmare flavor to them, and with the fairy tale way the story is framed, it makes sense to model them as such. They’re charming and unique. The characters themselves are fun too, while not deep, they’re hilarious(something shared with the game as a whole), and the story is surprisingly layered and intriguing.

Even the gameplay I enjoy. I like it for its relative simplicity, even without diversity in character builds, min/maxing or anything like that, it’s still fun in its simplicity I feel.

Okage is a definitely a game without a place to belong, made too soon for many to appreciate its humor and soul, and too late to be considered a classic in its own merit.

I think it’s a definitive cult classic, a strange, surreal, but heartfelt RPG journey that you wouldn’t be remiss in trying out if any of that sounds fun to you.