Playing this has been... fascinating. As most people will tell you, it's worth checking out for the art direction alone, and overall I had a good time with it, but wow is there ever room for improvement. In so many ways Okami is the inverse of Twilight Princess. You control a wolf for the entire game, whereas Wolf Link felt like an afterthought. Dungeons which are the highlight of Twilight Princess feel as though they barely exist here. Conversely the overworld, which is probably the worst part of Twilight Princess is done much better in Okami.
The choice of source material makes for a unique experience and the characters are full of personality which is a plus, but it's a shame that most of the dialogue in the game goes to its worst character. Issun is nearly as bad as Fi in Skyward Sword when it comes to incessant pace-breaking chatter, and the text speed in any scene that doesn't let you skip dialogue absolutely does not help. The game has a horrible habit of injecting tiny and unnecessary cutscenes with outrageous frequency, and most of it is accompanied with some inane comment from Issun. His personality also does him no favors. Issun's constant lechery toward nearly every female NPC in the game doesn't just get old, it was born old. I have no doubt that some of my distaste for the character's single "joke" comes from playing the game as an American in 2020 where such bullshit stopped being endearing many years ago. Other recurring characters are solid, with a few surprisingly effective emotional scenes created with them here and there despite very little screen time.
Combat is serviceable, but nothing noteworthy. The fact that it is always confined to a special arena is somewhat disappointing, as is the difficulty. Exploration rewards the player with piles and piles of consumable items to restore health, do more damage, etc, but they feel completely unnecessary. It's unfortunate when the rewards that any game gives you don't actually feel rewarding. For the vast majority of the game I had bountiful piles of money and nothing worthwhile to spend it on since my stores of consumables were already overflowing and I didn't see myself using them any time soon.
I enjoyed my visit well enough, but I don't expect to be back.
The choice of source material makes for a unique experience and the characters are full of personality which is a plus, but it's a shame that most of the dialogue in the game goes to its worst character. Issun is nearly as bad as Fi in Skyward Sword when it comes to incessant pace-breaking chatter, and the text speed in any scene that doesn't let you skip dialogue absolutely does not help. The game has a horrible habit of injecting tiny and unnecessary cutscenes with outrageous frequency, and most of it is accompanied with some inane comment from Issun. His personality also does him no favors. Issun's constant lechery toward nearly every female NPC in the game doesn't just get old, it was born old. I have no doubt that some of my distaste for the character's single "joke" comes from playing the game as an American in 2020 where such bullshit stopped being endearing many years ago. Other recurring characters are solid, with a few surprisingly effective emotional scenes created with them here and there despite very little screen time.
Combat is serviceable, but nothing noteworthy. The fact that it is always confined to a special arena is somewhat disappointing, as is the difficulty. Exploration rewards the player with piles and piles of consumable items to restore health, do more damage, etc, but they feel completely unnecessary. It's unfortunate when the rewards that any game gives you don't actually feel rewarding. For the vast majority of the game I had bountiful piles of money and nothing worthwhile to spend it on since my stores of consumables were already overflowing and I didn't see myself using them any time soon.
I enjoyed my visit well enough, but I don't expect to be back.
Reviewed on Sep 27, 2020