Hearing the praises for this game for so long, I'm glad I finally completed it. To start off, the presentation is absolutely gorgeous with an artstyle mimicking ancient Japanese paintings. Amaterasu is easily one of the stunning character designs for any video game protagonist brimming with elegance and just being adorable. The music utilizing ancient Japanese style really added so much to the mythical atmosphere of this adventure. The core characters are very charming and the quirky humor while not perfect, was implemented well enough to complement the story. Issun, your main companion, started out being this overly talkative Navi-like character who fell into some annoying tropes like being a weird little pervert and just being a douche for no reason. He does end up becoming much more well rounded and his friendship with Ammy really pulled through later on, his backstory is a little rushed but he's an endearing character when it comes full circle.
I enjoy the core gameplay on the basic structure it operates in, but the game can be wonky with it's execution. To start off with the basic movement and controls are at least really good and fun to control. Running around vast lands as this majestic wolf is pure bliss. In terms of core gameplay mechanics we have the celestial paintbrush which uses the environment as well as different brush strokes for different spells and environmental manipulation. It was a really fun mechanic to use but the annoying cooldown time during parts of the game where they force you to use it a lot (fuck the digging mini-games especially the second one) which luckily there was an item to negate that as well as it being weirdly irresponsive to me making the right input and then accepting something that resembles the intended design even less, it got inconsistent sometimes. Moving onto the combat, it basically puts Amaterasu in these little arenas where she has to eradicate all the demons to progress. I generally enjoyed the feel of combat and mixing different sub weapons and the celestial paintbrush which adds some flavor and versatility which I enjoyed. However the issue arises with the game being too damn easy, I didn't die a single time and eventually combat encounters became way too easy to cheese and it often just led to the mechanics not really being given the chance to be fleshed out to their fullest potential.
The game took me by surprise with being Zelda-like in some aspects especially with the dungeons you encounter throughout the game. Some of them felt either pretty decently well rounded and others could be way too short or way too long mostly stemming from frustrating excuses for puzzles or some brain-dead ones you barely need to think about. A bit of a mixed bag but they had some genuine stand-out moments I had a ton of fun with in the dungeons which I wish were fleshed out a bit more. Amongst non Zelda games though the dungeons do stand out a little better.
The structure of the game really threw me off guard, once you defeat the supposed big bad it just keeps going into two more semi-isolated stories with a half-assed way of connecting them all at the end. At the very least they do manage to still have an entertaining story and fun scenarios to keep it going beyond that but the game did feel like it got way too long and I was ready for it to be done at that point.
Another thing I'd like to mention is how this game is really weird when it comes to collecting things, it's generally fun to utilize your movesets to explore this gorgeous world and hunt for treasure but a lot of it is useless (plus the game being cryptic on how they can be used), plus some of them only help let you cheese and already easy game even further so I found them pointless. Some rewards you get for fully beating the game are locked to new game plus, and once you get into the final area of the game it doesn't allow you to exit and retrieve the final collectibles. So my desire to at least try finish some more side-quests and get some more collectibles were crushed.
Even though I've ragged on it's issues, I overall had a great time with Okami, the foundations are here for an even stronger follow-up that irons out the kinks for something truly special. I hope Kamiya gets to it soon.
I enjoy the core gameplay on the basic structure it operates in, but the game can be wonky with it's execution. To start off with the basic movement and controls are at least really good and fun to control. Running around vast lands as this majestic wolf is pure bliss. In terms of core gameplay mechanics we have the celestial paintbrush which uses the environment as well as different brush strokes for different spells and environmental manipulation. It was a really fun mechanic to use but the annoying cooldown time during parts of the game where they force you to use it a lot (fuck the digging mini-games especially the second one) which luckily there was an item to negate that as well as it being weirdly irresponsive to me making the right input and then accepting something that resembles the intended design even less, it got inconsistent sometimes. Moving onto the combat, it basically puts Amaterasu in these little arenas where she has to eradicate all the demons to progress. I generally enjoyed the feel of combat and mixing different sub weapons and the celestial paintbrush which adds some flavor and versatility which I enjoyed. However the issue arises with the game being too damn easy, I didn't die a single time and eventually combat encounters became way too easy to cheese and it often just led to the mechanics not really being given the chance to be fleshed out to their fullest potential.
The game took me by surprise with being Zelda-like in some aspects especially with the dungeons you encounter throughout the game. Some of them felt either pretty decently well rounded and others could be way too short or way too long mostly stemming from frustrating excuses for puzzles or some brain-dead ones you barely need to think about. A bit of a mixed bag but they had some genuine stand-out moments I had a ton of fun with in the dungeons which I wish were fleshed out a bit more. Amongst non Zelda games though the dungeons do stand out a little better.
The structure of the game really threw me off guard, once you defeat the supposed big bad it just keeps going into two more semi-isolated stories with a half-assed way of connecting them all at the end. At the very least they do manage to still have an entertaining story and fun scenarios to keep it going beyond that but the game did feel like it got way too long and I was ready for it to be done at that point.
Another thing I'd like to mention is how this game is really weird when it comes to collecting things, it's generally fun to utilize your movesets to explore this gorgeous world and hunt for treasure but a lot of it is useless (plus the game being cryptic on how they can be used), plus some of them only help let you cheese and already easy game even further so I found them pointless. Some rewards you get for fully beating the game are locked to new game plus, and once you get into the final area of the game it doesn't allow you to exit and retrieve the final collectibles. So my desire to at least try finish some more side-quests and get some more collectibles were crushed.
Even though I've ragged on it's issues, I overall had a great time with Okami, the foundations are here for an even stronger follow-up that irons out the kinks for something truly special. I hope Kamiya gets to it soon.