5/5
I think I played Okami for the first time in 2010. I had heard about it since its release, but I had just never found it on sale in my small town. I had also read for years people on the Phantom Babies forum saying the game was a masterpiece, so I had been meaning to play the game for a while. Luckily, I eventually found the game in a second-hand shop, in perfect condition. The next thing I know, I was playing the game 6 hours straight without a break. That’s how awesome Okami is. Firstly, you have to admire the game’s look. The whole game looks as though a Japanese painting came to life. With beautiful cel-shaded graphics, the first reaction I had when I started playing it was awe. As I controlled Amaterasu, a beautiful white wolf goddess, and ran through green fields and other detailed environments while leaving a trace of blooming flowers behind me, I could not help but notice the explosion of beauty around me. It was an impressive cocktail of colors. Simply wandering in the game’s beautiful environments is fun. But the game offers more than that. It has charming characters in a story that feels like an outright saga. You can interact with various characters throughout the game as you progress and hear what they have to say to you, as JRPGS typically do. Perhaps to cut costs, Clover Studio did not put any voice acting in the game. Instead, as the characters speak, we hear a sound effect that mimics the sounds of the human voice. It only adds to the ethereal atmosphere of the game, in my view.
But the game is not just about exploring beautiful surroundings. Because in our surroundings there are dangerous demons that want us dead. Combat, then, is another facet of the game. Being a Hideki Kamiya game, the combat system is good: you can attack, block and evade. You can learn new combos and new moves as you progress in the game, and you can unlock new weapons, too. Okami is an action-adventure game that leans more to the adventure side of the spectrum, so it’s understandable that the emphasis is not the combat system, and that other games sport more complex combat systems. That said, the combat system is still very unique because Amaterasu can use his celestial brush to attack his enemies. The celestial brush draws, for example, a line over the enemy, and the enemy is magically cut. It can summon the powers of wind, water and fire, too. You can also use the celestial brush to draw over the environment and interact with it. It’s an innovative and unique mechanic that I have never seen elsewhere (which I guess makes sense, since it’s so specific to the game’s art style). Basically, when you activate the celestial brush, the action stops, a brush appears on the screen, and you can draw on the screen with it, affecting whatever is there.
Finally, the music in Okami is spectacular. The tracks are inspired by traditional Japanese music and use traditional Japanese instruments, adding a lot to the atmosphere of the game, and making it even better.
I played Okami again years later, in 2021, and was still impressed with its beauty. The game plays amazingly and it’s a joy to control Amaterasu. It’s one of the greatest games I’ve ever played.
The Stillest 