The Saga Of The White Wolf And The Little Bug

Just as soon as I did a post about how I wasn't playing any of the games I still needed to beat, I finished Okami that night. I could have finished it sooner, but when I know I'm near the final boss, I start running around, trying to finish sidequests, or make more money so I can buy better equipment. It's stalling when you get right to it, because I do so hate to lose.

The story of Okami is that the god Amaterasu has returned to the mortal plane after 100 years, taking the form of a white wolf, determined to protect the people of Kamiki Village from a returning evil. Namely Orochi, the 8-headed dragon Amaterasu helped defeat a century ago. That's where it starts, but the threat spreads across the land, drawing Amaterasu into conflict with several other dangerous entities, from 9-tailed foxes to Water Dragons, and musical instrument playing demon monkey spirits. You play as Amaterasu, accompanied by Issun, a little fellow who plans to become a great artist and has decided to tag along on your adventure. That's because Amaterasu needs to reclaim its power, and that means finding the lesser deities that hold the various Celestial Brush Techniques "Ammy" needs to vanquish evil. Issun actually teaches Ammy the first technique, and is tagging along to learn the others. Issun's primary role is to do the talking for the both of you, though there is another sequence where Ammy is shrunk where Issun proves useful.

The style of the game is very much like Legend of Zelda. You roam the countryside, entering dungeons and fighting monsters, taking on sidequests for the various people you meet along the way. As you progress and learn new Brush Techniques, you'll find yourself backtracking to unlock treasures you couldn't reach previously. The nice thing is enough of the things you unlock are nonessential, that the backtracking doesn't feel as tedious as it did when I played Metroid Prime 2.

What distinguishes the game is its visual style, which is even incorporated into the combat. I think it's cell-shaded, but it's presented in such a way as to resemble traditional water colors. I haven't played a game that looks quite like it, which is nifty. Once Ammy learns Celestial brush Techniques, you can use them most anytime (provided you have some ink, which gradually refills). You press the R1 button (if you're using the PS2 like me) and the screen shifts to resemble a piece of parchment. Then you use the controller to manipulate a brush to make the appropriate symbol for the technique you want to use. The power of the technique can be modified in some cases by how large you draw the symbol, though more power also uses more ink. None of the symbols are particularly difficult, especially once you get the hang of them, though the game doesn't always recognize them (I had trouble with the Inferno symbol, personally), but it adds a nifty element to combat, in addition to using various weapons or exorcism slips.

The brush techniques can also help Amaterasu to earn "praise". If you help a person out by retrieving something they wanted or needed, or cause a tree to bloom, or feed an animal (that requires purchasing bags of different feed types, rather than brush techniques), those actions earn you praise, which in sufficient qualities allows you to power Amaterasu up. More health, more ink pots, a larger change pouch, so on. It's mostly optional (you don't have to feed critters, or fish, or help any random passerbys), but it doesn't hurt.

The one negative I found was the cut scenes. They look nice, especially when it shifts to depicting past events through what look like painted scrolls, but they are terribly slow. I'm no doubt jaded, but some of the dialogue is as pretentious and overdone as anything Claremont ever wrote (though no one says anything about whether quarter was asked or given). When I was fighting the final boss, it appears I've won only for a dramatic reversal to take place. Then before the battle can resume, the game goes into a 5-minute cut scene about the people regaining their faith in Amaterasu, thus repowering Ammy, and everyone talks about how much they like Ammy, and I'm sitting there waving my hand, yelling at the game to get on with it. It killed the momentum of the climactic battle.

That's my only beef, other than some voice actors might have been nice. When characters speak, its presented as captions accompanied with indecipherable mumbles. Kind of like the parents in Charlie Brown stories. I think that makes the cut scenes seem longer because I finish reading the captions swiftly, but I can't tell how far along in the speech the character is, and you can only speed it up so much. Still, it's a beautiful game, the music nice, there is fair amount of humor to the story, some oddball characters, combat is fun, but not overly complicated, and the makers remembered there's more to being a protector of the people than beating up monsters. it's also available on the Wii, and while I haven't played it on that system, I'd think it was made for it, with the brush strokes and all.