Beautiful, artistic, unique, and utterly obnoxious from start to finish. I don't think I've ever seen a game with so much potential fail to get out of its own way so consistently. Okami has lots of charm... there's a lot to love here... it just happens to be mixed in with huge swaths of the some of the worst, most inane tripe I've ever seen and abjectly miserable pacing. This is not at all the masterpiece it appears to be.


Pros:

- Wonderful artistic direction, style, visuals, and audio
- A thoughtful and reasonably large open world full of Zelda-esque secrets and discoveries.


Cons:

Okami features probably the worst intro of all time. It was a struggle for me to not quit the game within the first few hours because of how atrocious the beginning is. You get told the same very long (otherwise passable) story in pretty much the same way with slightly different words 3-4 times in a row... which unfortunately sets the tone for the rest of the game to come. In truth, it took a lot of willpower to carry on and if not for my commitment to 100% games I review I likely would have walked away in the early game.

This is also one of the slowest games I've ever played, both literally and figuratively. It's really an 8-10hr game stretched to fit a 35-40hr package. One of the first things you'll notice when you finally get to gameplay is that everything from movement to combat to dialog to your celestial brush to the UI is at an extremely drawn out pace. They also decided to force full-duration loading screens of which there are so.... soooooooo many... despite the fact that modern hardware doesn't need them at all. All this isn't your system struggling... you are at full speed... the devs just intentionally opted to have the game move at a snail's pace, roughly 2-4x slower than it should be. I ♥♥♥♥ you not I am not exaggerating here... you can use third party software to speed the game up and at 4x speed it feels more or less normal for 99% of the game... 2-3x would likely be the sweet spot (if you're dead set on playing this I strongly encourage you to do this).

Making the speed matters worse is the fact that the tautological approach to the game's intro rears its ugly head throughout the game's every... single... aspect. Get ready for Issun, a main character who rides you and serves as your voice throughout, to re-iterate every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ point to you like you just had your head smashed in by a bus and the nursing staff isn't quite sure you're all there yet (not an exaggeration). Much of the dialog is re-stated 3+ times, back to back to back. It... is... infuriating. The game has zero respect for you as a thinking breathing human. This happens when talking to NPCS. It happens for every single new puzzle and mechanic. It even happens right in the middle of cutscenes, like some gd mouthbreather talking in the middle of a movie, eg. "Oh, Ammy, did you notice it got dark just now? It must have gotten dark because that big evil sphere we just watched suck all the light out of the sky sucked all the light out of the sky? How did he do that? I'm confused? Ammy, do you understand? Hit yes if you understant. Ammy... Ammy... Ammy who's that guy? I have to go to the bathroom. Do you have any more popcorn? Wait... So Yami was working for internal affairs this entire time? What are you doing after the show? You wanna hang out later?" It assumes you're utterly braindead. What's worse is that the game actually does a phenomenal job of using art, style, and camera angle to convey EXACTLY what you need to know at all times WITHOUT such asinine interruptions. 99.9% of the dialog adds nothing but bloat, annoyance, and pointless time wastage.

I can't remember a game as easy as Okami. Even with the speed increased 4x, there is zero challenge to be had here. You could go so far as to completely hamstring yourself by never getting any upgrades and you'd still be hard pressed to break a sweat at any point. The endgame difficulty is almost on par with the tutorial difficulty in most games, especially in the action or aRPG genre. This isn't a dealbreaker in and of itself but when you combine it with the other glaring problems, it turns the good aspects of the gameplay and exploration into a boring slog over time.

After slogging through and realizing the above factors, I thought to myself, "oh... ok... I get it... this is a game for children. I guess that's ok.." Boy was I wrong. Enter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Issun again and his over the top misogynistic perv behaviour from out of bloody nowhere... You can scarcely talk to a female character after the early game without him calling her "jugs" or "melons" or "busty babe, baby, cans, sweetheart, you take care of those two bazongas you've got there while I'm gone toots! I'd do anything for a gorgeous set of tits like those luscious hams you got there! AWOOOOGA! AWOOOOOOOOGA!" That's less of an exaggeration than it seems, I assure you. He's really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ creepy around women, regardless of age, and near the endgame he even starts to give off a not-too-subtle rape-y vibe. I cannot overstate how awkward and uncomfortable it is. If you knew him irl you'd expect him to be on a watch list or a registered sex offender or something. Really unwelcome and gross. I feel like they were maybe trying to paint him as something of a lothario but seriously ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up here. If that isn't enough to clarify that Okami isn't remotely as tasteful as one would expect, you also learn an "attack" where you lift your leg and shower your enemy in urine... and another where you take a literal steaming dump on the battlefield (elucidating why the developers felt the need to draw your character with an anatomically correct wolf anus). Combine both these factors with the game's horrible writing and cringey humour and we've got a real recipe for discomfort. I've literally played games about launching poop at random passersby that were overall in better taste than Okami because at least they didn't have a lil pixie dude sexually harassing the other characters.

The game does not follow a traditional story structure. It has three distinct stories loosely connected, which wouldn't be a problem except that each story is way too similar and as soon as you reach the "good part" of one story, where the game feels like it's hit its stride, that arc ends and you go back to square one. Really shatters the game's overall gravitas. Also, without getting into too much detail, the game's climax is ripped straight from FFIV... it's not subtle about it at all and it's ironically the best part of the whole game (and yes, it's also ruined by Issun chiming in with too much unnecessary dialog)

The best thing this game has going for it is the Zelda-esque inspired exploration but it simply isn't enough to pick up the slack for the other flaws. This game needed a redux version, not just a straight HD version. The foundation is there for this to have been a truly great game. It could have been a masterpiece. Hell... simply removing Issun from the game altogether, killing the loading screens, and being able to enter combat without getting warped into a tiny instanced arena would have been a dramatic improvement. In its current form... I sadly regret the time I spent playing this.