Ōkami

The Good: Beautiful artistic and sound design - Great story – Long adventure with lots of tasks to do – Fantastic gameplay

The Bad: Minor graphical and gameplay flaws – It ends

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Of the many ports that have been released on the wii, none has been so awaited like Okami. This game first appeared on the Ps2 back in 2006 and as great as it was it didn't sell very well, this time the game gets a second chance on the Wii and it should definitely be played by anyone who's into adventure games or anyone who's looking for a breathtaking experience, because that's what you'll get from playing this masterpiece.

First thing you'll notice about Okami is the magnificent presentation, the colourful menu that looks like a Japanese painting, soon you'll notice that the whole game has that unique look that makes it so special, a watercolor painting right there on your tv, there are few words that can describe the presentation of the game.

Okami is heavily influenced by japanese folklore not only in it's beautiful visuals but also in the story. Here you'll take control of Amateratsu, a sun god who is reborn as a white wolf and has to stop an evil eight-headed monster called Orochi, who has poisoned the magnificent land of Nippon. It's pretty straightforward, but somehow it can be very involving with all the subplots and funny, unique and charming characters such as Susano and your little green companion called Issun, who works kinda like Midna did in Twilight Princess; Amateratsu (or Ammy as Issun calls her) is a pretty good leading character as well. There's a lot of dialogue here, and as the characters don't speak you'll be doing quite a lot of reading, which is fine because the dialogue can be funny and sad and it's not frustratingly long like it was the case in Super Paper Mario.

Gameplay-wise Okami takes a few cues from The Legend Of Zelda games but it's very far from being a rip-off. The basic movement controls are pretty much the same as the wolf segments of Twilight Princess, except that Ammy is faster and more agile, and if you're used to play the third person adventure games on the wii you may get confused when you realize there's not a pointer, but that's not a big deal. Just like Link, Ammy will find herself traveling in a huge, vast and colourful world full of different towns, sidetasks and minigames as well as temples.

Spread all over the land are some kind of floating green scrolls if you touch those you'll engage in battle, to fight you only have to shake the wii remote; this works great, especially if you have the beads as main weapon, the reflectors are a bit annoying and hard to get used to as first but you'll get the hang of it quickly. Battles end really fast because of the great controls and also because the enemies are fairly easy, after you're done with a group of enemies you're awarded with bonuses depending on the time it took and the amount of damage you've inflicted. Boss fights are also easy, the huge bosses don't give you much of a hard time, they're pretty straightforward, much like Zelda you only have to use your newly acquired technique to hit it's weak spot and repeat many times.

But this wouldn't be a proper adventure game without some clever puzzles and Okami has many of those. They're cleverly done and some of them will make you spend an hour searching only to realize the solution was right in your face the entire time, pretty much like it happens in the Zelda games. There are also some RPG elements in the gameplay, such as the ability to increase your stats, energy and ink. You can also get items that are very useful in battle like the exorcisms slips that can damage nearby enemies and new fighting techniques from a weird martial arts master.

Even when Okami has so many obvious things in common with the Zelda series, it still feels original, this is because of the game's main and most unusual item: the celestial brush. With this brush you can blow things up, slice enemies, rejuvenate the land and even control elements like wind, fire and water, for example to make night into day you only have to draw a circle in the sky, that way the sun will come out. To use the brush you only have to press and hold the B button and use the Wiimote to draw the desired shape, it works wonderfully and it's probably the best thing about the game because it makes it unique. The brush can also be used to solve the different puzzles and the different brush techniques are given to you by the animal gods, which also happen to be some of the funniest characters in the game.

Okami's visual design is simply unmatched by any other game, with the exception of maybe The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but the art styles are different, so they can't really be compared. Okami looks like a japanese painting come to life, with all the different colors that cover the land. Everything about it looks amazing, the land is colourful, except for the cursed zones that look grey and creepy which makes it extremely atmospheric. The characters are wonderfully done and very well animated and even the smallest visual effects are amazing like the small trails of grass and flowers Amateratsu leaves as she runs. Other effects are breathtaking, like when you restore a near death sapling with your brush, when it revives green meadows cover the landscape, flowers bloom and the vitality returns to the land. It's probably the best effect of the whole game.

The sound design is just as great as everything else about the game, the original music is wonderful, it's filled with classic japanese instrumentation and each part of the land has it's own song. The sound effects are just as amazing and well done and while the characters don't really speak they are not less memorable or charming because of this. All in all the sound design is on par with every other part of the game.

Okami is such an amazing experience from start to finish that you'll have a hard time forgetting it. Just everything about it is amazing, from the gorgeous visual style, to the well made gameplay and sound, in fact it's so good that it'll make you forget any minor flaws it has like the few combat issues, and it's worth the more than 30 hours it takes to beat, and believe me you'll comeback for more.

If for some reason you missed this game back in 2006, this is your new chance to play this masterpiece, and it's definitely the best port on the Wii and one of the best on the system so far. So play Okami and prove for yourself why this is one of the best games of our time.