Ōkami

Ok, I liked Okami alot.  I want to get that out of the way before I go into my rant.  Okami was FUN.  There is no denying that.  I loved the puzzles were creative, the dungeons were fun to figure out.  I thought some aspects about it was totally unique, while others were blatant clones of Zelda ideas.

I love Zelda games, boy do it.  I love Zelda clones and Okami is one of them, but what get's on my nerves is when people say Okami is a Zelda game but better, well, I'm going to disagree with that.  Okami is most certainly a Zelda game though, but I don't see how it was better.  The storyline in Okami is so random and crazy that it almost doesn't make any sense at all, it doesn't quite have the heart of a Zelda game.  There's some things straight up ripped off from Zelda, which is almost insulting.  First off there's the running mailman in the first field, which is alot like the running man in Ocarina of Time, you even do a sidequest with him.  Then there's the bombs you learn, which open up giant cracks in a wall that you'll find on fields or dungeons but that's a basic idea really.  However, what really set me off was when I found the fountain where you donate money to boost your bomb count.  Then there's the sundials you collect that boost your HP (basically heart pieces), and then there's the boss fights which are taken straight out of the Zelda handbook.  Then you have Issun, which is basically Navi.  There was numerous other elements that too, but those were the main ones.

Another issue is if they took ideas from Twilight Princess.  Okami beat Twilight Princess to the punch by a couple months, but Twilight Princess was announced at E3 of 03, first showed in 2004 and was hyped into oblivion beyond that, everyone knows of all the set backs because of the Wii version.  If Twilight Princess beat Okami to the punch, would people really love Okami so much and rag on Zelda?  Either way, there's a bunch of similarities between them including the bug collection in Twilight Princess, which reminds me of the animal collection in Okami.  Then there's the whole wolf deal. The controls are similar, and heck at times you have to ride around with someone on your back just like you did with Midna.  Then there's the aspect about slowly cleansing each new area from darkness, but that's been done a million times in other games as well.

I thought the graphics were unique, the story was different, and the combat was fun, but that's about it.  I wouldn't say any of that makes a game better than Zelda though.  There was just times where I had to force myself through the game though.  I never felt gamer fatigue so much in my life with this game.  The dialog scenes drag on way to long.  That's mainly my biggest beef with the game.  

----------Battle System----------
Okami is a Zelda-style Action RPG.  You can see all enemies on screen before they attack you, minus boss fights although they're easy to predict.  The enemies take form of giant floating tickets on the battle field.  You can skip most enemy battles if you choose as well.  If you do rush into battle, then you get trapped inside of a ring with your enemies until one of you (most likely you) end up the victor.  This is kinda similar to Quest 64.  After you beat your enemy, they drop some loot, money and you get evaluated on your performance and get bonus money depending on how well you did.  

Okami's big gimmick is the paint brush.  At nearly anytime in the game, either on the field or within battle you can bring out your paint brush and draw commands.  When you draw your brush, time freezes so you have all the time in the world to plan your stroke.  Some games did this in the past with crappy results (namely Taos Adventure) but Okami keeps it simple and easy to learn.  First of all, most of the commands are nearly all the same stroke.  You can do numerous things a slash, for example attack an enemy, break a rock, create a bridge, drag water to a fire.  Some commands are determined by what your stroke starts out with.  If you start stroking from water, then you'll drag water, if you start stroking form fire, then you'll drag fire.  Simple enough.  You'll gradually learn new brush strokes over the course of the game, slowly unlocking new secrets and areas, just like a Zelda game when Link gets a new item in dungeon.  Actually this is almost exactly that, some brush strokes emulate a few Zelda items, like the bomb or the grapple hook.

The key point of Okami is to revive the world that was taken over by a deadly mist.  When you revive plants, trees and help animals, or just do good deeds then you'll get Praise Points.  These are pretty much experience points.  When you get enough Praise points you can go into your menu and distribute them among four different stats.  You can boost your Max HP, you can boost your Max Ink (aka Magic), boost your Life or boost your ability to carry Money.  Another Zelda-ism in the game is to find 3 broken dials, when you find three, then you gain more Max HP.  

Over time you can buy or find new weapons, accessories and items.  There are three different types of weapons, a glaive, which is medium power but medium attack speed.  There's attack beads, which are weak in power but have great attack speed, and finally the heavy sword, which is slow but has great power.  You can find 5 of each weapon making a total of 15 weapons.  Then there's the accessories you can equip.  They can effect the world around you, for example they can give you more money, let you walk on water, protect you against fire and so on.  You can equip up to 3 accessories at a time.

Dungeon layouts are pretty much the basic Zelda game.  You'll fight through some monsters, find some treasures, get a map of the dungeon, then reach the boss.  The boss fights are pretty cool but also similar to a Zelda fight.  All you have to do is find the exploit and abuse it, mostly by using your newly found brush stroke.  My biggest problem with the boss fights is there are only 6 overall include the final boss.  That's 6 boss fights in a 50 hour game.  The most annoying thing about this is you have to fight the first 5 bosses atleast 2 times.  The most annoying (ie longest to kill) boss you have to fight 3 times.  It's kinda frustrating.


----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Amaterasu, a wolf god sent to the world of Nippon to restore order to the world.  Amaterasu is paired with a loud-mouthed pea sized Issun, who is basically Amateasu's mouth piece, like Navi in Ocarina of Time.  Issun is the only person that can see Amaterasu (later nicknamed Ammy) as the god she really is, as all humans within Nippon think she's a normal wolf.  It's Ammy's quest to restore all the Sacred Trees that remove the deadly poison mist.  She must also find all 13 other gods of Nippon and set them free from their entrapment and defeat the evil god Orochi.

The storyline is ok I guess, the dialog is fine and funny at times.  The dialog scenes tend to drag on way to long at times.  Okami is a very slow paced game, that includes the storyline aswell.  I dislike most of the names of the characters, as it's very very Japanese, so their names become very forgettable.  Heck, besides a few key characters, most NPCs are forgettable as well.  


----------Graphics----------
The characters and most of the environments are cel-shaded, with a weird filter over the colors so they're not bold, kinda like what they did in Wild Arms 3.  They also use a thick black outline over the edges of the characters and items within the world to create a very weird looking game.  I love it actually, but the crazy amount of color in the game can get a little crazy at times though.  I mean, Wind Waker for example used simple colors but Okami just takes it to an extreme.  Other than that, the characters are a little faceless in design, and some characters are literately faceless.  

The dungeons, fields and towns are all nicely crafted.  You can tell they most of the effort into the game with their maps.  This usually gives you an incentive to explore a little more than you should.  Besides a few key characters, you'll forget about most of the towns folk by the end of the game.  

----------Sound----------
The music is awesome.  There's nothing bad or generic about it.  My only beef with the sound is the voice overs they gave the characters.  Each character have a stupid muffled, unintelligible chirping voice, much like the characters from Animal Crossing.  It's not nearly as offensive as Animal Crossing, but you don't have the option to remove the voices, so it can get annoying.

----------World Map----------
The world map is a very basic Zelda style map.  You'll first start off in a small town, and then advance into a giant field full of secrets and dungeons and eventually move on to neighboring towns and fields until the entire map is completed.  The map doesn't expand much beyond what Ocarina of Time layed down but it doesn't have to since it was a near perfect formula to begin with.

----------Time to Complete Game----------

Play Time: 47:32:01
Days Passed: 77
Saves: 118
Deaths: 0
Enemies Defeated: 431
Money Gained: 3,602,755
Demon Fangs Found: 166
Praise Earned: 4,645

After you finish up the game you get your final results (see above), a few new items, and a gallery of pictures.  You can also start up a new game+ but I'm not sure what all carries over.