Part 1.

Hey guys, Okami happened again today - I cleared a dungeon to say the least. I apologise if this may seem a bit rambling at times but I'm still figuring out the best way to actually write something like this.

Okay, we last left off with Amaterasu and Issun entering the third dungeon of the game - the Moon Cave. Orochi (the big bad) has seemingly returned and he wants to eat Kusi, who I forgot about having not seen her since last year. Now, I'll admit to being rather disappointed by the dungeons in the game so far. The Wind Shrine especially didn't seem to have much going for it and was rather linear from the beginning to the end but the Moon Cave? This one's a doozy. Before I got there though, I had to drop down to the Calcified Cavern and get a disguise, as we're entering Orochi's lair which is full of Imps - the enemies you fight throughout the game. Sadly, I can't get screenshots from the PS3 (Is there any easy way to do this?) but the game had me used my brush to paint on a sheet - you can judge the results for yourself, but I think I nailed the Imp look. Now that I think about it, it would have been hilarious to draw a dick. #ryckert.

Anyway, onto the Moon Cave itself... this is more like it. 7 FLOORS. Even if they have literally nothing on them the sheer scale of a dungeon like this is always fun. Continuing along the Zelda path I think you're looking at something between Snowpeak Ruins and Temple of Time. It's incredibly vertical but under your disguise you can actually converse with the Imps (leading to some funny dialogue including one Imp who claims he "was born to work this lift") and this leads to the main gimmick of the dungeon. The Imp chef wants you to scour the caves and find his four secret ingredients for the appetizer he wants to give Orochi. This leads us through the dungeon on a glorified fetch quest which due to taking place in a dungeon doesn't feel like a fetch quest.

Now, let's move onto some real talk about the mechanics of the game. I'm actually surprised how un-intrusive I've found them. The quickness between entering and leaving brush mode is a godsend as that could be potentially very annoying and the game seems to know what I'm trying to do at least 80% of the time. This dungeon had some nice puzzling with the new technique, Inferno - being able to draw from a source of fire to burn things. The enemies also factored my new technique into account with the ice-wheel imp being as easy as you'd expect to take down with fire. One thing I have noticed is that due to the nature of random encounters, some areas can be rather barren. A lot of the times a big area just has a gate that you enter for the encounter. It's a bit nitpicky but I suppose that's the nature of the way this game deals with encounters.

Anyway, having recovered all four ingredients I was ready to take the elevator manned by the dedicated Imp up to Orochi's room for the big battle. I got there, he appeared and I was greeted with a barrier I couldn't break through. Enter Susano! Somehow despite my God brush techniques not leaving a scratch, his wooden sword destroyed the barrier leading to a relatively simple two stage boss fight. I used water spout to make him drink and ran up his back to attack a bell and move onto phase two.

Here, I used water sprout again before burning all 8 of his heads with Inferno for massive damage. Surprisingly, like humans, Orochi didn't like being burnt whilst drunk. Cool. Susano then sliced all eight of his heads off despite being a coward for most of the game and we saved Kusi! Awesome. Party time! Literally! I went back to the first village, fireworks were going and I had to talk to everyone to advance. Susano and Kusi were nowhere to be found and thankfully Issun was there to imply what they were away doing for the brain-dead people who couldn't work it out.

Apparently Orochi split off into most like 4-5 pieces and went to other areas of Nippon... WAIT, THE GAME ISN'T DONE? I wonder if I'll have to go to temples or something like that? Nah, no chance surely? I'm definitely heading to a capital city next, maybe they've got the credits for me? Who knows. See ya next time.