Okami - Zelda for the Playstation 2.

[lucidique]

Okami

WikiPedia Entry
?kami (??, ?kami?) is a cel-shaded video game developed by Clover Studio for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It was released on April 20, 2006 in Japan and September 19, 2006 in the United States and Canada. It is scheduled for release in Europe during February 2007. ?kami's main character is the Shinto sun goddess named Amaterasu, who has taken the form of a white wolf. The title of the game is a pun; the word ?kami (?) in Japanese means "wolf", however the kanji characters used as the title of this game (??), also pronounced as ?kami, meaning "great deity", so the main character is a great wolf deity. The same characters (??) are also used to write the full name of the goddess Amaterasu-?-mi-kami. ?kami can also be read to mean "big paper", hinting at the game's sumi-e-inspired visual style.

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I've been playing the game for a couple weeks now, and it's hard to put down. If you have been asking yourself why there has not been a single Zelda-like adventure game on the ps2, grab this one while it's hot.

Okami use the traditional gameplay of Ocarina Of Time, with the art style of WindWaker, in a much more satisfying way, with a special gameplay twist. Anyway, WikiPedia is better at it than i. So, Here goes :
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?kami has the player controlling the main character, Amaterasu, in a paintbrush style, cel-shaded environment. The gameplay style is a mix of action, platform, and puzzle gaming genres, and has been noted by many reviewers to have numerous similarities in overall gameplay style to The Legend of Zelda series. The main story is primarily linear, directed through by Amaterasu's guide Issun, though numerous side quests and optional activities allow for the player to explore the game world and take the story at their own pace.

Unique to ?kami is the Celestial Brush. Players can bring the game to a pause and call up a canvas, where the player can draw onto the screen using the left analog stick to control the Celestial Brush.[2] This feature is used in combat, puzzles, and as general gameplay. For example, the player can create strong wind by drawing a loop, cut enemies by drawing a line through them, or create bridges by painting one amongst many other abilities. These techniques are learned through the course of the game by completing constellations to release the Celestial Brush gods from their hiding spots.
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I won't spoil the Story for those interested in trying. It's part of the magic to discover the "Legend" for yourself.

Anybody played it? This is one of the last great ps2 games to be released at the end of this generation. The playstation3 , Wii and Xbox360 have been out there for awhile, so it's a good chance to see the Playstation2 running at it's full potential.

 

[Monster]

This game seems to be very interesting!! It will not come out here in Germany until February, however. I'd buy a PS2 just to see it!

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

I enjoyed Starfox Adventures on Gamecube very much, and I've become curious about that type of games (I yet need to have a look at Zelda; I only played an old version of Zelda for SNES once in a hotel room in the US and I liked it!). Are there any others besides Zelda and Okami you would recommend (for any console)?

 

[Monster]

I've been playing Okami since yesterday -- and WHOA!!

I'm totally enjoying this game! :nod:

I like it much better than any Zelda that I've played.

Okami is really FUN to play. Taking out enemies with a stroke of a brush, creating a sun by drawing a circle, or repairing things by drawing the missing parts. That's simply fun.

I like it how in the instruction booklet, there's not even "the grand goal," as a player you aren't pressured to proceed in the game (unlike Zelda). You can spend your time walking around and exploring things.

The humor in this game is also very enjoyable.

I'm happy!

 

[Monster]

Bah, I'm stuck at the minigame with Kaguya, where I'd get the golden coin. :terror:

Did anyone get past that point?

I hate games with unfair levels of difficulty. That's so 1983! :rolleyes:

 

[Monster]

Whew! Now I'm at Oni Island, but I don't wanna play the races with Tobi! :tongue: (yet)

But yeah, the :rolleyes: still persists!! I really didn't expect Zelda and Okami to be that primitive! (gameplay-wise) I thought the 1980ies were already over...

EDIT: Now I'm in Kamui.

 

[Monster]

A couple of days ago, I finally completed the game. When you do that, you can start over with a set of goodies and keep most of your weapons and skills (of course, not the brush techniques, because in the story, you have to regain them). To me, that's the fun aspect of the game: playing it again, but this time with ease, and enjoying things.

Here's a quick feature list:

• Items: You can keep a large number of items (up to about 20,000 to 30,000), including food, charms, scrolls and treasures. Of each weapon type (4), there are 5 variations. Each weapon can be levelled up once. You can equip a main and a side weapon. Special magic items are rare, but can have surprising features. 3 of them can be equipped at once.
• Money: You can keep up to an 8-figure amount of money (depending on the size of your 'wallet') and a number of demon teeth. You can trade these into items with merchants. There's one surprise merchant in the game that you encounter while completing a later mission in the game. Merchants usually have only standard items, and the occasional special item. Gold dust for enhancing weapons, magic items and weapons are only available in very limited quantities (that's sufficient for the game). Special items cannot be sold (prevents player from selling important items). You also use money to learn skills.
• Skills: In Dojo's (fighting schools), you can learn new skills. The basic skills are cheap, more important ones are more expensive. After completing the game, you keep only the skills that don't have to be learnt as part of the story.
• Brush techniques: These are learnt as part of the story, and all are necessary for completing the game. Some extra techniques can be found in side quests. So it's worth exploring the game.
• Minigames: There are several minigames, and most are unexpectedly hard to solve. But with the use of all of your brush techniques and items, you can possibly complete them. Games include solving problems quickly (like helping Susano), 2D-style digging through mazes, and races. (BTW, the Yoshpit games are easier when playing them multiple times, making the trees bloom as you go. The Tobi games can be completed only by using Veil of Mist). To me, the minigames were the least fun aspect of the game, because they don't match the difficulty level of the rest of the game.
• Fights: The fights are very easy when you always equip yourself with the best weapons you can find, combine them to have the highest strength, uplevel them, and improve your skills. The earlier enemies in the game can be fought in any way, but the more you proceed into the game, the more important special fighting techniques become (like using particular brush strokes and stuff). Many enemies have a particular weakness that can be exploited. This is insofar unrealistic that you often cannot fight an enemy with an obvious choice of attacks, but have to resort to something particular. Despite that, fights are quite easy. As soon as you have Veil of Mist (which is acquired as part of the story in Sei'an), use it to slow down the fights. During some fights, switching to the brush doesn't slow down the game, and sometimes Veil of Mist doesn't slow it down either (when you're fighting especially 'evil' enemies). In some later parts of the game, you fight against enemies who also have mastered the celestrial brush techniques (that's the most interesting and entertaining series of fights).
• Character attributes: Some attributes can be uplevelled by collecting 'luck' and distributing it over the attributes. You can have as much as 4 lives, 18 points of life energy, huge ink depot, 8-figure sum 'wallet'.
• Game complexity: The game is very simply structured, but not as simple as Zelda. Okami hence provides a more pleasurable experience. On the other hand, Okami is far from a real role playing game. Especially trading and character attributes are somewhat disappointing. Fighting skills involve only hitting the enemy in the right pattern to produce a learnt effect. Like, there's a technique to hit an enemy five times in a row to produce greater damage. NPCs are stationary. There are optional monsters (hovering about in demon scrolls) and mandatory monsters (part of story), but they're all soulless creatures, not NPCs (with a possible life on their own). While in the 1980ies, such limited game features were used only because of limited system resources, nowadays they're used to keep game simple, but at the expense of more experienced players. Perhaps they should have introduced varying levels of difficulty (with different feature sets), or an overall richer feature set.

That's it!