Okami HD (PS3)

One quick look at a bit of Okami’s action-adventure gameplay and you’ll find yourself looking at a vividly painted world inspired by calligraphy and wood block art and rich with references to Shintoism and Japanese folklore. The cel-shaded cartoon style gives the world a painted look appropriate for a game where brush strokes will serve as an actual mechanic, and with its heart steeped in religion and myth, it’s easy to believe for a moment you’ve found a gorgeous yet serious fantasy epic. However, Okami HD is not constrained by trying to be authentic to historical myth, as should become apparent when the sun god Amaterasu is represented as a wolf in game despite there being almost no historical ties between her and wolves, this apparently an extrapolation of the game’s title being a Japanese term that can mean either great god or wolf. By straying from old stories the game is able to build up characters, tell unique tales, and weave them together into a deeper narrative, but that narrative is also unafraid to get silly and have fun as well, a good bit of humor making up the backbone of even pivotal events without robbing the more emotional moments of their power.

 

Okami begins by sharing with you a legend about a white wolf and a legendary warrior who stood up against the evil eight-headed dragon Orochi to free the people of the land from his barbaric desire to devour a maiden on each full moon. In the time since its defeat the world existed in relative peace, but when someone curious about the legend disturbs the resting place of the warrior’s sword, Orochi is released from its seal and nearly destroys the world with his dark power. Before all is lost, the wood sprite Sakuya attempts to revive the white wolf who once protected the people from Orochi, finding instead that the sun god Amaterasu has seemingly inhabited its body. At greatly diminished power Amaterasu is not quite at the level of strength to fight against Orochi nor can she hope to defeat the other many evil creatures that begin to appear around the land, but a tiny assistant no bigger than a bug named Issun steps in and pushes her to undertake a journey to acquire the 13 Celestial Brush techniques that will allow her to reshape, alter, and otherwise impact the world in unbelievable ways. Interestingly enough, the game practically reaches a worthy climax about one-third of the way into the adventure and continues on afterwards, but it easily justifies it by taking you to unique new locations with new characters and incredible situations that make you appreciate that the game doesn’t just settle on completing only the first few character arcs it sets up.

 

The characters are definitely a great strength of Okami HD’s storytelling, although Amaterasu herself is unable to speak and thus most of the speech is left up to her ally Issun. Issun can at first come off as an entitled and perverted character, literally leaping out of a woman’s cleavage to introduce himself and being quick to criticize many people you encounter including Amaterasu herself. At first only interested in himself and an attempt to copy the sun god’s powers, the adventure has its time to work on his character and push him into more likeable territory while still not necessarily erasing his defining feistiness. A little firecracker of a companion, he does have to do the talking for the character you are playing as and amusingly sometimes she will get him back for some of his behavior or outright ignore him if she believes she knows what is right, and when Issun starts to show more respect to people including even some of the enemies you encounter it’s easier to soften your opinion of him since it’s clear he’s not just an obnoxious tag-along. Other characters you encounter on your quest are given time to have small arcs as well, an early one being the supposed descendant of the warrior who defeated Orochi. A drunk layabout who tries to talk himself out of displays of his skill, when you perform a little divine intervention to back up his boasts, he actually begins to try and live up to his legend while still baffled by the fact he could even pull off such feats, the story not even ending at that simple premise as he begins to question it more as you run into him again and again.

The tales of Okami HD’s world continue to be told in plenty of different locations. A large city by the sea brings in new allies and a fresh threat, and even if you think you might know the trajectory of someone’s story because they share a name with a mythological figure, the game is unafraid to take some sharp swerves just for the fun of reinterpreting those tales in unique ways. In some ways the game can almost feel like it links together what could have been multiple adventures for Amaterasu but manages to place in some consistent elements and gradual growth to prevent it from feeling disconnected. You won’t truly resolve the main threat until the end, but you learn of new facets, deal with the aftermath of other battles, and work to learn more about the people you encounter as you assist them. Along the way you head to some impressively diverse locations, some rooted in natural lands but others getting even more elaborate as the mystical nature of the world allows you to do things like climb inside a person or scale a tower far above the clouds. As mentioned earlier the art does a beautiful job in realizing the locations with traditional Japanese instrumentation in the music to draw out more from even simple grasslands and caves if needed, the world not feeling overly large either and there are means of quicker travel once you do enter a few too many locations to always run where you need to go.

 

Despite the environment being presented with such a beautiful painted look you can marvel at when entering somewhere new and imaginative, the characters you meet are often simpler in design and sometimes silly in their distortion. Their stylization will emphasize something like an old man’s age by having him heavily bent forward and impossible to imagine without a cane to prevent him from falling over, but when the game wants something to be imposing or more serious it will design them as such so you know when you’ve encountered something less goofy. Amaterasu herself leaves plants and flowers behind her footsteps as she runs and with a consistent goal being restoring the land you’ll often clear an area of the curse and get the gorgeous sight of color and life returning to it. One of the most striking parts of the art style though is when you get to see the traditionally illustrated representations of key moments, characters, and enemies that immediately lends more gravitas and importance to them when they appear. The little monkey-like imps that make up some of the most basic foes aren’t really as much trouble as their art makes them seem and sometimes the gulf between the funny character you know and the serious depiction of them is stark, but the illustrations make new encounters and events stand out as more notable and intriguing because the game takes the time to show you an intricate work of art based on it.

 

The Celestial Brush and its slowly discovered techniques are definitely the most important element of your adventure in Okami HD. At almost any time you are able to freeze the world around you and whip out a calligraphy brush you’ll be controlling with a control stick. By holding down square you will draw a line of ink to match the motions of your stick, specific simple drawings have different effects on the world when the action starts back up again. A single line through an object creates a slash that can be used in battle but can also cut down barriers or sever ropes out in the adventuring world. As you gain new powers though, a small loop will create wind that can move objects, a circle will cause plants inside it to sprout, and you can even slow time with two dashes that make a calming mist appear in the area. This brush is frequently used for puzzle-solving and some abilities like repairing damaged objects by filling them in exist solely for exploring the world more. There are moments where clever uses can come into play as well since you’ll eventually get abilities like drawing in the sky to change the time of day, and while it does lose a little creativity when new brush powers start to consist of things like drawing a line from something electrified or on fire to move the element to something else, it still keeps building on your ability to alter and interact with the world with something you’re drawing yourself. There are also moments where you can draw a disguise or kimono design just for fun, but the brush is a pivotal part of the journey consistently and while sometimes a shaky line doesn’t register as what you were hoping for, it is mostly a cleanly executed concept that expands your abilities in a compelling way. Your ink is limited within reason as well, the player not able to just scribble over things constantly or overutilize the stronger powers unless they’re willing to leave themselves high and dry as the ink slowly recovers from your wastefulness.

Amaterasu herself has things she can do beyond painting over the action though, the wolf able to acquire new attacks and techniques across the journey like a double jump and dodge. If you do run out of ink you will be in a bind as you can only do simple wolf things like bite and scratch, but while your divine power is doing well, Amaterasu wields special weapons on her back she can use in different ways. She can pull a blade off her back with her teeth for powerful swings she can charge, she can break apart a rosary to barrage foes before her with a storm of small beads, and the reflectors give her a simpler attacking style as she swings a disc around at a good speed and close range. Each weapon can also serve as a sub weapon that grants powers like long range bead shots. Different weapons have different advantages including the power to place ink bullets in a fight with your brush and some with elemental affinities give you a handy power source for some of your celestial brush techniques. Enemies do come in a wide variety of interesting forms like a wooden doll in an igloo on legs you need to burn out, a trio of scythes that roll around while wrapped in wind, and flying fish dressed in robes that will grab onto you to explode when they’re weakened enough, so while you will at first be fighting a fair few imps that mostly are differentiated by how their different instruments make them attack, the variety does start to increase as you reach more unique locations. The battle system however isn’t always the most exciting, tending to boiling down to a lot of basic attacks and maybe some brushwork if the foe has a specific weakness to it, but later foes do at least demand more action in that regard and bosses evolve in the same way as well. The fighting is still probably the least effective part of Okami HD’s design though, but many normal battles can be evaded with ease since they manifest first as floating scrolls that need to touch you to initiate a battle. Unless you’re aching for the spoils of a fight you can walk around them and keep focused on major tasks while dungeons and key fights provide a good dose of action that make the battles feel less simple and repetitive.

 

Battles do provide rewards based on how well you do in them to spur you to fight in more interesting ways though. Time and damage taken by you are both judged after the fight and you get more yen to spend if you do well, this going towards things like helpful items, new weapons, and even some stuff important to side quests. Similarly you can also try to get demon fangs from enemies by using certain weapons or techniques that can be traded for incredibly helpful gear. So long as you don’t take challenging every scroll as a personal mission the fights won’t likely wear out their welcome because of the push to earn these extra rewards and then boss battles allow for more imaginative and layered confrontations that make better use of the brush and pose a bigger threat. Even during peaceful moments of the plot though you’ll still be finding quite a bit to do, the player able to earn faith that goes towards upgrading Amaterasu’s health, ink reserves, yen storage, and even food storage since gathering enough of it will grant you extra lives that, admittedly, don’t seem too necessary. Bringing life back into the world by making trees bloom or supporting that life by feeding the many animals ambling about will give you small boosts of faith that add up over time, but doing optional activities like helping people with their problems end up providing bigger faith boosts and often other rewards as well. There is a good deal of side content to engage with like a fairly fun fishing minigame where your catches can be sold for cash, people in the big city have problems you can help with like catching a thief who can make doppelgangers of himself that require different brush techniques to defeat, and even independent exploration can often find you little nooks where a helpful treasure might be hidden. Much like the story provides a hearty amount of content even when it felt like it could have been enjoyable with just its first major arc, the extras in Okami HD provide a great deal of interesting activities to do on the side without bloating the game into something where it will feel incomplete if you don’t indulge in side quests.

THE VERDICT: While it can take a while for its battle system to really show its creative side, Okami HD is a beautiful adventure that puts its heart into everything. It can be painting a beautiful location with its traditional art style, constructing puzzles for clever use of your Celestial Brush, or concocting a ridiculously goofy scenario and Okami HD will put the work in to make sure that it is well realized and feels like a piece of the grander adventure. The payoffs throughout provide many satisfying steps to that final closure at the end that is able to bring together what almost feels like three adventures in one. Personality and imagination mixed with folkloric inspiration make Okami HD an excellent example of building new ideas out of old traditions, the adventure full of fun and creative concepts to discover and interact with.

 

And so, I give Okami HD for PlayStation 3…

A FANTASTIC rating. While I do approach this rating with some mild hesitation due to the battle system sometimes feeling a little bare, once you’ve pushed past an early obsession with imps you begin to better treat the encounters as new obstacles of their own while the more crucial battles end up being the ones that encourage you to really get imaginative with your brushwork and careful with how you attack. It is not a difficult game but it gives you the room to better explore the world and interact with its fascinating elements because it isn’t asking you to focus on its combat, the joys coming from narrative payoffs to character arcs, exploration of unexpected new locations, and optional activities that push you to play with your brush in new ways. Okami HD isn’t afraid to get serious when it needs to and even kill off likeable characters but it also wants to see you smile with jovial goofballs during less serious moments. An intimidating monster can still have a commanding presence, a silly character can see satisfying growth, and the journey itself does still feel like an epic, just one with far more to it than the stuffy storytelling style one might assume it has just based on the care put into making it all feel like an authentic representation of a Shinto-inspired world of myths. While basic battles do need to exist to assist some of the side quests the game could have treated them instead as obstacles overcome with the brush if it wanted to guarantee they remained more consistent in their quality, but Okami HD has so much to the adventure that it can still be said to be excellent even just on the adventuring elements. Learning what new things you can do in the next area introduced, discovering a part of the world and meeting the distinct characters who inhabit it, and working to set things right with even more unexpected new powers and situations makes Okami HD a fascinating and ever-evolving yarn to follow.

 

In essence, Okami HD’s greatest strength is not only its Celestial Brush but the kind of approach that brush can be said to be taking. The game’s adventuring could still be enjoyable without this ability, but it adds an incredible amount to the proceedings that push it higher and higher as it continues to edit and evolve the space the game takes place in. Okami HD’s roots are found in old Shinto myth, but its strengths come from building off those in ways that aren’t just reproductions of old ideas. The path ahead is exciting in Okami HD because it is never straightforward, there game not losing steam as it keeps inventing new places to head to, people to meet, and powers for you to use to interact with them in a more involved way. It can take a bit to get going and show what the story and action will truly be like, but after the 30 hour journey you’ll realize how it magnificently crafted much more than just a splendid art style.