Amazon.com: Okami: Playstation 2: Video Games

150 Reviews

5 star:		(128)
4 star:		(14)
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4.8 out of 5 stars (150 customer reviews)

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118 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A breath of fresh air., September 20, 2006

By	James K. Bess (Cookeville, TN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

Today's video game market is a stagnant one for the most part. Publishers rely on franchises and proven formulas to make their money. Meanwhile when something creative and original comes along publishers don't want to take a chance on it in fear of lousy returns on their investment. While this does make for a great business decision, it makes for poor gaming experiences. Thankfully Okami made it to fruition.

This game is reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda. The cell shaded graphics harken back to The Wind Waker, and inevitably any third person adventure game is going to merit a Zelda comparison. However, this is definitely not a Zelda clone. It merely takes the genre and builds on it to produce something extraordinary.

The gameplay is relatively simple. You can run around, fight baddies, talk to villagers, etc. The real innovation here is the use of a "paintbrush" that you activate with R1 to alter your environment. If you run up on a bridge that's broken down? No problem, activate your paintbrush and paint another one onto the landscape. Bad guy getting you down? Simple, just activate the paintbrush, draw a slash through the enemy, and he's down for the count. I've only progressed through the first hour of the game, so I have not collected all of the paintbrush techniques. But there is no doubt that the paintbrush is a big part of the game.

The graphics are nothing short of beautiful. You do a good bit of running around in this game. Fortunately it never gets old because the scenery around you is just so awesome to look at. I never thought a Ps2 game could look so good.

The story takes on the guise of Japanese folklore (I've read that the basis of this game is an actual legend, but I would assume some liberties have been taken with the story to fit the game). The story is interesting, although nothing groundbreaking (at least as far as I have progressed). Still, it is enough to keep you interested.

There are some small things that annoy me. The text comes with a gibberish voiceover (like Animal Crossing). Its bearable at first, but tends to grate on your nerves the farther along you go. The intro is about ten minutes too long, and I never found a way to skip past it or make it go faster. The big gripe I have is that there is no widescreen support, which would have made this game really shine on TVs that supported it.

This game might be the last great game on the Playstation 2. I'm happy that Capcom decided to break the industry mold and publish a title that displays a lot of creativity and beauty without it being a proven franchise. I consider this game to be in the same mold as Psychonauts, Shadow of the Colossus, Katamari Damacy, etc. Games that displayed a ton of creativity and were fun. Unfortunately games like this often go unnoticed by the majority of gamers and they don't sell well. Hopefully Okami will be an exception, and it needs to be if we ever want developers and publishers to release more original and "unproven" content to us.

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44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sucessor to Zelda? Perhaps, September 30, 2006

By	pErFecTsToRm (USA) - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

Many game critics have raved about this game, and it is no surprise. Once you start playing Okami you will quickly realize you have picked up quite the original adventure game. Okami does have certain hints of Zelda (i.e. bombs to blow up walls, searching for treasure, interaction with different people to find quests, time change, etc.) but at the same time Okami is a different animal. It is quite hard to explain really, but what really sets this game apart from most adventure games are the graphics and the almighty Celestial Brush. The graphics if anything will remind you most of Wind Waker, but while Wind Waker chose to go with the traditional style cel-shading (although they worked quite well and helped that game along), Okami chooses to go with stylistic cel shading, if that makes any sense...the graphics really bring every single enviornment in the game to life and not only that but they are defintely crucial to the whole theme of Okami on which its story is basically that of a Japanese legend novel. The calliography stylings you will find are incorporated with the watercolor-like graphics of Okami, and thus this is where the Celestial Brush comes into play. Throughout the game, you will gain brushstyles (once again reminiscent of Japanese calliography) from mythological constellations. Once you gain these you will use them to progress throughout the game. So a bridge is a broken? No problem you can fix it simply by waving your brush back and forth to create a new one. You will also use it a lot in the battles you will face, as you can draw bombs to defeat enemies quickly or draw a simple line through them to slash them powerfully and gain the upper advantage. Then at times you will face say, like a fire elemental and an ice elemental...using the brush once again, use the fire against the ice elemental and then use the brush once again to create wind and blow the fire elemental out. Tired of drowning in the water? Draw a circle to create a lily pad and then draw wind to travel faster on the lily pad. These are just a few of the things you can do with the brush but there is much more. As for the battles themselves, they are relatively easy but not so easy that they get boring...all you need to use is a bit of problem-solving and you have it down, the bosses take more of that of course. I will not spoil the boss encounters at all but the ways you use your brush against them is really inventive and original. The controls are tight and quite responsive, yet the only gripe I have with this game is the camera. It's not terrible, but it seems during the battles it gets a bit frisky but it's just a minor flaw. The oriental-type music fits with the theme of the game very well, it does get a bit repetitive in some parts but it's otherwise well done.

I have never heard of Clover before, I don't know if this is the first game they have come out with or what...but you can be rest assured I will be looking into them after this masterpiece of a game. The PS2 is nearing its end but this is definitely one of the last games it should go out on. Okami is a must buy for this year, I promise you no PS2 owner should be without it. All critics have been raving, I have yet to hear a bad review about Okami, that should tell you something. Overall this is a must buy game, do not doubt it buy it. Peace.

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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even better than a new Zelda game, November 22, 2006

By	Jerrod Adee - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

Story / Gameplay
In playing as Amaterasu, A Sun-God awoken to defend a classical Japanese village in the area of Nippon, you will use a variety of weapons, combat techniques, and Celestial brushes to defeat your enemies and rid the land of an ancient evil that has been resurrected. The weapons will be your standard platforming arsenal of short and long ranged devices that you use to keep yourself from harm, and try for the opposite effect with your enemies. These will include various twists on Japanese Imperial Regalia to include, A reflector disk (Your beginning weapon), Rosary Beads (Your primary ranged weapon), and a Glaive (Powerful long sword).
The Celestial Brush is what makes this game unique. It allows you to pause the game at any time using the R1 button and paint various symbols to have a wide reaching effect on gameplay. These include, but are not limited to, attacking enemies/objects, bringing back life to various dead flora, creating platforms, and in general showing off your God-like ability to affect almost every aspect of reality in the game. The Celestial Brush will be your major gameplay factor in practically every puzzle the game offers. It's also used for story progression and helping out some of your village friends think they can do things they really can't without them knowing.

Art / Graphics
Okami draws a lot of it's animations from Japanese watercolor paintings most famous from the Ukiyo-e style. Like the game Zelda: The Windwaker, which people most commonly relate Okami to, Cel-shading is used as opposed to 3D Polygon textures to give the game a more animated feel. This serves the purpose of bringing out smoother movements in the character models and bringing the characters themselves more to life. Unlike the aforementioned game, however, Okami uses a brushed style that helps bring more color into the game rather than focusing solely on shape definition. In short, it's the best thing that Cel-shading has ever produced. It even winds up showing off a lot better than some of the cinematic driven games to date.
Music / Voice Acting
The music in this game is on par with many of its platforming brethren, and exceeds a lot of the standards for the genre. The scores are large numbered and always seem to have a good piece of music to back-up whatever situation you, as a Brush wielding Sun-God defending good in the form of a wolf, may find yourself in. The voice acting is the only thing that could bring this game down. The simple truth? There is none! Well, it's no great loss because the game does fine without it. However, during the opening sequence, which consequentially is about 14 minutes too long, the little humming sounds that they use instead will probably have you wanting to claw your ears out before it's done. After this little sequence however, you should be good to go through the rest of the game.

Controls
I list Controls as its own category because quite simply, they will make or break a game. I won't lie to you, I was a little skeptical when I heard that somebody had a made Zelda clone for the PS2 based in feudal Japan. But from the moment I picked up the controller and started maneuvering smoothly through the cel-shaded environment, switching from weapons to brushes quicker than thought, I was sold. Okami has some of the most intuitive controls of any Console game I've ever played. You will almost never have one of those moments where you are left thinking, "If only I had put the camera somewhere else."

Overall
Okami is a fun Action-Adventure / Platforming game that will keep you locked in to the very end. The Brushed Cel-shading quite frankly outdoes itself as you progress through rich and peaceful villages as well as dark and brooding cursed lands. The controls boast more than their fair share versatility as they put in your hands the ability to change the very fabric of existence surrounding your character with just the few buttons and strokes of your brush.
The downsides you will see in the game mostly center on the distinct lack of Voice acting and the horrendously long opening sequence. These however, do very little to detract from the overall masterpiece that Clover Studios has created.

Okami takes everything that made people love the N64 and Gamecube Zelda games, and then improves upon them ten fold (Yes, I though it was impossible too.) to create one of the most original and masterwork Action/Adventure games to ever hit the markets, and has no competition whatsoever on the Playstation 2 gaming console.