Okami

[beddo]

So, I bought Okami. I was not sold on the graphics and to be honest I'm still not; the use of cel shading is too heavy handed. The black outlines are too overpowering and garish. The overall composition could be improved, the scenes are too small to be fully realised as an immersive world.

I was hoping for a new and interesting 3rd person adventure. To be fair I have only played for around an hour and a half but, I already feel like this is Twilight Princess with a different skin. The gameplay in the first village feels like a carbon copy of the first villages Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. The main fields are spitting images of Hyrulian fields, it's one thing to be inspired by a game, another to copy one. The gameplay consists of rather tedious 'coincidence of wants' solving. Person 1 wants object B, Person 2 has object B but wants object C, Person 3 wants object A which Person one has but left on the other side of town.

Yes these games have many hours of gameplay but to me this gameplay just isn't fun. I don't mind fetch quests, but they're used to such an extent, that, I almost can't be bothered to continue with the game. Furthermore, the game is littered with 'spraff'. I don't actually mind cutscenes, they are good at directing the actions ensureing the player is able to focus on the events dictated by the game. However, text based cut-scenes are the bain of my gaming existence. These are the worst things in gaming since PlayStation analogue sticks! I'd rather play through Bourne than have to go through another text based cutscene!!!

 

[Portkins]

Okami came before Twilight Princess. <_<
(Wait, The new one or the old one?)
Okami's not for everyone, but I personally liked it. (The old one)

 

[YukoValis]

you suck! Lol honestly it's a great game, if you like that sort of thing I guess. I personally loved the art style, being a hack artist myself. I still say it's an original game, with a good story, new and interesting play style, and lovely art all around. My only problem with the game is that it's too easy save for those memory games where you have to poke that rock creature. Play the whole game through and see if you start to like it, if not then oh well more fun for me.

 

[YukoValis]

Okami came before Twilight Princess. <_<

Okami came out before Zelda yes, so if anything Zelda would be copying it.

 

[beddo]

Coming out before another game does not mean it was thought up first. I don't know which concept was created first but the influences of earlier Zelda games on Okami are almost undeniable.

 

[beddo]

I really liked Shadow of the Colossus, I basically want something more like that.

 

[LivemeLifefree]

Okami came before Twilight Princess. <_<
(Wait, The new one or the old one?)
Okami's not for everyone, but I personally liked it. (The old one)

It's just a port to the Wii. I also don't like the cut scenes, but they do offer an option to skip, but you miss all the story. I wish they'd speed up them up some. I fell asleep while starting it. I liked it's use of cell shadedness though.

 

[beddo]

To clarify, Okami's art style is an amazing achievement. Moving away from the standard is never easy. It's just not to my taste, I think they could have imporved the style significantly in the wii version by why bother putting in the effort eh.

Twilight Princess looks really bad in my opinion, especially in open spaces. It feels like the skybox is a crappy dome stuck on top of disjointed fields, it does nothing for a sence of scale.

 

[beddo]

I knew that Okami was more Zelda style I just wasn't expecting something so close to it. At least it has a different story to Twilight Princess.

I was expecting more originality than just the graphics. Who knows, the story may yet make up for it.

 

[Daouzin]

Okami's a great game. I played the original on the PS2 about 6 months after it came out so not recently enough to probably say everything that should be said about the game, but it's pretty clear to me that you came into this game expecting something specific. Everyone does this to an extent, but try to step back a little a bit and let Okami take it's own course.

Personally I fell in love with the games approach to story telling. I felt a lot of the cinemas were just aesthetically appealing and the game gave me the impression that I jumped into an old Chinese legend, but not generically. It's obvious that Okami took a lot of ideas from Zelda, but I don't think it's fair to say that the whole first village is like OoTs although to be honest it's been even longer since I've played that.

If there was anything that I took away from Okami that I rarely get from most games is the desire to explore and to watch the rebirth of a god. The NPCs really help to establish Amaretsu apart from the rest of the world and the contrast between Amy and Susano help to establish the power that Amy has in the relatively realistic universe set in a prior time period.

The only real complaints I have and have heard people mention is the games pacing and the games length. I think a good 5 hours could probably have been shaved off, but the story has a much older aura to it, as though I'm playing a game that was originally an oral story passed from generation to generation through out early Japan. That's really what's so powerful about the game, is it manages to merge a new storytelling medium with a story that comes out of it feeling thousands of years old and it does this through the game's atmosphere.

The art style inspired by a Japanese water coloring technique, the use of the "celesital brush" with automatic connotations to calligraphy and by keeping verbal audible dialogue to being any one specific language. A number of other things help to contribute the feeling I'm trying to convey, but ultimately the game delivers an experience rich and entirely different then what most games offer.If it has to do that by taking ideas from an established franchise then so be it, but personally Okami's left a bigger mark on me then any Zelda game has since LttP, which to be honest is probably entirely nostalgia.

 

[The Wooster]

I don't recall there being a paint brush that allowed you to change the world around you in Twighlight princess.

As for copying the fields in OoT. I agree completely. Both games feature not only grass (!) but also, Trees! (!!)

 

[Castrate the Heathen]

What game is like SOTC anyways? I can't think of any

Ico.

 

[Eiseman]

Well, one could argue that SotC had many puzzles. It's just that said puzzles were huge and could crush you underneath their hooves if you didn't solve them right.

 

[lenneth]

I think they could have imporved the style significantly in the wii version by why bother putting in the effort eh.

They might have if it was actually Clover porting it to the Wii nt just Capcom

 

[Andy Anonymous]

You need to give it more time.

As for the graphics style, it's made to emulate a Japanese watercolor, and it does that, extremely well. Perhaps you simply don't like that style of artwork.

 

[Wanderer Of Days]

If you wanted something like Shadow of the Colossus, you would have a hard time finding something quite like it. Shadow of the Colossus could be very much described as a thesis on boss battle design, and that combined with it's style and atmosphere makes it a very unique game.

As people have stated before, Okami takes many cues from Zelda, though it does present plenty of new ideas. Yes, the sumi-e art style can be messy, but Okami is a wonderful game, so try to play through it a bit more. The story is good in my opinion, and even if you are unfamiliar with the Japanese folklore used throughout the story, it makes for a charming narrative. It gets even more interesting towards the end. The combat can be a bit stale at fist, but the addition brush techniques and divine instruments make for fun times.

 

[slyder35]

you suck! Lol honestly it's a great game, if you like that sort of thing I guess. I personally loved the art style, being a hack artist myself.

What's a hack artist?