I'm shocked not to see any threads on this excellent action-adventure title for PS2! I think this is easily game-of-the-year material. Favorable comparisons have been drawn between Okami and recent Zelda games -- this is probably fair, but certainly not unwelcome.
For those who don't know, you play Amaterasu (sp?), sun-goddes of the Shinto religion, inhabiting the body of a white wolf. As a wolf, you can run around, dig, jump, and generally do wolf-things. As a deity, you have access to the "Celestial Brush", allowing you to turn the world around you into a canvas on which you can draw. Almost all enemies will stop moving while you're drawing, lending a strategic element to otherwise real-time combat. You can attack your enemies with cutting brushstrokes, create cherry bombs, or blow them away with a blast of wind. Combat is a real blast, though the difficulty can be uneven -- some enemies present no challenge whatever, while some are invincible except at specific moments and deal piles of damage.
Outside of combat, you have to be creative with your brush strokes to advance. The story is interesting, and the Sumi-E (Japanese caligraphy) stylized visuals are breathtaking. And for us obsessive-compulsive types, there's tons of side-quest goodies to collect. Completing all your collections would probably take dozens of hours.
I'm not sure I could possibly reccommend this game strongly enough. Any fan of RPG-ish 3D platformers owes it to themselves to pick this one up -- it even launched (here in the US) for 10 bucks less than the 50-dollar normal "new game" price! I'm probably about 2/3 of the way through at this point, but I can safely say that even if the entire rest of the game is crap, it's worth the money.
Does anybody have any comments?
For those who don't know, you play Amaterasu (sp?), sun-goddes of the Shinto religion, inhabiting the body of a white wolf. As a wolf, you can run around, dig, jump, and generally do wolf-things. As a deity, you have access to the "Celestial Brush", allowing you to turn the world around you into a canvas on which you can draw. Almost all enemies will stop moving while you're drawing, lending a strategic element to otherwise real-time combat. You can attack your enemies with cutting brushstrokes, create cherry bombs, or blow them away with a blast of wind. Combat is a real blast, though the difficulty can be uneven -- some enemies present no challenge whatever, while some are invincible except at specific moments and deal piles of damage.
Outside of combat, you have to be creative with your brush strokes to advance. The story is interesting, and the Sumi-E (Japanese caligraphy) stylized visuals are breathtaking. And for us obsessive-compulsive types, there's tons of side-quest goodies to collect. Completing all your collections would probably take dozens of hours.
I'm not sure I could possibly reccommend this game strongly enough. Any fan of RPG-ish 3D platformers owes it to themselves to pick this one up -- it even launched (here in the US) for 10 bucks less than the 50-dollar normal "new game" price! I'm probably about 2/3 of the way through at this point, but I can safely say that even if the entire rest of the game is crap, it's worth the money.
Does anybody have any comments?
