This game looks absolutely gorgeous, it has a strong visual identity and it’s very appealing, replicating the style of old Japanese oil paintings. This game also has a fantastic gameplay loop: In order to upgrade your HP, brush technique uses, inventory space and so on, you need to get a currency known as Praise, this is done by doing various activities in the lands such as restoring pieces of land, restoring decayed trees, feeding the animals in the overworld and so on, plenty of these activities are scattered throughout the game and each usually takes a few seconds to do, this makes it so the activities never get repetitive and because every little activity gives you handful amounts of Praise, it makes it so that everything little thing you do in the game makes you stronger bit by bit, keeping a steady pace of progression. Speaking of the overworld, the lands that you will go to in this game is littered with treasures and secrets to find, areas to restore, people to talk to, side quests to do and so on, I was never bored as I always wanted to explore these lands to the fullest extent and uncover as much as I could. There are also many treasures, secrets and various activities that can only be found and completed using certain brush techniques, making the areas in this game much more revisitable and these brush techniques all the more satisfying to use, and the same can also be said about the dungeons in these games, each dungeon has a unique theme, all with different sets of enemies, platforming challenges, secrets to find and puzzles all revolving around the brush techniques, figuring out how to use the brush techniques properly in the different puzzles as well as how to utilize them in combat is immensely satisfying. Besides the exploration and dungeon-crawling there are also various other events in the game to keep the gameplay varied, like using your vine technique to latch onto a log going straight for a waterfall, a 2D segment where you dig down blocks to help uncover a character’s treasure, having a friendly race with a prayer slip and so on, in this way it makes the game much more engaging and interesting.

All of this great gameplay, mixed with an amazing soundtrack, charming characters and an engaging tale about helping those around you, Okami oozes with charm and is simply one of the best action-adventure games I have ever played. A highlight in Capcom’s amazing library.