You are a god and you do not act very smart, but you seem to intuitively or even instinctively know what to do. You have a wandering flea on your body that rambles a lot, it acts mostly as noise to the quiet background of the game. The environments are big pretty big somewhat empty but everything that is on the map is very pretty. You have a very varied journey as you play the game, you get to be tiny, you get to battle a mysterious flute player, and you encounter big bosses. There is very little focus on the outcome and more on the things you encounter that are very memorable but the reasons to why you are there not so much.

“Well… We’ve been through a lot together. […] But for you, it’s just the start of an even greater adventure.”

For sure, this journey was a memorable one.

Okami is the quintessential old school adventure videogame: a large world made of multiple interconnected maps, subsequently opened to the players by precedingly unlocking new unique abilities. The different scenarios also offer a wide variety of side activities, quests and collectible, without choking the game full of time-consuming nothingness or making the players deviate much from the main quest: moreover, even the apparently most trivial side mission ultimately brings the player to unlock a new weapon, helpful accessories or ability upgrades, so there will never be a minute of gameplay lost just to achieve an empty 100% competition rate.

Certainly, there is not a tight world building behind every encounter, or interesting written stories for all the characters, like for example in the Witcher and Souls series, yet what Clover studio achieved by blending the Zelda formula with Japanese folklore resulted in a most unique product, even amid the vast catalogue of niche games for the Playstation2. No surprises Okami achieved a strong cult status among past generations of video gamers, other than receiving various porting and remaster.

The story itself sets the game as a niche product right from the beginning, as it explores themes and events reimagined from Shinto mythology, and as such it has many details and references that may be understood uniquely by a Japanese audience, or well versed in this particular cultural background. The whole premise of Okami reinvents the legend of the slaying of Yamata-no-Orochi, an 8-headed and 8-tailed dragon serpent, by the hand of the gods Susanoo and Amaterasu, with slightly differences such as Amaterasu, while still being the Sun goddess, as well as the players’ character, is represented as a mute wolf (Okami is a word play that while being written as ‘great god’ could be read as ‘wolf god’).

Other characters coming from different myths are Issun, Okami’s Navi although arguably more talkative and amusingly obnoxious, who serves as a narrator and as Amaterasu only mean to communicate with the world, aside from barking and headbutting; Urashima Tarou, Otohime and the Dragon Palace on the bottom of the sea, the shapeshifting fox spirit with nine tails, Fusehime and her eight dog warriors, Kaguyahime from the tale of the bamboo cutter, as well as actual historical figures such as Himiko, a real queen from the early days of Japan. The vast assortment of characters gives a pantheistic feeling to Okami’s otherwise primarily light-hearted and goofy plot, making the players immerse in a scenario akin to an Olympus, where the deities intertwine with each other to serve the purpose of a greater story.

What immediately strikes about Okami is certainly its visuals, the peculiar art design with broad black outlines and a soft colour palette that heavily borrows from various Japanese traditional art, such as ukiyo-e, sumi-e (ink painting) and even calligraphy on some degree. The end result is a less rough and more glistening rural world immerse in nature, with sparkling of true beauty but with the simple recognizable designs of a children story book. The gameplay also fits with the artwork of the videogame: Amaterasu can use her tail, the Celestial Brush, to enter a sort of otherworldly dimension from where she can utilize different strokes to unleash various effects on the game world: these effects range from manipulating the elements to fix broken or missing artefacts, slow time, evoke explosives and cut through most objects.

The Celestial Brush also heavily plays in the combat system, as aside from Amaterasu’s quick fighting style mix of Divine Instruments (beads whips, greatswords and mirrors) the brush techniques can also be implemented with various effects on the enemies to facilitate crowd controls or hit weak points. Despite the fast-paced combat, the use of the Celestial Brush also serves as a pace breaker, stopping the frenetic action and putting the players in a dimension of stillness from where strategies can be elaborated and executed with ease and calm.

The last impressive factor about Okami is its soundtrack: over five hours (if one were to listen to it from start to end) of classical Japanese music inspirations that range from soothing and atmospheric pieces played with relaxing woodwind instruments, to more rhythmic, frenetic and bombastic percussions fighting themes. The ambience is probably the most sublime aspect of this game, since the first opening of the main menu the players are hit with the slow tempo of traditional flutes and almost immaterial and echoing drumming, that immediately stages the Eastern opera that Okami sets out to be; a relaxing fantasy journey in a fairy tale land.

Easily one among the most gorgeous video games that I've ever played, but I feel like even that would be putting my experience of playing through Okami very lightly. The art design is remarkable, but everything about what Okami presents as a narrative makes for a highly rewarding experience from start to finish, for all of its references to Japanese folklore it never feels like it alienates outsiders but brings them into a new world with such ease.

As far as games that are clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda have gone, this is easily one among the very best - ranking right alongside most of said series' best games too, but seeing how everything comes together from the beautiful world designs and the fun combat and side quests, there's always a reason to get lost throughout the world of Nippon through the eyes of Hideki Kamiya. While it may be easy enough to get the gist of how the combat with certain enemies work, you're always made to learn how to put every new technique into play when you're entering new battles - and this also results in some of the most rewarding boss fights that you could ever ask for.

An easy all-time favourite for me, I can't wait to play through it again and 100% it.

A game that uplifts the soul and a fine piece of art that makes brilliant use of the japanese mythology setting and pushed the PS2 hardware to the limit, providing orgasmic visual direction (cel shading effects fits perfectly the colorful tones of the world and the scenery is breathtakingly beautiful), masterful sound composition and an interesting narrative to boot.

Even after completing +550 games, this one stands as one of the most artistic game I've played thus far. The screen-aquarelle system used to interact with the environment is unlike anything out there, a stroke of geniality indeed.

On the downside: this game isn't really challenging regarding combats and it is a bit too easy to beat.

Certified classic of the PS2.

Playing this has been... fascinating. As most people will tell you, it's worth checking out for the art direction alone, and overall I had a good time with it, but wow is there ever room for improvement. In so many ways Okami is the inverse of Twilight Princess. You control a wolf for the entire game, whereas Wolf Link felt like an afterthought. Dungeons which are the highlight of Twilight Princess feel as though they barely exist here. Conversely the overworld, which is probably the worst part of Twilight Princess is done much better in Okami.

The choice of source material makes for a unique experience and the characters are full of personality which is a plus, but it's a shame that most of the dialogue in the game goes to its worst character. Issun is nearly as bad as Fi in Skyward Sword when it comes to incessant pace-breaking chatter, and the text speed in any scene that doesn't let you skip dialogue absolutely does not help. The game has a horrible habit of injecting tiny and unnecessary cutscenes with outrageous frequency, and most of it is accompanied with some inane comment from Issun. His personality also does him no favors. Issun's constant lechery toward nearly every female NPC in the game doesn't just get old, it was born old. I have no doubt that some of my distaste for the character's single "joke" comes from playing the game as an American in 2020 where such bullshit stopped being endearing many years ago. Other recurring characters are solid, with a few surprisingly effective emotional scenes created with them here and there despite very little screen time.

Combat is serviceable, but nothing noteworthy. The fact that it is always confined to a special arena is somewhat disappointing, as is the difficulty. Exploration rewards the player with piles and piles of consumable items to restore health, do more damage, etc, but they feel completely unnecessary. It's unfortunate when the rewards that any game gives you don't actually feel rewarding. For the vast majority of the game I had bountiful piles of money and nothing worthwhile to spend it on since my stores of consumables were already overflowing and I didn't see myself using them any time soon.

I enjoyed my visit well enough, but I don't expect to be back.