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Forty game hours after my first post about it, we've completed Okami. Well, I use the word "completed" in that the final evil boss has been dispatched and we've seen the ending, but like most games of its type there still seems to be an enormous amount that we haven't done. For now, though, it's going back to GameFly and we're moving on to something else. When I last wrote about this game we'd just seen the very start, where you're running small errands that seem rather beneath you and it seems that far from saving the world you're in danger of becoming the God of Laundry and Turnips. But after the slow beginning you start restoring colour to Japan one area at a time, accompanied by a rather lecherous little insect-thing called Issun, and the scope of it broadens from there.
It's strange that in a game with so many little sub-quests and objectives, there's no way provided to keep track of them all (you're given a Journal in the menu, but it only shows what you're currently supposed to be doing in the main plot). Tombi is pretty much the nearest thing to this game I've played in terms of structure as well as general objective, and it kept a clear record of every problem that a character in the game had whined to you about so that you knew it was on your list of things to fix. That would have been nice. Though at the same time, you could say that it's good not to have an oppressive percentage counter constantly reminding you how much you've missed so far.
As for the main objective of the game, it's rather surprising that what you're led to believe is the ultimate goal from the start is actually achieved about a third of the way through. Even though you've only collected half the brush techniques in the game you're tricked into thinking you've nearly completed it, but as soon as that's happened you're sent off on an adventure into an even more expanded world. I don't want to say that this makes the game feel "too long", because that's a complaint that I've never really understood, but it does sort of feel like rather than being rewarded with more game it's sort of dangled a carrot in front of you and then thrown it into a lake.
The whole game is very stylized, as I've mentioned before, with a unique drawn style and things like detailed artwork announcing the arrival of each boss in Japanese, inspiring me to shout out made-up translations of their names Iron Chef style. The characters also have a lot of, er, character to them - one of the most oppressive ones is a complete ponce called Waka, whose name is phoenetically only short of an N in the middle. I don't know if he was French originally, or even if it's possible to have a French accent in Japanese, but if it was the choice of the translators then they made a fitting decision. At least the game acknowledges how obnoxious he is in the way that even the other characters clearly can't stand him either (ref. "You big fruitcake", etc).
It's an enjoyable game, but it does share a slight problem that self-proclaimed "retro" gamers see in many titles now - it's very easy. Not quite Granstream Saga easy because I can see in theory how you might see a Game Over screen at a couple of points, but still easier than even FFX (you're given a sort of "extra life" feature in the form of Astral Pouches that save you from death if your health bar ever runs out, and I used exactly none of them throughout). Even the harder bosses are more exercises in working out what you're supposed to do to damage them rather than being real threats to your life. But a lot of them are fantastic in that regard, particularly the nightmarish clockwork owls near the end and the very last boss that takes the form of a mechanical sphere and attacks you with giant mallets and massive barrages of missiles that look like they should have "ACME" written on the side, until you eventually hit it enough and its heart falls out of its bottom.
As you can probably tell, it has a strange sort of duality to it in that it looks like the people who wrote the actual plot wanted it to be sensible, but the other half weren't afraid to go absolutely mad with it - but the result makes for something very entertaining, filled with nice touches from both sides. One of those is that you'll occasionally be prompted to draw a symbol of your own, and then it'll show up throughout the game just after it's been long enough for you to forget about it - at the very end, the scroll the storyline of the game is being written on is finally rolled up to display the seal of the great god Amaterasu. Which thanks to me was a giant smiley face.
It's strange that in a game with so many little sub-quests and objectives, there's no way provided to keep track of them all (you're given a Journal in the menu, but it only shows what you're currently supposed to be doing in the main plot). Tombi is pretty much the nearest thing to this game I've played in terms of structure as well as general objective, and it kept a clear record of every problem that a character in the game had whined to you about so that you knew it was on your list of things to fix. That would have been nice. Though at the same time, you could say that it's good not to have an oppressive percentage counter constantly reminding you how much you've missed so far.
As for the main objective of the game, it's rather surprising that what you're led to believe is the ultimate goal from the start is actually achieved about a third of the way through. Even though you've only collected half the brush techniques in the game you're tricked into thinking you've nearly completed it, but as soon as that's happened you're sent off on an adventure into an even more expanded world. I don't want to say that this makes the game feel "too long", because that's a complaint that I've never really understood, but it does sort of feel like rather than being rewarded with more game it's sort of dangled a carrot in front of you and then thrown it into a lake.
The whole game is very stylized, as I've mentioned before, with a unique drawn style and things like detailed artwork announcing the arrival of each boss in Japanese, inspiring me to shout out made-up translations of their names Iron Chef style. The characters also have a lot of, er, character to them - one of the most oppressive ones is a complete ponce called Waka, whose name is phoenetically only short of an N in the middle. I don't know if he was French originally, or even if it's possible to have a French accent in Japanese, but if it was the choice of the translators then they made a fitting decision. At least the game acknowledges how obnoxious he is in the way that even the other characters clearly can't stand him either (ref. "You big fruitcake", etc).
It's an enjoyable game, but it does share a slight problem that self-proclaimed "retro" gamers see in many titles now - it's very easy. Not quite Granstream Saga easy because I can see in theory how you might see a Game Over screen at a couple of points, but still easier than even FFX (you're given a sort of "extra life" feature in the form of Astral Pouches that save you from death if your health bar ever runs out, and I used exactly none of them throughout). Even the harder bosses are more exercises in working out what you're supposed to do to damage them rather than being real threats to your life. But a lot of them are fantastic in that regard, particularly the nightmarish clockwork owls near the end and the very last boss that takes the form of a mechanical sphere and attacks you with giant mallets and massive barrages of missiles that look like they should have "ACME" written on the side, until you eventually hit it enough and its heart falls out of its bottom.
As you can probably tell, it has a strange sort of duality to it in that it looks like the people who wrote the actual plot wanted it to be sensible, but the other half weren't afraid to go absolutely mad with it - but the result makes for something very entertaining, filled with nice touches from both sides. One of those is that you'll occasionally be prompted to draw a symbol of your own, and then it'll show up throughout the game just after it's been long enough for you to forget about it - at the very end, the scroll the storyline of the game is being written on is finally rolled up to display the seal of the great god Amaterasu. Which thanks to me was a giant smiley face.
