Update One Hundred and Twenty-Three: 11 February 2018

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

OKAMI is like Mary Poppins - it’s practically perfect in every way.

I think I first played OKAMI when I was 11 or 12, and I can honestly say that here has been nothing quite like it, before or since. I am thrilled to announce that it hasn’t aged a moment, and that this gem continues to shine on. I’m going to try to be as coherent and concise with this as I can, being as I’m still a little waterlogged from all the crying I did about the ending.

You play as Okami Amaterasu, the sun goddess, who has come back to life in the form of a wolf after one hundred years of dormancy. Like in all great myths, you’ve evil to defeat, lands to restore, and people to help. You can also press B to bark. The game is a love letter to Japanese folklore, and the stylization is based around sumi-e painting. It’s not just like walking around a living, breathing watercolor - you paint in it, too. The major mechanic beyond running, jumping, and fighting (and barking) is the Celestial Brush, and over the course of the game you learn different brush techniques that help you in battle and in platforming - calling vines, blooming trees, making the wind blow, calling the sun or the moon. It is truly a joy to play and its one of the games that most defly weaves together its stylization, story, and game mechanics.

Speaking of story, this game has a lot of it. Normally my playtimes can’t be trusted, but this is pure playtime - it’s not a short game. There are three distinct acts, each at least fifteen hours. The game takes you from small villages to a huge city, from mountains to plains, from the seaside to bitterly cold Northern Lands - the bredth of the game is breathtaking, and it never wears out its welcome.

Oh, christ, and I didn’t even talk about the music. The music is so good. Or the animation. The animation is so good. Or the character design. The character design is so - yeah, I think you guys get it. There is no fuller package than this.

Playing the game as an adult made me realize how much effort they put in to make this game easily playable for children - the main points of the plot, what you should be doing next, and solutions for puzzles are usually really overstated, so 11 or 12 year olds can still follow along. I don’t think it detracts from the game - in fact, I appreciate it now, and I appreciated it then - but it does break immersion a bit every time Issun, your little sprite companion, goes, “Didja hear that, Ammy?!” and restate exactly what had just been said. The main storyline isn’t too difficult to get through, but there are optional challenges and minigames that absolutely do up the difficulty - I am incredibly glad I had my more-skilled girlfriend to play with me, because she was responsible for dragging me through fights I, on my own, could never win.

Of course, there are downsides - nothing really is perfect, not even Okami. Speaking of Issun, he could sometimes be very grating - Hideki Kamiya is literally unable to make a game without objectifying women, and in a kid-friendly game that impulse is channelled through Issun. (The flipside is, though, is that sometimes I think Kamiya forgets… that Amaterasu is a girl… so when she’s oggling a character’s goofily bouncing boobies it comes off as mad gay.) Also, the game makes you fight its bosses multiple times, and that gets a little old.

Otherwise: this is a game you need to play, as relevant now as it was a decade ago. As joyous as ever. A game close to my heart. I hope, one day, it can be close to yours.

Next up: We’re going to play -

See you soon!