Ōkami

Rarely will you find a game as beautiful as this.

In families like mine, individuals often pick a matron and patron deity to focus on. Having long tied-in Shinto with my other beliefs, I chose Amaterasu, sun goddess. It goes without saying then, that I was delighted to get Ōkami time ago.



大神 mean "great deity", their pronunciation, 狼 (ōkami) means "wolf". Both of the title characters are used in the writing of the goddess' full name, 天照大神 (Amaterasu-Omikami).


Elegant and deeply meaningful as this game is, storytelling and talking can be very slow indeed.
Our friend Steve fell victim to this while watching me play.

Before Issun's dialogue:

"Oi! What you doing on my land?"
Afterwards:


Wandering Artist Issun's endless, unstoppable jabbering sequences are a definite negative. But does the gameplay counteract this? I'd say so. As the wolf goddess Amaterasu, you travel around, helping confused villagers (who often only see you as a plain white wolf), cleansing cursed areas, fighting entertaining battles, and learning celestial brush techniques from other deities you'll meet along the way.


Each brush technique aids you further by giving you the ability to turn day to night, repair structures, heal trees, climb walls, slice things in half, etcetera. These allow you to revisit tasks in areas that previously had you stumped.

The main selling point for interested gamers was the ability of the player to paint onto and change the landscape around them. In fact as soon as I read about that, I knew I definitely wanted the game. Every frame looks like a wonderful painting upon parchment, thanks to the sui-boku-ga style of animation.
There are vast locations, which are pleasant to look at, and reasons to return to each of them as skills are unlocked, rather than to just leave them behind.
There is so much exploring to do, and the cute animals you can feed along the way are an added bonus.

It's not all plain-sailing and there's occasional confusion as to what you're actually meant to do in a given place to make something happen. When trying to complete constellations and reveal additional gods, you can draw the exact same brush movement ten times, and it won't work until the last one. Some fights can get a bit tedious, such as that with the jorōgumo queen.


Overall though, the game is very enjoyable, and the characters you will interact with have their humorous qualities, especially bumbling warrior Susano. Admittedly there's a lot of toing-and-froing, but it's nice to revisit the lovely locations.

This title contains a gem of a soundtrack:







Ōkami Playstation 3 theme.
Sadly, Clover are now defunct.
The Wii version of Ōkami endured a bit of controversy due to an IGN watermark being visible on the case, and a new title, Ōkamiden: Chiisaki Taiyō (tiny sun), is now available on the DS. I should probably play hand-helds more.
Nintendo recently managed to trademark Amaterasu's name.



Christians didn't like Ōkami, complaining that it features Pagan gods (no shit!) and is a "Buddhist recruiting tool". Never mind that Shinto and Buddhism are completely different religions from completely different places. And at least, last time I checked, there weren't Shinto and Buddhist "gaming associations" set up to subtly pester people about the bible during online COD.
Ōkami in no way promotes or encourages Shinto, rather the title uses the religion's rich legends as a point for storytelling. The references within the game are unlikely to be understood by anyone not already a practitioner.