Honestly Unmotivated Game Reviews - Okami HD for Nintendo Switch

Welcome to Honestly Unmotivated Game Reviews, a new series by a textbook casual gamer. Aiming to prompt an honest discussion about the highlights and lowlights of different games, both new and old, while completely unmotivated by any kind of paid sponsorship: this is Honestly Unmotivated Game Reviews.

This article was originally published on my personal website at https://slwelton.github.io/Unmotivated-Game-Reviews-1-Okami-HD-Switch/.

First Impressions

Ah, Okami… Probably one of the prettiest but weirdest games I’ve ever played, pairing a beautiful, painterly art style and a fun story with dirty humour and good gameplay in a combination that’s really hard to put down.

This is not to say that the game is without flaws, though most could be considered forgivable. I was excited for this one the moment I realized that it was available on the Nintendo Switch.

I had first heard about the game when it came out for the PlayStation in the early 2000s, in a review on the now-defunct XPlay. The game captured my interest back then, but it wasn’t until now that I finally got my hands on a copy and got a chance to experience it for myself.

And oh what an experience it has been.

When I first popped the game into my Switch, I ended up logging almost 60 hours before lag issues forced me to properly restart the game - a result of my usual habit of putting the console to sleep while I did whatever else needed doing, before inevitably returning to the game.

It’s beautiful, the gameplay is unique, and the story is compelling.

That being said, it’s time to go more in-depth - if you want to avoid spoilers, you should skip ahead to the end of this review.

Story - 4/5

I’ll be the first to say that I absolutely loved the story in this game. Japanese mythology with a twist: what’s not to love?

I was unfamiliar with the legend of Nagi when I first started playing, or the mythology of Amaterasu, some stories were familiar, such as that of the Princess Kaguya, the girl born from a bamboo shoot who eventually returns to her home on the moon.

But, mythological interest aside, the game’s story isn’t anything groundbreaking. You are brought back from the dead to regain your lost brush techniques and banish the reawakened Orochi, the evil eight-headed dragon that caused your demise 100 years earlier.

For me, many of the other big reveals and betrayals in the game didn’t feel like anything as surprising as the game tried to make them out to be. I found myself having figured out the twist involving Rao long before the game chose to reveal her true intentions, and guessing Waka’s true identity once the Celestials were shown on-screen.

Other moments landed a lot better: the strained relationship with Issun and his grandfather, Himiko’s unfortunate end, and many of the other resolutions the game arranged for secondary characters. The time travel element of the story came as an unexpected surprise, and did add a fun twist to the latter half of the game. Even Susano and Kushi’s clumsy romance is enjoyable to watch unfold on screen.

Overall, the story is fun. The characters are great, the jokes are enjoyable, and it’s a great world to spend time in - I just can’t say that I feel it breaks any major ground as far as storytelling goes.

Gameplay - 3/5

The basic mechanics of the game are pretty simple: you are the goddess Amaterasu, on a mission to save earth in the form of a white wolf. Fighting monsters, solving puzzles, and doing some platforming all come with the territory.

The fight mechanics can be used for a simple hack-and-slash button pounding, though different weapons and their equipped location will change how fights play out. A reflector in the main slot offers a quick way to rack up damage up-close; in the sub slot, it becomes a shield that can restore health through carefully-timed activations. Rosaries offer a bit more range, sacrificing some damage in the process, turning into a ranged blast in the sub slot. Glaives provide less damage than reflectors, though more than rosaries, quickly escalating to devastating hits if the player charges up each hit. The different weapons add a different level of complexity and customization to suit a player’s preferred play-style.

Though, to make progress through any of the game’s fights or puzzles, players will have to make careful use of the game’s core mechanic: the Celestial Brush Techniques.

Using motion controls or a JoyCon’s joystick, players will have to draw specific brush strokes over top of their enemies or their environment, according to pre-set patterns. Draw the correct pattern to slash rocks, summon fire, move water, or just blow up an enemy or an obstacle with a bomb.

The mechanic is great in theory, and when it works well, it feels amazing and oh-so fun: landing a successful combo of brush techniques and basic attacks to wipe out an enemy in seconds flat is one of the game’s great joys.

But it can also lead to great amounts of frustration: overlapping items and similar inputs can make the experience get clunky fast, especially with the Switch’s already finnicky input system. I opted out of motion controls, due to plenty of frustration with other games’ clunky motion gameplay (looking at you, Mario Party…), and chose to struggle my way through with the imprecise JoyCons.

Some segments took a frustratingly-long time to pass through, the most notable being the section where the player has to stop a log hurtling downstream by drawing lines from the log to the riverbank. The input for the brush technique in this section was maddeningly over-sensitive, leaving me falling just short of success multiple times as I fought with the controls.

The other slightly frustrating element of the gameplay is the constant repetition of enemies. Once a basic enemy type is introduced, you should be prepared to fight a re-skinned version, or the same exact battle, multiple times throughout the rest of the game. The same is even true for boss battles: after beating Orochi once, be prepared to fight him again… and again, before the game is done. The mechanics of the fight will not change, only the tools that you have available to you in battle.

In that way, the game can sadly feel a little repetitive at times. Even the hardest challenge of the game, the final Monster Gate Challenge, is just a collection of previously defeated bosses, stacked into a single fight, with multiple bosses thrown at you at once.

While the enemy designs are well-done, it can still get a little boring fighting the same monsters again and again, repeating the same fights, only with upgraded health bars as the difference.

Aside from that, there are plenty of secondary activities and collections to keep a die-hard completionist busy with this one - stray beads, animal feeding, fishing, revenge lists, and treasure all add plenty more gameplay to round off the entire experience. The game world isn’t huge, but there are enough elements that are only unlocked by story progression that open up new areas for exploration in older areas, making the game feel a lot fuller.

It could be that the controls are a lot better on the original console, making the Switch just a poor choice of port - but for this version of the game, gameplay will have to sit at a 3.

Bonus Point - Art Style

This game’s bonus point is definitely the art style. The entire world is depicted as if it was painted in a traditional Japanese brushwork style. It’s downright gorgeous to look at, and I found myself taking tons of screenshots as I worked my way through, just because of how gorgeous I found the game.

Overall - 4/5

I can’t quite give Okami on the Nintendo Switch a perfect score, because of some of the issues I had with the gameplay, but it’s pretty damn close to perfect for the experience it offers. It’s obvious that so much care and attention to detail went into crafting the game’s world and art, making it hard not to love the game.

If you’re considering giving the game a shot, you won’t regret it - just make sure you bring some patience for the Switch’s controls!

Have you played Okami? Do you have a differing opinion? Or do you just have an idea for a game you want me to review next? Leave a comment below!

Or, if you enjoyed this review and want to see more, don't forget to leave a tip.