Okami, now on its seventh platform, remains unaffected by the ravages of time. The convergence of Japanese folklore and a Sumi-e aesthetic over the blueprint of The Legend of Zelda created a benign opus that, eleven years later, remains unchallenged and unequaled by any scale of competition. Okami, even with its pronounced vulnerabilities, is a singular creation and merits constant preservation.
Okami is a dream on the verge of breaking through to reality. 2006, in the midst of next-generation hardware, was not an ideal time for its debut on PlayStation 2. Two years later, Okami’s “drawing” mechanics made sense on the Wii — right around the same time Wii owners became disinterested in third-party software. Okami HD, with PlayStation Move support in tow, quietly arrived on the PlayStation 3 in 2012. Late last year, Okami HD came to current platforms with 4K resolution. Today—finally—Okami HD arrives on Switch without the bump in resolution, but with the restoration of motion control and the option to use the Switch’s touchscreen. It has been quite a journey for Capcom’s most understated star.
Why is this beautiful creature doomed to walk the earth Groundhog Day’ing it through every console generation? Games of Okami’s stature—it receives generous critical praise every time it walks through the door—typically merit a concentrated follow-up (rather than a DS reprise). Instead, Okami is processed through HexaDrive’s porting process and ordered to test the waters of yet another pool. When, if ever, will it be Okami’s time?
The only reasonable answer (or perhaps the only way to preserve our collective sanity) is to conclude that Okami is a singular creation independent of time and unsuited for the traditional model of a commercial product. It is also possible that a cel-shaded, extremely chatty forty-hour itinerary that riffs on The Legend of Zelda and is drenched in Japanese folklore in which you play as a wolf is no one’s idea of a white hot commercial product. Unless Capcom and PlatinumGames ever make nice, Okami’s legacy is fated to remain at Okami.
If you’re new to Okami, know that you’re the goddess Amaterasu and currently inhabiting the form of a white wolf. Mute (except for adorable wolf emotes), the bulk of instruction and explanation is left to Issun, a one-inch-tall person who faithfully accompanies Amaterasu everywhere she goes. The semi open-world of Nippon creates room for diverse biomes, traditional villages, inventive combat, and layered puzzle-platforming segments. Okami mirrors the design tenets of Zelda and pours fresh ink on top familiar mechanics and challenges. It is fights, exploration, and dungeons. You’ve played this game before, but not from this point of view.
Expect to be taken by three important facets of Okami’s construction: style, means of interaction, and its eastern themes. The first is its most present; the gorgeous ink wash visual style that places cel-shaded, three-dimensional objects against watercolor backgrounds and then layers a parchment paper filter on top of the entire package. Okami may not be entirely faithful to the sumi-e aesthetic, but it’s fundamentally unlike anything else inside of its medium. Large or small, no other game looks or behaves like Okami.
The Celestial Brush endures as Okami’s signature mechanic. At any point, the player can pause time, summon a drawing board, and stroke ink across Okami’s canvass. Basic shapes act as commands; draw a circle for a Sunrise, a dash as a Power Slash, and a loop to summon a Galestorm. Thirteen techniques make their way into your abilities, and each have different applications in the environment. Vines will sling Amaterasu across gaps and the Water Lilly creates much needed, albeit temporary, platforms on top of water. Zelda’s influence is conceded (use your new abilities to move through levels!) but Okami remains unique in its execution.
The Celestial Brush is also an integral part of combat. Fights break out into contained environments and are graded on ruthless efficiency. The bulk your offense is composed through an escalating series of melee and ranged attacks from an assortment of weapons. Rationing your ink for Celestial Brush finishers however, quickly becomes essential. Slashing through enemies at specific times is a given, as are dropping Cherry Bombs and Firebursts to deal with crowds and special weaknesses. Better performance ensures better rewards, as Okami incentivizes smart play.
Boss fights also compose a large portion of Okami. Unlike the rank-and-file fodder, bosses are often context-sensitive tests of when and where to use your Celestial Brush techniques. It’s here where Okami feels more in line with Metroid Prime and its room-spanning action puzzles. Okami also falls prey to one of Capcom’s inescapable trademarks; the dreaded late-game boss rush and a reliance on repeating these fights over and over. As either an ode to their rich history or a means of extending Okami’s narrative I get why they’re there, but the boss gauntlet remains one of the game’s least savory aspects.
Basic role-playing game elements and collectibles also work their way into Okami’s rich fabric. Health can be upgraded with Sun Fragments, Ink Pots can increase the range of your Celestial Brush, and your Purse can be expanded to hold more money. Praise, which functions as basic experience, is the currency used to level up your stats. Sidequests can lead the player toward Stray Beads and opportunities to feed the local wildlife (and the former creates a zen-like sequence where Amaterasu shares a kinship with the nourished creatures).
Okami HD’s trip to the Switch restores control options that were dropped for 2017’s PlayStation 4 and Xbox One release. In handheld mode the Celestial Brush can be controlled with your finger on the touchscreen. On the television or in tabletop mode, either the left or right Joy-Con can act as a motion controller, “drawing” lines on the screen. Both of these options worked fine and added a bit of variation to Okami’s pacing, but each felt inferior to simply using an analog stick. It’s great that both of these options exist! I just can’t imagine using them as anything other than a novelty. Additionally, there’s a new, hyper-aggressive rumble option to take advantage of the Joy-Con’s unique vibration tech.
Some other quality-of-life options help set this version of Okami HD from the 2012 edition. Tucked inside menus are hidden treasures like adjusting the intensity of the parchment visual filter and restoring the fang-generating loading screen minigames. Mercifully, you can finally choose to skip through Okami’s interminable dialogue sequences. Okami is a long and verbose game. Replays—I have a suspicion that the same people keep buying Okami over and over—are much easier to parse with the ability to decline pieces of it at will.
On any platform, Okami HD still runs at thirty frames-per-second. This seems like an affront to 2018’s standards—a PlayStation 2 game should easily output at sixty on modern platforms—but the reality is a bit more nuanced. A Capcom representative detailed how Okami’s logic is tied to its thirty frames-per-second operation, and pushing it to sixty breaks the game’s behavior. Could more time and money solve this problem? Almost certainly, but it didn’t pass muster for Okami HD’s projected scope. With this information I tend to lean toward explanation over excuse, but I also don’t think maintaining sixty frames-per-second is especially important to Okami’s performance.
Okami (along with the fiery God Hand) once cost Capcom their prestige development house, Clover Studio. Today it will cost you about twenty dollars. It’s a fair price for a port and a bargain for one with attention paid toward presentation and quality-of-life improvements. At this stage of Okami’s existence, it’s hard to imagine a better way to enjoy its natural resources.
