Review: Okamiden

Okamiden is an action-adventure game for the Nintendo DS. It was developed by Capcom. It is the sequel to Okami.

Chibiterasu and his current partner Kagu rnning through Yakushi Village, and the map on the bottom screen.

Nine months after the events Okami, Nippon is once again invaded by demons. Chibiterasu, son of the sun goddess Amaterasu, is summoned to destroy the new threat alongside the adopted son of the hero Susano, Kuni, and various other teammates.

Chibi travels to different parts of Nippon fighting large small demons and their demonic bosses. The game is not divided by levels, but areas of Nippon, which makes it feel like one giant place. There are villages full of people and not enemies; over-world levels between villages and dungeon areas, which can have enemies, hidden treasures, and people; and dungeons, which is mostly enemies, puzzles and boss fights.

Like his mother, Chibi can use the Celestial Paintbrush. The paintbrush allows Chibi and the player to pull off magic spells to overcome obstacles and fight monsters. The player can stop the game at any time and draw on the screen with the stylus; drawing certain symbols causes things to happen. For example: drawing a horizontal line across the screen can slash enemies and cuts boulders in half, and drawing a lop-the-loop makes wind blow and knock flying enemies out of the air. Chibi learns new spells by finding statues of gods around Nippon and tracing the constellation in the sky. Chibi has a limited supply of ink, which gets depleted whenever the player uses the brush. The player can refill Chibi’s ink reserves, as well as his health, with items bought at a store or found in the field.

Puzzles in this game are really simple. Most of them involve using a brush technique once or twice to get by an obstacle. Others involve guiding Chibi’s current companion to a button or treasure chest while fighting off demons with brush techniques.

Using the brush techniques is interesting. Not “Wow I have to play this every minute because it is so much fun interesting”, but “That’s a neat way to use the DS’ features” interesting. Nothing specific is memorable, just the concept is general.

Combat occurs when Chibi runs into an enemy on the field, which transports them to an arena. Basic attack is using whatever weapon Chibi has equipped by mashing the Y button; Chibi starts off with a bladed disc and finds two other weapons later. However, a lot of enemies are protected from that basic attack but are susceptible to certain brush techniques. The player can either wait for the enemy to become vulnerable, or use whatever technique works on the enemy to stun them, and then whack them until their life bar depletes. The player is then awarded yen for how quickly the fight took, how many times Chibi was hit, and how often the player used Chibi’s partner, who attacks after the player has pressed Y enough times.

Combat is not very good. It takes forever to wear down the enemies’ health bar even when using brush techniques, and to get in and out of the arena. Then yen reward is not worth it since so many items are found in the field anyway it makes the shops almost worthless except for the last boss. Eventually it is just easier to avoid running into enemies on the field.

Chibi increases the amount of health and ink reserve he has by completing sidequests. These are always boring fetch quests.

The design of the game deliberately looks like ancient Japanese brush art; It is a stylized but impressive look. The DS is able to make the design look good, but sometimes characters look pointy.

There is little story here. Chibi just gets dragged from one problem to the next. His interactions with his partners are more interesting than the story. It is not until the last third of the game that the story picks up, when the fate of Nippon is on the line and Chibi’s companions start interacting with one another. It would have been nice if the plot had started at the last third and Chibi met his companions along the way, or something like that. And the plot is not going to make any sense to anyone who has not played Okami. But the ending is very memorable in a good way.

Anyone who has played Okami will recognize that Chibi goes through several of the same areas as his mother did. That is disappointing, and tedious.

Also, the player cannot save anywhere. There is no good reason the developers could not have done that.

Okamiden is a major letdown as a follow up to Okami. After the novelty of the Celestial Brush wears off the only interesting thing is the story. This should be avoided except for diehard Okami fans, who will at least enjoy seeing familiar characters again.