Time to talk about brushes. Well, more like one brush in particular, and the frustrations I had with it. Please note that this post contains spoilers, primarily for Tsuta Ruins.

Up until this point, I didn’t have much trouble with the brushes. Sure, using them with an analog stick is a bit fiddly and very much imperfect, but so long as basic requirements were fulfilled, all was well. For example, a successful use of Restore simply relied on your filling in all of the areas that needed fixing. The circular brushes in particular, such as Sun and Bloom, were especially forgiving. The completed shape could resemble an oval or even a generic blob more than a circle, but so long as the shape was sealed, the magic would work. The ends of the line could even be outside of the finished shape. It was with this attitude toward the brushes and their allowance of such leeway that I went into Tsuta Ruins, where I acquired Vine.

My first task in using Vine was to use it to connect Amaterasu with a pink flower hanging in midair. Up until now, I had only seen these flowers as buds, but after getting this new brush, they would blossom whenever Ammy was in the area. Anyway, the way I was to do this was by drawing a line from a flower to Ammy, creating a vine which would pull Ammy up to the flower. No problem. I use this technique to climb to the top of the dome I was in, then go out to the exterior of the dome, where four flowers float before four large hooks sticking out from the dome’s roof.

Here’s where things start to get interesting. For some reason thinking that the connection between Ammy and the flowers is the key to all of this, I positioned Ammy so that the hook was right between her and the flower, then drew the vine—not from the flower to the hook, but from the flower to Ammy, with the hook in between them. With some trial and error, all of the flowers were soon connected to the hooks, and the roof raised up, revealing a hidden room. I had Ammy jump into this haniwa-filled room, where I saved my game at a conveniently placed mirror.

After saving, I move on, coming upon a special gate in the process. It appears that this is some sort of quick-save gate; after passing through it, if I die, I will be restored at this same point. I am also asked if I am absolutely sure I want to continue on. It was obvious to me by all this concern over my well-being that a big battle awaited beyond the gate. I pressed on.

Indeed, something was awaiting me: a giant evil spider whose abdomen was a giant flower bud, with hooks sticking out of it. Ringing the Boss Battle Arena were a number of those pink flowers, all of them pointing downward, indicating that they were not to be used as platforms for Ammy. The goal seemed clear: snag the Spider Queen’s hooks with vines, get her flower bud abdomen to open up, and attack away. However, I had one major problem that prevented me from even doing a smidge of damage on that first attempt, namely, I still didn’t know exactly how Vine worked.

Despite my misguided attempt to “trick” the vines into aiming for Ammy but snagging onto the hooks instead, I only ever managed to get one vine connected at a time, which was not good enough. In addition, I found it very tricky to have the hanging flowers, hooks, and Ammy visible in painting mode at the the same time. I complained about this in our group chat (see previous post) and put Okami aside for awhile, not coming back to it again until last week. After some more trial and error, I finally figured out that Ammy needn’t be a factor at all: since the flowers and hooks both emanate green smoke when in the brush’s vicinity, they can be directly connected to each other. I made progress, but something else still wasn’t working.

It was my husband, who had been watching me and dropping small hints on and off, who told me why: I was overshooting with the brush strokes. The lines for Vine have to be connected directly from the flower to the hook (or Ammy), sure, but also, I couldn’t continue the line much further than that. It was much closer to connect the dots than actual drawing and, considering the leeway I had been allowed with all of the other brushes thus far, this restriction didn’t make sense to me.

I suppose part of it has to do with my way of thinking, which is much less analytical than that of my programmer husband, who recently couldn’t understand why Dance Dance Revolution doesn’t penalize for extra steps. I’m an artist and tend to take a more organic approach to gameplay, if that makes sense. In a game such as this, perhaps I expected too much from a painterly (or sumi-e, rather) approach to gameplay. Still, I think again of the other brushes, and their quirks and flexibilities, and wonder why, if I was passing the brush through the right points, did the end of the line matter when it came to Vine’s successful execution.

Perhaps that’ll be answered later, I don’t know.

Last night, the planets had aligned in such a way that a rare and wonderous thing happened: the three of us were on AIM all at the same time. As we had planned to do AIM chats as a part of this project, one was promptly organized. Before the chat derailed into talking about games other than Okami, here’s some of what was discussed.

CloudANDTidus is only about four hours in, due to his PS2 being flaky when reading his memory card, and I’m currently stuck on a boss; namatamiku is the furthest ahead, though it sounds like I’m only a little ways behind him. As for my boss battle woes, I laid a huge chunk of the blame on the camera. Clidus asked, “What was the camera doing?”, and nama replied, “Finding the best possible position to screw with the player,” which is pretty accurate.

This led into a discussion about Issun (Clidus: “Just imagine that the camera is controlled by the little guy that lives on Okami’s nose.”). Nama thought Issun was going to be hateworthy at first, but has since grown to like him. I was in the same boat, anticipating a Navi-like character. That led to my confession that I’d never played a Zelda game, which was met with (expected) shock from the others! Zelda recs followed, then it was back to Okami, where we talked about how the graphics look blurry in HD; for Clidus, it’s bad enough that he can’t play for long stretches, since the blurrieness gives him a headache.

Anyway, things got offtopic not long after that. Later on, after Clidus had turned in for the night, nama and I continued chatting, and Okami’s music was brought up. I mentioned how huge the original soundtrack is, and offered to take pictures for the blog. Nama liked the idea, so here you go. (Click on the thumbnails for larger versions of the pics. Also, I apologize in advance for the slight blurriness in a couple of the photos.)

I bought the OST for my husband as part of a largish CDJapan order, a full five disks worth of music from the game. Of course, these five disks make the case a bit thicker than average. Here’s how the spine looks compared to the ones for a single-disk OST and a four-disk one:

Here’s the front and back cover art:

Let’s open this sucker up:

And now, the full unfurling:

Detailed pics of the disks and booklet may come later, especially once we all get further into the game. A lot of the OST’s art seems to be spoilery, and I’d like to avoid as much of that stuff as I can right now.

Glad I’m not the only one catching the Viewtiful Joe nods.  I’m also pleased to see “Just go for it!” crammed in as a certain someone’s battle cry.  Between this and their swan song, God Hand, Clover Studios was dishing out all sorts of wonderful fanservice.  A shame so few appreciated it at the time.  I totally gave Clover my money the day Okami came out, so I’m not guilty just because I’m late to the party!

I Completed the game’s first full-fledged dungeon today, boss fight and all.  Even when compared to, say, the first dungeon of Ocarina of Time, progress was very straightforward.  Good thing, since a brisker pace is a much better fit for Okami’s mechanics.  As I mentioned before, running around is some of the most fun one can have with the game, so it’s smart they never seem to keep the player in one spot for long.  I was moving directly from one room to the next, never worrying about backtracking or hoping I didn’t miss that one cracked wall on the previous floor.  While the appeal of a more maze-like approach is understandable, this endeavor was an invigorating change of pace.  The game doesn’t even give the option to carry multiple keys — it’s one at a time, and thus far they’ve been located in the immediate vicinity of the bonded door.  The door lock itself presented a favorite moment of mine, actually: the little jerk stuck its tongue out at Amaterasu and giggled mockingly when I first passed by, but cringed and squirmed in fear once it saw her return with the key.  Never before was unlocking a door so satisfying as watching that creep evaporate; it’s reassuring to see personality continue to shine through in more than just the fundamental aesthetics.

The boss battle itself was well-designed, even if there weren’t any particularly impressive moments.  I was expected to utilize abilities I had just learned to discern a weak point, a common implementation that has proven effective time and time again in videogames. I only hope these abilities remain effective during future encounters, rather than be totally washed aside once I learn the next technique solely for the next big fight.

One unfortunate quirk of the dungeon design is how nearly every new room you enter takes a few seconds to steal camera control and pan around the interior.  It helps for a few shots of the larger, more impressive rooms, but in most cases I’ve found it unnecessary.  Surveying is something I’m very much used to, thankya kindly.  Fortunately, chit-chat is finally eating up less of my play time.  As a result, pauses in play have reverted from a real annoyance to more of an amusement.  When the characters do take a moment to bicker, muse, or babble aimlessly, the humorous writing at the core of it is now much easier to appreciate.  And, to be honest, by “characters” I’m mostly referring to Issun; the bug’s high horse personality was off-putting at first, yet either from character development or simple overexposure I’ve grown to like him.  He certainly has no reservations concerning talking to himself.  Many entertaining characters persist through the story and world, but for the most often you’ll be focused on Amaterasu and Issun — and only one of them has developed speech.

By the way, I swear this post is the last time I’m going to make a Zelda comparison, because each time it only results in Okami distancing itself from its more popular peer.  Okami’s roots are equally faithful to the traditional platforming and action seen in Viewtiful Joe or Castlevania.  While not nearly as difficult as either example, Okami’s assorted obstacles might pose a threat to your Grandma or five-year-old nephew.  On the flip side, that just makes it more fun for those of us who know our way around a controller.  After a slow start, Okami has finally begun developing into more than a preview of what’s to come.

Before I start, might as well post my equipment info since the others have: 27″ old school non-HD color television and a PS2 Slim (used to have a Fat, but sold it off once I started getting disk read errors. I know it’s fixable, but didn’t want the hassle). No fancy audio setup other than the internal stereo speakers, but I do have the PS2 attached to the TV by means of a component cable, so there you go.

Anyway, I got back to playing Okami today after having set it aside for about a week. I had gotten the fourth brush last time I played, and my session today was largely devoted to exploration, fighting monsters, winning praise, and other such idle activities.

I was originally intending to make this entry about the brushes, but now I think that I should save that for a future post, when I get more of them. However, I will note a couple things that were on my mind during today’s session:

• Praise points can be earned in the game by doing good deeds, restoring areas, and so forth. These points can then be used to boost Amaterasu’s stats. One of the many ways praise can be earned is by feeding animals, several types of which exist in the game’s fanciful Nippon. Every time Amaterasu feeds an animal, the game cuts away to a scene in which said animal is eating from what looks like a large dog dish. There are four types of feed, but all of them look the same in this cutscene, where everything seems to glow and soft, ethereal music plays while the camera slowly rotates around a quietly watching Amaterasu and the animal she’s feeding.

These scenes are skippable, but gameplay-wise, they’re easily the weirdest things I’ve come across so far.

• Had a flashback to a certain other Clover game today, and not just because of the cel shading. When Amaterasu runs out of ink, her reflector and orange markings disappear, and she becomes a regular old wolf for a brief amount of time. Although I’d seen this happen before in previous sessions, I only realized today that this mechanic was exactly like the VFX Gauge in Viewtiful Joe: when that runs out, Joe loses his superhero outfit and special powers until the gauge recharges itself.

With this in mind, I happened to see the hearts floating over the heads of some fed animals, and they reminded me of the ones in Viewtiful Joe’s life gauge; the shape is slightly different, as is the color, but they still have that bulbous, cartoony feel. It’s neat to see these little details from Viewtiful Joe carry over into Okami, even though the tone, pacing, and genre of the two games are very different.

I’d like to start off with an apology for my delayed start on this here ol’ blog. While I won’t bore you with the delicate details of my situation, its safe to say the issues I was having shouldn’t hinder us anymore. Secondly I’d like to follow up namatamiku’s post by describing my setup for playing Okami. Like him I’m using a 32″ HDTV, however its just plain old stereo over here and unfortunately I have the pleasure of playing the game on an original PS2 fat. This may well be the machines very last game the way its behaved thus far. It’s almost like reliving the NES era the amount of times I have to blow on my memory card before its recorgnised! But enough about that, we are here to discuss a game…

I’m going to use my first post to generally relay my very initial impressions of the game from the first hour or so of gameplay. Many JRPG’s have long drawn out openings designed to set the stage for the epic story that you are about to witness, and Okami is no different. While I didn’t necessarily time the opening like my fellow blogger did, I did recorgnise that with some editing the story could have been told in a much shorter period of time, but its not all bad. From what I’ve seen so far it’s looking to be an intriguing tale, if a little two dimensional good and evil in the character department. I’m not expecting huge plot revelations such as “Okami, I am your father”, but its enough to keep you motivated to continue your journey.

One of the first things that stood out to me about Okami was the graphics, which I both adore and hate at the same time. I appreciate the art style and love the simplistic design of the world, which mirrors that of a water colour painting quite elegantly. The world that Clover Studios created, in a word, is beautiful.

My issues with the graphics could be put down to a number of things, some the games fault and others mine. Firstly its possible that a PS2 running a composite connection into a HDTV is the technical issue I’m having, or perhaps its simply my eyes and the fact I’m partially colour blind. Either way I find the game to be pretty washed over in colour saturation and at times, a blurry mess. Icons are not distinct or clear and items and characters lack the clarity needed to be able to pick them out of the backdrop. The reason I’m inclined to blame anything but the game is due to the fact that many games have come out before Okami (including the Zelda franchise that it clearly takes much inspiration from), which attempt similar art styles without the issues I’ve been having.

One of the other basic things a game should have to make the simple experience that much more enjoyable is a solid set of controls. Okami has this rather nailed, although if your heads wired like mine you might want to invert the X and Y axis before you get yourself disorientated. Jumping is fluid and functional, attacking is elegantly simple, motion and speed work as you would expect when running long distances and the brush controls work surprisingly well with an analogue stick.

With the rudimentary mechanics covered, my next post will concentrate on combat and your interaction with the world, me thinks.

I’m a bit of a cheat here, you could say. I spent a good five hours with Okami back when it was fresh, giving me a few pre-existing opinions Reeve and Clidus won’t have. However, it’s already been two years. All things old are new again, yeah?

First off, let’s talk about my setup. I’m playing on my Playstation 3, hooked up to a 32” LCD TV and 5.1 audio system. I share this not because I expect it’s particularly valuable information for Okami, but rather because every reviewer should extend such a courtesy. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that Mr. IGN played Gran Turismo with a wheel rather than a controller, or if the sound design only impressed thanks to his lovely 7.1 audio system? If I hope for readers to relate to my opinion, then it is always important that they be aware of my circumstances.

Let’s talk Okami. We’re brought up to speed with a cute little intro, an animated storybook detailing events 100 years ago. It’s a very charming, and, much like the rest of the game, highly Japanese way to pull the player into Okami’s world. After about ten minutes we’re presented with a full-color explosion showing off the game’s true graphics engine, and how it can be used to watch people talk for another ten minutes. These totals are no exaggeration, as my first save, taken nearly immediately after all of the text-only chit-chat, displayed 23 minutes. The plot is really quite interesting, but not even the most pretentious role-playing games require players to sit through the equivalent of an anime episode before even fiddling about as their protagonist. Once I did get my hands on the titular Okami, or rather, Amaterasu, I was thrilled. However, these initial gameplay segments represent only bite-sized portions, whilst well-intentioned folk will stop you every 2-5 minutes to explain a game feature. Breaking pots, for example. Or jumping. The first hour of actual gameplay is pretty much a hand-holding pain in the ass, made bearable only through entertaining writing. If you’ve played a videogame before, only the Celestial Brush tutorials will be necessary. Okami is something of a Zelda clone at its core, so I’m not shocked at all by the babying I’ve received. Only a little disappointed. Once I could play with fewer interruptions, matters progressed rather smoothly.

Amaterasu is light as a feather, running faster and jumping higher than most any humanoid protagonist in videogames. Headbutt a wall, and you bounce off swiftly and unharmed. Hop around near villagers, and whatever task they were attending is dropped in the proceeding freak-out. Gorgeous floral affects accompanying certain actions, such as a trail of flowers growing behind Amaterasu when she really gets moving. Call it the Sonic the Hedgehog Effect – when simply running in circles is fun in your game, you know you’ve nailed the controls. Hell, there’s even a button solely for barking. This is all rather unfortunate for someone like myself, who’s natural attention deficiencies lead them run around town barking and trying to hop across waterways, among other daft things.

Combat also plays out smoothly. Striking enemies with Amaterasu’s reflector has a nice tactile oomph, and a key defensive strategy is to simply keep running – not a bad thing at all when running is so much fun. Battles generally ignite when one of several foreboding-looking pieces of fabric hovering about the Hub World float into Amaterasu’s comfort zone. It’s a very RPG-ish method of producing enemy encounters, but it succeeds by keeping me in suspense over what type of enemy hopes to ambush. At about the three hour mark three types of common demons have been introduced, yet even in combination they don’t pose much of a threat. Out of sixteen or so battles, I’ve only been hit once. Now, this could very possibly be attributed to the five hours I originally spent with the game, so jury’s out on difficulty for the time being. I’ll say that I would really like to be challenged, though.

I’ve completely avoided discussing various brush techniques, and that’s intentional. They apply to every gameplay element I’ve discussed and then some. People tend to liken the Celestial Brush to Link’s Ocarina in the N64 Zelda games, but it’s far more integral than that. The brush is your ocarina, your sword, your jar of water, and several things that Link never tried his hand at. Next time I feel like writing, I’ll explain how. Unless my cohorts decide to do it for me.

So I started Okami yesterday afternoon after reading through the story part of the manual, briefly skimming the characters section, and pretty much skipping everything else. It was a typical Capcom manual from what I saw—black and white, with the predictable sections, and nothing particularly unusual or overly compelling about it. Besides, even though I didn’t so much as glean a hint that there would be tutorials from my skimmings, I kind of expected them, and figured I’d learn all the basic moves that way, referring back to the manual as needed later on.

A lot of games nowadays are kind of funny like that. Back in the day, when we blew on dusty cartridges instead of cleaning disks and “saving” meant password inputs, reading the manual for any game with a hint of complication about it was practically required, because there were no in-game tutorials. Nowadays, manuals are mainly there for reference, and the rest can be learned during the course of the game. The first time I remember seeing any sort of in-game hints as to how to do stuff in a video game was probably Super Mario World, where bonking on a blue and red box would give you hints and information. Fast-forward several years and just about every game out there contains something within it to show you the ropes, and oftentimes these bits are mandatory.

The best in-game tutorials, especially in story-driven titles, are the ones that don’t break the immersion, only pulling the player out of the game’s world when discussing which button to use to do certain actions. For example, in Final Fantasy VII, you take the role of Cloud, a hardened mercenary and former soldier. It would be odd for such a character to not know how to fight, equip items, and so forth, so Cloud himself guides his audience, including the player, through most of the game’s (optional) tutorials.

Though mandatory, the approach Okami’s tutorials take likewise don’t break from the setting too much. After a long introduction, I took control of Amaterasu, a god returned to the world in the form of a wolf. With my task set in front of me, I went forward with a sidekick in tow, a miniscule artisan named Issun.

I feel compelled to note here that Amaterasu fits the mold of the silent hero, like Link, Chrono, or the guy in Grand Theft Auto III. Issun, on the other hand, is a cocky chatterbox who seems to regard Amaterasu as inexperienced and/or rusty—a n00b, of sorts—compared to himself, and thus readily explains what to do whenever I approached certain spots in the game’s first area. Upon completing whatever tasks were asked of me, this friendly yet seemingly presumptuous bug would be impressed and we’d move on to the next thing. By the time my main task was completed, I’d learned how to break certain types of objects in the field, fight enemies, jump to high places, and paint brushstrokes. I’d also learned more about Issun as a character.

It would’ve been strange for a god, even one who has been absent from the mortal world for a long time like Amaterasu, to have had his/her hand (or paw) held at the beginning of the journey, but thanks to a self-assured tiny bug of an artist who had decided early on that this god needed to be shown what to do, this hand-holding doesn’t seem so strange after all.

Hello all, and welcome to the Blue Shinra Project’s newest site, okamiblog. This site came about when CloudANDTidus, namatamiku, and I all found out that we had Capcom’s cult hit Okami languishing in our respective backlogs. We decided to play it simultaneously and write about our experiences with the game.

Right now, we’re playing things by ear as far as our posting schedule and structure goes, but if there’s anything you’d like us to talk about or if you have any questions, feel free to comment on this post.

Also, please note that none of us have ever played Okami before. Since we don’t know much about the game’s story, we would prefer not to be spoiled. We will make sure to include SPOILER notices in posts that require them and kindly ask that our readers, if they choose to discuss spoilers in the comments, do the same.

nama mentioned in an email yesterday that he had planned on starting the game then, and both Clidus and I plan to start it today. After lunch, I’m off to flip through the manual some more and fire up the ol’ PS2. More to come!