Only few titles have it all right and Okami is one of them.

User Rating: 9.2 | Okami (French) PS2
Okami is a game inspired by many Japanese legends including the myth of the sun goddess Amaterasu. The hand drawn visuals are an outstanding remark of the game as they make it solid chronically, and with the celestial brush feature which is the main focus of gameplay, and the combination of puzzles, platforming and interaction you'll be spending weeks playing one of the best games to hit the playstation2.

The Story is a mixture of folktales which were spread over different eras in old Japan. And it really points out to many beautiful notions and values which are still being passed on from a generation to another in the whole world.

The dialoug flows smoothly and characters vary as each has a different role. Not to mention that they're also inspired by Japanese mythology and folklore, so their roles are condenced. You play as the sun goddess Okami Amaterasu who's in the shape of a wolf and her role is to bring peace upon mankind and to the people of Nippon and get rid of evil force. You're joined by an inch tall guy who calls himself artist and named issun. He'll be talking for you to the rest of the game seeing as you're a wolf and can't really talk to human beings. Saving the world might sound cliched but the way to acheive it is perhaps one of the most original tricks to be used in gameplay which is using the celestial brush; A paint brush you use on a canvas to demonstrate different abilities. The celestial brush allows you to learn 13 brush techniques featuring sunrise, rejuvenation, power slash, bloom, water lily, cherry bomb, watersprout, cresent, inferno, galestorm, thunderstorm, veil of mist, catwalk and blizzard. They're all can be used when pressing the L2 button + square button during battles, tasks and while roaming. Battle system is like a free-style Role-Playing Game where you can either run into floating Japanese slips which beams with a mysterious evil force, or ignore them. Once you're in, you fight with different shapes of demons that yeild weapons and instruments to hurt you. You can knock them off by using various types of swords and pressing the square button. You can also defend with an armor equipped and pressing the traingle button. Also some monsters will be elemental so your bursh techniques might come handy in such situations.
Boss fights are amazingly designed in this game for they serve the purpose of using both celestial brush techniques and physical abilities of Amaterasu the wolf like running in three different speeds and jumping. Moreover the bossfights symolise everything nasty and evil wether they were creatures believed to bring bad fortune or dark and ugly.

Since you're on a quest to recalim all the thirteen brush techniques with the help of a bug inorder to defeat evil force, you have a system where you raise the attributes of "Ammy". Each time you help someone in the game by finding missing objects or fixing broken things or any kind of mission depending on the character, you'll be rewarded with praise points. The idea of praise points works beautifully with the story as your a god and each time you make someone grateful, points of praise will be added to your attributes . You can use these points to raise the health bar units, number of ink bottles which you use to paint, the bags of money and the space of astral pouch which is an item used to revive you everytime you die and this has made the games super easy for you collect many items on the way to fill astral pouch and this makes getting a game over rare in Okami.

There are other tasks which can you collect praise points from like feeding animals and blooming feilds. Besides mini games like racing, digging, looking for tressure, fishing and many other addicting tasks, you can look in your menu for information about all the things you encounter in your journy like animals, fish, treasure, monsters, map and a guide incase you got lost.

The puzzles in this game differe from tricky ones to simple ones. This also depends on your quick wittiness like the puzzle with a monster called blockhead, where you rely on your memory which gets frustrating sometimes, seeing as memory span differes from a person to another.

This game has one of the best original scores for the tunes feel like you're living through the characters in an epic adventure. The musical pieces are so well functioned like when you're in a boss fight, the tempo gets faster and so on. It switches from dramatic to enthusiatic to romantic to funky and other forms which fits perfectly with the setting and situation you're in. Though the noises you here that are produced when characters are talking can get annoying sometimes but they too fit the style. I personally felt that it suits the comic style more than real dubbing though I would love to hear Japanese people talking ! It counts as a way to learn the language for those who are interested like me. But you'll get over it soon.

In addition to its length, the game has tons of extras and unlockables to offer, therefore a high replay value. And the prizes are worth every minute in a challenge.

Best bit: Presentation due to having amazing visuals. Lots of freedom.

Worst bit: The game is not as challenging as it should be though it's not easy to cover all missions. And I wish Capcom gets rid of old habits like the gamer having to repeat some levels and boss fights towards the end.

Last word: Get it !