Recs.
Updated
Õkami HD is a beautiful Action-Adventure game, set in Nippon, mythological version of Japan. You, as a sun goddess Amaterasu in a white wolf form, need to bring back life to the world cursed by an eight-headed demon Orochi. The main weapon in this fight is a paintbrush - you can change your surroundings by painting things into existence.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro A lot of different activities
Apart from the main storyline (curing the Demon-cursed areas by looking for guardian sprouts and letting them bloom), there are ample employment opportunities – characters in this mythological Japan need all kinds of help. The paintbrush techniques get a lot of use in these missions as well, for solving riddles and puzzles. You might need to win a race to get a guard's mask back to him, look for a lost bunny, or defeat a bunch of demons so that a drunk guy could keep his name as the best warrior in the land. Or you can just fish or feed cute animals.
Some sidequests need to be at least partly done to move the story along, some of them are totally optional. However, every good deed restores your status as a God: if you do good in the game, you get points, which can then be used to increase your health or the amount of ink you can carry, and that keeps the player motivated.
Pro Unusual and one-of-a-kind combat methods
Throughout the game, you will encounter three types of physical weapons: mirrors, rosaries, and swords. Mirrors have a good balance of power and speed, rosaries are less strong but fast and let you keep your distance, and the sword allows for the strongest attack but is the slowest. All of these can have different effects depending on how they’re used - as a major or as a minor weapon.
The real highlight of Õkami, however, are the thirteen paintbrush techniques that can be learned during the game. Some let you attack enemies directly: for example, in the form of a bomb, which you paint on the screen by guiding the brush. That sounds a bit awkward but works quite well – you don’t need to paint a detailed picture, it is enough to roughly hit the desired shape.
Other techniques are good for manipulating your environment. For example, you can make a fire-based opponent vulnerable by drawing a jet of water, directed straight at him. Or draw a dotted line of thin trees, catching your enemy behind them and getting a chance to heal and rest in the middle of the fight.
Pro Unique and breathtakingly beautiful art style
The unusual art style takes inspiration from traditional Japanese woodblock paintings, called Ukiyo-e. Crisp black contour lines and explosions of color after successfully bringing back life into the world give a constant impression of being inside a work of art: every tree, every building, and every figure looks like it was painted with ink.
Pro Large, enchanting, and atmospheric world
Õkami, though not an open-world game, still has a vast map, consisting of seven regions and numerous subregions. You have an opportunity to explore all of Japan and experience everything the country has to offer, going from tall dense forests, over the picturesque coasts, to frosty mountains. Along the way, you’ll find history, rooted in Japanese mythology, and you'll meet a lot of imaginative characters. Some of them might only keep you company for a few missions, but you still get invested in their stories and development.
Cons
Con Indiscernible dialogue voice-over can be grating
The voice-over was done by actors actually saying the text that is shown in the dialogue box, but then it was chopped up, speeded up and resulted in a cartoony gibberish. These high-pitched voices can become quite annoying over the 40-60 hours of gameplay, luckily, the voice-over can be turned off in the settings.