What can be said about Okami that hasn't been said before? Not much, if we're being honest, and what I'm about to say is more of the same, since I freaking love this game.

Okami is very dear to my heart. I played as a child with little to no English knowledge (a thing that, in retrospect, I consider to be pretty impressive since the brutal amount of dialogue this game has). I only knew that I really liked it, and since the sequel was announced, I thought it was a perfect time to re-play it, now with an adult mindset and a clearer understanding of what this game is about.

To be short? I wasn't expecting to like it this much. The gameplay, albeit simple, is entirely enjoyable for me. I love the Celestial Brush mechanic, which can be pretty fun to use and spam in combat, on par with the button-smashing that is using your weapons. I'm a simple person: You give me enemies to slash and destroy without it being tedious, and I will have the time of my life. Even in the boss fights, I found myself having a lot of fun trying to see how fast I could beat them. If you're here for a complicated combat system, you won't find it here. It's like a children's introduction to a hack-and-slash kinda game, with some challenges along the way (Looking at you, Devil Gate Trials).

The art style is the big protagonist here, tho. It's undeniable the beauty of it, and how well it holds up even after all these years. Unique and inspiring, it's one of those you know where it's from by just looking at one random screenshot.

The story is extremely Japanese. Not just because it's about Japanese mythology, of course, but also because its main focus is hope, growth, and resilience against even stronger forces than your own and even the well-known Power of Friendship with a goddess turn to it. I find it charming, even when Issun is annoying (All part of his arc, yes, so I forgive him a little about it).

Now about the port: I've seen some comments about how you can't alt-tab your way into it, and I agree it's annoying (especially when I was achievement hunting and I had to have my phone with me all the time to read the guides). Also, sometimes I had a problem when the game started where it reset my settings from full-screen to windowed. Kinda annoying, but nothing I couldn't fix. Besides that, everything worked fine.

So yeah! Do I recommend it? I think this is one of those games every person should play at least once. It may not be for everyone, but I do think everyone can at least appreciate one thing or two from it.

This is one of my favorite games of all time. I've played it on the Wii, and PS3, and this seems to be a strong port so far (I'm about 1/3rd of the way through at time of writing).

Easily the best Zelda game I ever played that wasn't Zelda. I'd love to play more Zelda games without playing Zelda. I'm so hyped for Okami 2 now! Please port Okamiden to Steam, too!

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Before I get into anything else, I have to discuss the port quality of this game. Especially for handheld users

Okami HD over-utilizes hardware, consuming the ENTIRETY of my 3,500mhz on my CPU, pulling over 15W. That is insane, especially for a PS2 game locked at 30fps. With DeckyLoader's "PowerTools" plug-in, I was able to force a 400mhz cap on my CPU, GPU, and RAM, dropping my wattage consumption down to 5.5W average, tripling my playtime (9h average), WITHOUT effecting game performance at all

Apart from poor optimization that I fixed myself, this game ran flawlessly on SD OLED. No crashing, no lagging, no stuttering, no input lag, nothing. A perfect game for an OLED display, as well!

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All achievements!

I collected every stray bead, dug up erry clover (I hope), I'm pretty sure I got all the chests in the game lol, caught every fish, completed the bestiary, collected all treasures, maxed out all stats, all 15 solar fragments for max HP, fed 100% of erry single animal, learned erry Dojo art, fully upgraded and acquired all brush skills, bought erry Demon Fang item, collected all weapons and fully upgraded them, erry tome is completed, all BlockHeads defeated, erry demon gate cleared, all hit-lists cleared. 0 Deaths

Okami (HD) was the most fun I ever had completing a game since my last Nintendo game. I no-lifed this game hard for like 10 days straight and had a blast then entire time

There was a small girl drawing pen15s errywhere in Sei'an City, too lol

Text was painfully slow. Voice acting was top tier, tho!

The art style is amazing. Got a banger OST. Combat was shallow and primitive, but the brush techniques and enemy's varied technique requirements compensated rly well. The boss fights were VERY distinct and VERY fun, especially in the boss rush at the end where I insta-killed them all lol

The Demon Gate trials were easy, but time consuming. Way too many. They rly dragged on. It wasn't hard to get thru at all, but all enemies were just hit-sponges. The downside to Hack n Slash games is when errything is a hit-sponge in a 1 or 2 button mashing combat system

The camera was terrible. VERY low sensitivity. In demon realms, the border gets in the way of the camera and makes it difficult to see. Sometimes, I couldn't get an enemy in my camera, even with celestial brush, and it doesn't help when the sensitivity is INSANELY slow. Sometimes, my camera just bugged out. When running across the sea in North Ryoshima Coast, the camera would automatically zoom out and look down. Very annoying

The LoD/render distance was too low. Animals, objects, and plants did not load in until I got VERY close to them. Once you go across the small open world maps, most of it just disappears. It made looking out for animals, chests, and clovers harder than it should've been

The platforming sucks in this. Lack of depth perception is typical with 3D platformers, but when you're controlling a dog and are limited to a VERY low camera sensitivity and angle, it makes it very difficult to jump on mushrooms, banners, or on Orca smh

Celestial Brush sometimes didn't work. I'd have to draw techniques MULTIPLE times before it activates. Mainly with "Rejuvination". Very annoying

I think the worst part about this game, was the lack of touch support. On Nintendo Switch, you can use the Celestial Brush with your finger. I tried to get it to work on here, but the options for touch screen just weren't there at all. I know it's a thing bcuz I've set up Android Emulators on my SD OLED before

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Okami HD was the best $4.99 I spent so far! I can't wait for Okami Sequel! And I'll have to grab Okamiden on my 2DSXL. I hope they port Okamiden to Steam tho