I think Capcom would have been better off making a straight sequel to Okami.
The concept of Okamiden as a handheld companion to the original game,
taking place in many of the same areas but putting twists on them and
telling a sort of tangential story is fine. But it took me over twenty
hours to beat and has sections that can for many minutes without save
points, which is sort of ridiculous for a handheld game. The game's
reach exceeds the intended scope of a portable experience and if
anything the game wears out its welcome faster than its notoriously long
predecessor. The actual playing of the game and telling of the story is
fine, but there are issues with the pace that bog down the experience a
bit.
In Okamiden you play Chibiterasu, the young offspring of Amaterasu, the
wolf goddess from the first game. Only nice months after evil was
supposedly vanquished, it has returned, and you are called into service
to find some friends and use the celestial brush to get rid of it once
more. The brush is a natural match for the DS' touch screen and stylus,
and the system definitely works more smoothly than it did on console.
You don't start out with many techniques, but you quickly pick
some familiar ones up, along with a few new skills, mostly associated
with specific partners who ride on your back and can help you fight
certain enemies or cross certain dangerous terrain. The game's look
handles the transition to the DS hardware remarkably well, definitely
with a blockier style than before but with the general aesthetic in
place, and even a usable camera and only a few issues with slowdown. The
game design is necessarily a little more narrow and boxed off, but it's
hard to call the platform change anything other than a success.
So the game progresses as you revisit some of the locations from the
original and discover new caves and dungeons to explore within them,
while accompanied by various children who mostly happen to be related to
or at least resemble existing characters. They replace Issun as your
connection to other humans, and help in combat and puzzle solving. The
story starts out nice and simple, feeling like a regular little
adventure, though things get more dramatic later on when the villain is
revealed, and eventually actually surprisingly touching towards the end.
I would have really liked the game a lot of it actually wrapped up
about fifteen or sixteen hours in like it felt like it was going to, but
things kept repeatedly getting tacked on that I need to finish,
including an entire additional flow-breaking dungeon to finish along
with a new kid to worry about. Eventually it got back on track, but then
a twist happens that essentially negates everything you did in the last
couple hours, and then there's still another whole last section
involving a pretty uninteresting set of challenges and a bunch of
repetitive combat. The fighting is the thing that feels the most dumbed
down from the PS2 game, and I mostly avoided it where I could, since the
only reward was cash that I didn't really need to spend. So being
forced to slog through a dozen battles without any of the nifty puzzles
breaking it up was a disappointing way to wrap up the game.
And then after finishing the final boss fight, the last cut scene lasts
for twenty five minutes before the credits start. Again, this is a game
for a system that's most useful feature is it can be played on a bus. I
feel like more games I've played in the last few years haven't known
when to quit than they did before. It's not about how long the story
lasts, as I said twenty hours is long for a DS game but not on its own
that out of control. The issue is the pace. If the story has taken a
turn and feels like it's racing towards a conclusion, then that
conclusion should be brief in comparison to the preceding sections of
the game. In the past I've lamented games where what is essentially the
third act is over too quickly, but that was probably wrong. If something
feels like it's the climax, it shouldn't have the same pace as the
rising action. It's a feel thing, so I don't mind a little stretching
here or there, but Okamiden definitely didn't know when to quit, and
that soured my perception of the whole thing a bit. It's a cute, solid
little action/adventure that works quite well on the hardware, but it
does have some problems weighing it down.
