Okami: A game I should love, but couldn’t connect with

I was told for months to play Okami. My roommate would continually tell me that it was a game that I would LOVE! It’s a Capcom game, it has beautiful art, and you play as a white wolf trying to stop this terrible fate that awaits a village.

I ended up getting this game on an eshop sale and put it next on my backlog list. Whenever I first booted up the game, I loved how the game looked. The story of the beast that was awaken after 100 years was interesting, I would need to interact with the people around me and there were puzzles scattered around.

My first session into the game was great. I was invested in the story, I wanted to talk to everybody in all the places I could travel. I rummaged through every nook and cranny that I could find. The art style had me hooked, there was moments where I just sat there and looked at my screen. This was just a beautiful piece of moving art that I could play.

Every new brush style gave me so much more to do. The incorporation of brush styles into the puzzles in areas was so fun, it was refreshing to see a game use these kinds of puzzles that made you think. Since I played this game fully in handheld mode on the Switch, I was able to use the touch screen for most of the brush strokes. This small detail made the game more engaging for me.

The story was told really well. The silent protagonist trope is easily overlooked since you are playing as a wolf, so your little bug friend does all the talking for you. You can make wolf noises, and you are heavily acknowledged so you never feel like an invisible character. And if you are struggling with a certain element of the game, continued errors will have your sidekick giving you not-so-subtle clues on what you should do.

I put in about six hours before I started to feel like I was getting bored of the gameplay look. The combat was good, but broke down to me using one attack and dodging, so it felt less skill-based and more button-mashing. With this being a good portion of the gameplay, I think that was the starting point of me not fully enjoying this game. Okay the true tipping point was the camera controls. I don’t know what it is but I hate how the camera works in this game, I feel like it is constantly working against me!

After 10 hours, I felt like I was making some real good progress and was thinking that I was getting close to fighting this terrible beast and rolling credits. I was too curious wait so I looked up Okami on How Long To Beat and it said 30 HOURS! This really tipped me over the cliff and what was the begging of a gaming slump came in full force. I told myself going in that I was determined to play through games so my goal was to play a single game start to finish so I could start working through my extensive backlog of games I want to play.

I ended up forcing myself to play more because I wanted to roll credits and move onto another game, but I also wanted to finish out the story of Okami before moving on. I put in around 16 hours before I fought the giant monster. On my way there, I began to get so frustrated with the puzzles and the way things were supposed to be discovered that I ended up looking up a guide to help me out at a handful of points. I wanted to make sure I was going to the right areas because traversing was kinda slow and I didn’t wanna waste time. The longer I ran around, the more likely I would run into an enemy.

My last run at this game was when I beat the dragon. I was so happy because I thought I was done. I was confused because I was only at around half the time to beat, but I was so sure that this had to mean the end of the game. When nothing happened in terms of credits, I went back to the guide and saw so many more entries that needed to be done. I felt so dejected at this point that I didn’t wanna play anything. I had zero motivation to pick up the game because I was already done with putting effort into it.

It wasn’t until a week later when I was talking to my boyfriend that he told me that I shouldn’t force myself through content that I wasn’t actually enjoying just to check it off some list. I should put in the amount of time that I wanted to put in and once I’m happy, move onto something else. This was what I needed to encourage me to say that I am done with Okami. I am happy with what I got out of the game, but I’m ready to move onto my next backlog game, one that I am very much looking forward too starting.

All of this was to say, I liked Okami, I was happy playing Okami for the first 10 hours. But forcing myself to play it more after I lost interest just because I needed to roll credits to think I would feel satisfied almost ruined my entire playthrough of the game. If you are feeling like your run of a game is done before you actually finish the game, it’s okay to put the game down and say “I had a good run, what am I gonna play next?”