Nick gave me his copy of Neverwinter Nights last night. I wanted to start it up, but I had to finish Okamiden. Now with Okamiden done, I couldn't be happier. Fuck that game in the mouth.That's a little extreme of a statement to make about a game, I know. But I feel like like I wasted three days of my life, days that I could've used replaying Okami -- one of my favorite games -- or playing a game that would be a truly new experience for me.
If I was a cocksucking type reviewer, I'd say, "Okamiden is not a bad game, it's just a little too familiar." What it is is a boring, uninteresting game. In other words, it's bad. If you have Okami, just play that instead. Any sort of pleasure or fulfillment -- be it aesthetic, gameplay, or whatever else attracts one to gaming -- a player can get out of Okamiden, with the exception of chibi characters, you can get it better in Okami.
I'm not butt-hurt that Capcom made an unnecessary sequel to something that worked so well as a stand-alone game. I'm not butt-hurt that Capcom made a sequel with none of the original staff, though it is a contributing factor towards why I hate Okamiden. I'm not butt-hurt that they made for the DS. The story was uninteresting and made lame contributions to the mythos of Okami, but that's par for the course for Capcom sequels. I was okay with the removal of certain features since it worked with Okamiden's smaller, simpler scale.
Design and originality are what bothered me. In Okamiden, you won't make trees pop out of the ground to restore a girl's faith in the gods or your use wind to blow banners to create traversable platforms. What you will do in Okamiden is draw a line from x to y, maybe then connect y to z. Every dungeon is mechanically the same, save for small differences like conveyor belts or ice slicks. Every quest is the same, either a fetch quest or telling someone about Yakushi Village and then visiting them later. Touching back on x, y, and z, even though Okamiden uses a more natural interface via the touch screen and stylus, you do more simple and rudimentary things with this interface. The first game had more varied happenings with the brush. Okamiden failed to capitalize on using the Celestial Brush with the stylus.
What I hate most about Okamiden is the failed potential. If I had to cram a design document for my perfect Okami sequel into a paragraph, here it is:
The game follows Amaterasu and Waka as they restore the Celestial Plain. Using a setting like the Celestial Plain, the developer would have a different setting they can run away with and offer the player new enemies, new puzzles, new elements in general. Even though Amaterasu would start out with most her abilities from the first game, she would need to learn new abilities in order to overcome these new trials.
What I hate about Okamiden is that it represents everything I hate about sequels. Okamiden doesn't refine or push the gameplay forwards nor does it make meaningful contributions to the mythos. Okamiden is a publisher making a quick buck off an IP created people they fired years ago.
