After a long while of waiting for Okami’s sequel, Okamiden has finally hit the west! A series based on Japanese mythology: Following his mother, Chibiterasu is the star of Okamiden. A lot of parts in Okamiden feel vaguely similar to Okami at first, but later on, you’ll realize it’s no less than a full-fledged sequel.

The gameplay, as a whole, is almost like Okami. In a nutshell, it’s a (mini)god simulator with action RPG and exploration elements, similar to Zelda, in a way. Chibiterasu, “the child of the sun”, who is able to use several celestial brush techniques, such as elements, attacks, and so on. As a whole, it does kind of feel less fleshed out than Okami, but comparing a handheld with a console game is unfair; in fact, for a handheld game, Okamiden feels slightly like a console game!

The fights are straightforward: You are locked in a small area, and as with action RPGs, you can do what you can to take your enemies down. Okamiden focuses on using a combination of both your regular attacks and celestial brush (moreso than Okami). With that, ink no longer regenerates, but every enemy and breakable item drops ink pots most of the time. Boss fights are slightly different: you have to exploit the boss’s weak spot after lowering its health by a certain amount, otherwise it will recover its health again.

Weapons work slightly differently now. There are three types of weapons in the game: Reflectors (shields), Glaives (swords), and Rosaries (whips, surprisingly). In Okami, you could equip one as a main weapon and one as a sub-weapon. However, in Okamiden, you can only equip a main weapon; your partner replaces the sub-weapon by doing an attack after your combo finisher. There’s also the fact that, instead of getting different weapons to represent different tiers/levels for each weapon type, you upgrade your basic ones in Okamiden, instead. This is done by getting one or two of three different types of materials from demons, by finishing them off with a certain brush technique. (sort of like how you get demon fangs in Okami without peeing or pooping)

Brush techniques are still mostly the same: Either press L/R to bring the main screen downwards and press again to end, or hold L/R instead. Most of the brush techniques in the Okami make a comeback, but unnecessary ones didn’t make the cut. It even introduces two new ones: one of which is Guidance, which you use to make your partner move around when they are not on your back. Just make sure you don’t run out of ink. If you do, you’ll temporarily lose your weapon as well and be forced to attack with bites and slams.

The controls are fine for a 3D game, the D-pad doesn’t seem to restrict your movement that much. Curved paths automatically rotate the camera for you, so you can just hold one direction. The camera itself however, is one of the few issues with this game: you can’t control it. In the overworld, it rotates depending on the direction Chibi is facing. In battles, it homes in on a certain enemy. There’s no problem with it, but that also means you can’t change your view while drawing; however, in the case of bosses, the game often makes the weak point in range of drawing by shifting the camera a bit, so that’s not much of an issue.

The difficulty is pretty average; if you pay attention and avoid button-mashing, you should never get a game over. There’s no food pouch this time, so you have to use items (and dropped health pick-ups) to stay alive! The enemies later in the game hit hard and occasionally require using your brush techniques. If you run out of ink, though, you can just hit them until they drop some ink bottles. Some, however,expose their weak points occasionally, so they don’t drop ink pots. You can choose one of two difficulty settings: “Old Hand” or “Greenhorn”. In Greenhorn mode, enemies have less health, and ink regenerates when you run out. Even on Old Hand mode, I only died once due to carelessness.

The story is, in my opinion, the most well-done aspect of the game. As stated earlier, you play as Ammy’s son, Chibi. This takes place 9 months after Okami’s ending. This also means that it will spoil some events from Okami, so it’s better to play that first. The game focuses mainly on character development and interactions. The game has a lot of parts that cheer you up with humor, or depress you with tragedies; no mood whiplashes, though – it all flows smoothly. The second half of the game will keep you hooked, because the story gets really intense and emotional, whilst revealing a few things Okami didn’t shed some light on.

The game looks great, as it still retains the same art style Okami is known for, and the DS doesn’t seem to hold it back much.  The soundtrack is fantastic for a handheld: make sure you wear earphones! While some tracks were either ported/remixed from the original Okami, the new ones are just as great. If anything, the music and the art style both work excellently to back up the story and the gameplay.

Your mileage may vary when it comes to replayability. The story is much shorter compared to Okami, being only about 20 hours long. However, you get rewarded in your New Game+ save file for beating the game, as well as fulfilling other criteria, such as finding all scrolls. In fact, it is recommended that you play through the game one more time just to pick up on subtle hints the characters gave away that couldn’t be noticed the first time. Don’t worry; you get an insanely strong weapon for beating the game.

tl;dr This game is an enjoyable experience, especially for people who’ve played Okami. If I were to list the game’s pros and cons, it would look something like this:

+ Amazing story

+ Great presentation, for a DS game

+ *Slightly* more challenging than Okami

+ A lot of sidequests/unlockables to look into

- Imperfect camera controls

- Story is shorter than Okami’s.

± Gameplay somewhat inferior to Okami, yet great for a handheld

If you’ve played Okami, you will miss out on a lot by not getting this. If you haven’t, you should! It’s a great game! Afterwards, you can play Okamiden.

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