PlayStation 2 Critic Reviews

Okami shames them simply by being the genuine article: A stunningly gorgeous and unique masterpiece that effortlessly blends art and storytelling with puzzles and amusement. Miss this landmark effort at your peril. [Oct. 2006, p.78]

It's one of the best-looking, most creative 3D action adventures in recent memory, and every PS2 owner out there owes it to themselves to snap up a copy to enjoy immediately. Truly magical stuff.

The fighting is so nuanced and altogether joyous it never gets old for a second, and the bosses are simply stunning. Like I said, Zelda only better. [Oct. 2006, p.50]

The game manages to achieve near perfection on every level, from technical to story to gameplay, and presents the player with an enticing world that is impossible to ignore. Even after completing the adventure, you'll be drawn back if only to take in the world.

The game's music is enchanting, combat is simple but a blast, and it all comes with a full cast of endearingly kooky characters.

It's an epic quest of rejuvenation, elemental and ornate, in the context of an extended action/RPG/platformer. It’s built from artwork that upstages anything you've seen on a next-gen console. Not since Shadow of the Colossus has a game world been presented so lovingly and evocatively.

Simply one of the best games of the generation and I’d even wager to put it up with some of the best of all time.

Okami has elements of many genres—platforming, adventure, RPG and action all apply. But there's more to it than that. There's something so ... joyous about it, in Amaterasu's happy barks, in her running, her jumping, her digging of holes. I found myself ignoring the game for stretches, just doing these things. I don't know if it's the way the controls handle, or the graphics, or what, but it's there. Okami is the video game version of Professor Dumbledore, managing somehow to be both gleeful and august.

Okami’s single player campaign is one of the most ambitious we’ve ever seen, and with its score of collectible items, trees to save and animals to feed as well as characters you like and a story you’ll want to revisit, this is a game you could easily wind up playing twice or thrice.

A true epic. It's a dog-eat-dog world in the games industry, and Okami buries the opposition like a load of old bones. [Jan 2007, p.82]