Okami Review

The art is not a filter, it is the argument. Sumi ink outlines, paper grain, cel shaded colour that blooms as you restore life to a cursed valley, and a brush you draw with directly, so healing a withered tree or slashing a boulder means making a mark on the screen yourself. Bringing colour back to Kamiki Village remains one of the medium's genuinely moving moments, and the celestial brush is the rare mechanic that carries the theme in its hands.

Structurally it is Zelda with better handwriting: dungeons, tools, bosses, a growing map of a mythologized Japan. It is also very long and does not know when to stop. Issun narrates every discovery, the game ends at least twice before it actually ends, and the last stretch drags badly. The brush recognition misreads strokes at exactly the wrong moments in combat. It sold poorly enough to help sink the studio that made it.