Okami’s woodblock art style in particular has remained beautiful over the course of numerous remasters (most recently, the Okami HD rerelease for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, which came to Nintendo Switch in 2018). Playing Okami HD after playing a handful of Zelda titles has only revitalized my appreciation for the cult favorite. Though Okami’s puzzles are less open-ended than those of Breath of the Wild - it’s pretty obvious which brushstrokes you use to solve things - I was still wowed by the powers I amassed, and how they let me modify the world. Like in Zelda games, dungeons had elemental themes: I used levers to lower the waterline in a cursed pirate ship, and fire powers in a lava-themed dungeon. I summoned vines to jump from point to point in a swamp dungeon, drew lines from enchanted cat statues to invoke cat climb powers - which allowed me to scale up towers - and even used the brush to turn back time. Even now, after hundreds of hours spent across Metroidvanias, these puzzles still strike me as unique. I was also pulled into the game’s dungeons, each with a unique gimmick that taught me how to wield a new brush power. A cavern brimming with water - just too long for the wolf’s swimming stamina to breach - became a portal to another region, once I had the power to make lily pad platforms to traverse it. A well-placed cherry bomb might reveal a chest with an extra ink pot. Every boss fight, and every new Celestial Brush move, meant more of the world to unravel. In a world before internet access gave me all the answers, I never knew whether hidden passageways would yield a small, buried treasure or entirely new regions blanketed with snow. Drawing the sun in the sky instantly triggered daytime, waking up villagers - sorry to all the shopkeepers I forced into constant clopenings. I was also always snorting with laughter Celestial Brush tornadoes could sweep up enemies as if in a blender. Each of these little actions brought the wolf one step closer to healing desiccated soil or restoring the enormous Guardian Saplings that anchored each region. The world was my sketchbook, and I wanted to beautify the game’s gorgeous woodblock and sumi-e ink art style. A curlicue in the air created a zephyr that gently riffled through the sky. An “O” around a tree’s naked branches made it burst with cherry blossoms, a vision of abundance. These brushstrokes yielded such gorgeous results in Okami’s mutable world. I would flail my arms about with all the gracelessness of a child holding a crayon in their sweaty fistīut I didn’t care. But I found the Wii to be notoriously finicky, hard to manage, and liable to misread any shake of the wrist. (I beat it again on the Wii in 2020, and started a new run of Okami HD last year.) At the time it was released, a number of critics called the Wii’s motion controls a great fit for Okami’s Celestial Brush mechanic. Though the game was initially released for PlayStation 2 in 2006, I played it on Nintendo Wii in 2008. Outside of combat - you’re also given the option to fight with a giant JRPG-style sword - brushstrokes modify the world by healing plants or summoning rain. As I played, I’d pause to manually draw a slash, loop, or other shape using a calligraphy-style brush, creating a tornado or a fire. Okami’s expansive move set comes in the form of Celestial Brush powers that Amaterasu wields to revitalize the land and fight the demons plaguing it. Because I played Okami long before I ever played a Zelda game, it became my watermark for the kind of action-adventure in which discovery is a driving force. With its loop of exploration, discovery, and more exploration, Okami has often been compared to the Zelda games (especially Twilight Princess, thanks to Link’s lupine form). Just one more boss, and one more unlocked power, might be the key to another mysterious swath of land. Okami constantly teased this idea of more - that behind any barrier, there might exist a dungeon, or even an entirely new map segment. This would become a theme: entering a new area with the drive to dig, with my grubby little paws, into its secrets. Join us on our journey through The Legend of Zelda series, from the original 1986 game to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and beyond. In 2023, Polygon is embarking on a Zeldathon.
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