A Rant Entirely Unrelated to Ponies · 10:02am Jun 20th, 2012
Everyone who knows me well knows I tend to rant, so here comes one about the first two hours of Okami: a video game I'm borrowing from a friend after being nagged for years by several people to play. Just skip this if you don't care. I won't begrudge you or anything; I know this is going to be huge, so I'll be sure to have a TL;DR at the bottom.
Okay, so I need someone to convince me to keep playing Okami.
Seriously, this game is supposed to be amazing from what I've heard from basically everyone. I went into it expecting a pretty good off-brand Zelda about a wolf-god with magical painting powers, but the first two hours have succeeded only in annoying me to no end.
The game begins with about 20 minutes of cutscene with the text speed set so slow that I'm beginning to wonder if my disc is just messed up or something. Seriously, I read faster than this when I was four. It goes on to feature a 30-minute tutorial in which your Navi-like companion stops every 20-30 feet to inform you of your next obvious task. Maybe two of those instances contained necessary information? Mind you, about half the the text can't be skipped or sped up (the other half can for some reason; this seems to differ at random from cutscene to cutscene).
So I finally make it to town, only to find everyone turned to stone. After examining two of them, I'm told by Navi to try and find someone not affected by this curse, so I explore the entire place thinking I'm missing something. After about 10 minutes of this, I get frustrated and examine another stone person, and this time Navi tells me to return to the top of this mountain that I just visited in my earlier confusion. Nice, I sure do love long boring walks.
At the top of the mountain, I'm shown that it's apparently nighttime forever. Conveniently, it turns out I'm the sun god, so the problem is solved in the same cutscene that introduces it. This somehow turns everyone back from stone, and the mayor approaches me and tells me with his very slow text that I remind him of the statue of their god. Because I haven't been told that in like five previous cutscenes already by literally every character I've met so far.
I go through town and break stuff and collect money and do a few easy side quests, and make sure to talk to every NPC (it seems non-story cutscenes have text I can speed up, so this wasn't as painful as the story scenes, which are utter torture to sit through). Finally I talk to this dude at the edge of town who's trying to move this huge boulder blocking the road. I decide to help him, so I whip out my magic cutting-things technique which I've used to cut a few rocks up to this point already. Nothing happens, so I decide to take this guy's advice and enlist the help of the local warrior, who can probably break rocks. At least, this guy hopes so.
So whatever, I'm down with this. I still have my hopes at least moderately high; I'm a pessimist in most things, but I always try to give everything a fair shot, and I admit I'm still in the opening scenes, however long this is dragging on. So I go talk to the guy, who I had already found asleep in his house during my earlier exploration. While smacking him previously failed to wake him up, it now works for some reason. He whines about being awakened so rudely and tries to go back to sleep, so I grab him and drag his lazy ass over to the boulder. He gives it a look-over and decides he can definitely do it, but it looks difficult so he's going to go warm up first. With this obvious lie, he escapes back to his house where (surprise!) he's gone back to sleep.
Thinking I know the drill, I smack him again, only this time to no avail. No, this time the game wants me to wait until morning, which takes like 10-20 minutes (I wasn't keeping precise track). I guess the game wanted me to go do some side quests? Unfortunately, I already did everything available in town, so this time was spent utterly confused as to what to do next to wake this lethargic sack of shit up. Once morning arrives, I decide to talk to him since I'm honestly lost for clues and I'm willing to try anything, and lo and behold, it works!
Think I've succeeded just yet? Nope. This pointless "warrior" apparently can't warm up without alcohol in his system, but wouldn't you know it, he's fresh out! So it's off to the sake mill for me! The woman running it claims that her water wheel has broken down though, so she can't make any sake at the moment. Fearing another layer of what I'm at this point referring to as "Fetchception," I begrudgingly go and give the water wheel a look. Yep, thing's clearly busted. So I whip out my fixing-things technique and use it on the wheel. It does nothing. I try it from every angle, even from across the river, but no dice. After a good five minutes of wondering how to fix this stupid thing, I realize that I have to examine it, after which a cutscene prompts me to use--you guessed it--my fixes-things technique.
"Whatever," I say to myself, "I can handle this. I should be near the end of this mess, so let's just collect my booze and soldier on." The owner of the mill informs me that I can have some of her finest alcohol, but she's not sure if I should be drinking it since I'm a dog and all. Okay lady, then why are you giving it to me? Oh right, because the story requires me to get some booze, even though the NPC herself seems to think this particular bit of the story is getting a bit far-fetched. "Whatever," I mutter once again, realizing the word is becoming a bit of a common utterance as I grit my teeth and laboriously slog through slow-text cutscene after slow-text cutscene.
Lazy McUseless seems satisfied with his newly acquired booze, tilting his head back and chugging it all in one go. Damn, dude. So at long last, he's ready to practice. He staggers toward the first bamboo dummy, swings his sword and...misses it entirely. "Welp, I guess I'll just sit here until further prompted by this dog," he probably says to himself. Okay, I get what's going on here: I have to use my cutting-things technique right after he misses to make him think he's succeeding. So I start the small scene again and use my technique each time he fails (ie, every time he does anything), resulting in some bolstered self-esteem on his part.
Full of somewhat less than justified bravado, he cheerily runs off to meet me at the boulder, where he--you guessed it again--fails to cut it in half. Horizontally. That's right, he's attempting to clear the path by cutting off the top half of the boulder, which would logically be pointless, as the bottom half would still be blocking the path, wouldn't it? Not missing a beat, however, I pause the cutscene and magic up another cutting-things technique, cutting the rock horizontally. It fades to nothing, the problem apparently solved.
This leaves me utterly confused for a few reasons: First, as already mentioned, a horizontal cut makes no sense here. You could argue that it's just the game working within its own mechanics, but at this I'd have to stop you and point out that I do have a vertical cutting-things technique, so your point is moot. Second, I already attempted this. More than once. Back when I first talked to this guy who was pushing the boulder, remember? Why didn't it work then? Third, and most irritatingly, what was the point of this "warrior" fellow? I did all the work myself. I don't mind a game with a linear storyline, but why exactly is it going out of its way to undermine the gameplay? If I have a technique that can do something and I attempt to do it, it should work whether I'm in a cutscene or not. Why did that rock break (and that water wheel repair) only when the cutscene prompted it? What was the point of the last hour of gameplay?
Well, that sure was a wall of text. I guess I should TL;DR this thing.
TL;DR, and also In Conclusion: This game seems to get in its own way. It's slow-paced and so far the gameplay and storyline seem to clash with one another--and the story always wins, even when it has to defy logic to do so. I've heard this game is incredible from several people who have taste similar to my own and I actually do want to enjoy it, but I think it might simply not be for me. Have any of you played it? Do these issues ever resolve? I don't care if it's the most artistic game ever made; I can't play a game with such frequent and slow-paced scenes and whose gameplay and fetch quests don't even make proper sense. If this resolves itself later, I may jump back into it. Otherwise, I'm done. Thank you for having wasted your time reading this.
The bad: Yes the cut scenes are annoyingly long. So many things defy logic. (It's a Japanese game that has been translated, so dialog/slash actions don't always make sense and Japanese story telling is odd as all hell sometimes.) Some characters will make your ears/eyes/brain bleed or ache. You can get stuck because of stupid crap that should work,but is conditional.
The Good: When you have played for a while, you may actually care more for the story. It becomes less spoon fed later. Some of the cut scenes are crazy and random, but can be seen as hilarious wtf moments (I'm still unsure if they are meant to be funny or not sometimes.) As for randomness or logical stuff, there are a lot of references to Japanese lore. After playing for awhile you kind of learn what to expect and what makes the world tick (which I enjoyed, especially when my other friends were so confused.) I guess it's sort of a club like vibe. Yes there are annoying characters, but also some interesting ones. As for stupid mechanics, you learn what to expect as I stated before and it seems to get better later. IF anything is taking forever, its simple or crazy ( i submitted to the internet two or three times and was not mad for doing so.)
So, great art, good atmosphere at many points. Random hit and miss humor, some good music, some good boss fights, being a wolf and tearing shit apart, a slightly free rome atmosphere with a railed story made this game worth playing for me. The begging is sort of slow.
There I rant back.
The funny thing? I never cared for this game in the first place.
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I just finished the first major dungeon/boss. The gameplay did pick up after a while, but I'm still a bit irked by the game's need to stop every 3-5 minutes to reexplain things that have already been said five times, reiterating every story point just in case I've somehow managed to forget what's going on since our last review. The painting mechanics are also a bit wonky, often forcing me to paint the same thing two or more times before it registers what I'm trying to get it to do--and I know it's not strictly my fault, since I'm not even terrible at drawing myself.
So far the story itself is still pretty tame. That warrior guy keeps wandering around and I keep doing things to convince him that he's not awful, even though the plot has given me no reason to do so (yet for some reason requires it), which was my entire objection to it in the first place. WHY am I going out of my way to make him feel special, when I could have easily solved the problem alone? There's no reason given other than THE GAME WANTS ME TO DO THIS TO PROGRESS; way to drop the ball, narrative. It also happened when the mayor tried to revive the huge tree at the center of the village: I had to run around town fulfilling his every whim before he'd be willing to do his Dance of Tree Revival™, and then I spend the whole dance making the tree blossom wherever he points. Again, I'm wondering why I couldn't just do it myself. The story seems hellbent on forcing me to inflate these NPCs' egos, convincing them they're accomplishing things they're not. But whatever, I'm still at the beginning; maybe it picks up.
Anyway, thanks for the encouragement. I'll probably play it some more tomorrow and see if it keeps improving. At the very least, today's session was far better than the two hours I spent yesterday. Except for the cutscenes, which are still torture...seriously, game, what's with the slow text?
Hahaahah. I realized a bunch of things from this post. You're a god, so you have the ability to make people feel better about themselves. So I guess the game is making you answer peoples prayers. Slow cut scenes are slow, but some made me laugh so hard. My next chapter si coming soon, so if the other one is not corrected, you may have two to look at. I have finally gotten a couple other prereader/editors so the stress should be relived form you a little. Thanks again and I'm glad your giving the game a chance. I have no problem if you don't like it.
Almost 200 likes...well 40 more to go.