Review #82: Okage: Shadow King

 Consider my childhood satisfied.

 Okage: Shadow King is quirky JRPG, a bit reminiscent of Earthbound, it doesn't take itself too seriously, it's set in a very mundane world with NPC that are as weird and odd as they get. It also happens to have been criminally forgotten, is this how people reward uniqueness?
 In Okage, you play the role of Ari, your average run-of-the-mill teenager who lives with his quirky family on the outskirts of the village of Tennel. Ari is, as the people refer to him, a very "overshadowed" person. Everyone downright ignores him and walks all over him, if he wasn't there, people probably wouldn't notice. Soon, his sister gets afflicted with a Pig-Latin curse, and their only hope is the Evil Shadow King Stan, who cures her in exchange of making Ari his slave and becoming his shadow. Ari's sister ends up with a pink shadow as well. Now Ari, slave to Stan, must aid Stan in defeating all the other Evil Kings in order to regain his former power and rule the world. Because that's what an Evil King is supposed to do. Evidently, the game doesn't take itself seriously at all. The game is fairly humorous too, many times Ari will be allowed to choose between three answers, the third one usually being hilarious, but everyone ignores him and his answer doesn't affect anything, funnily enough, it is a conscious design decision, as it becomes a major plot device in Chapter 5.

 The world of Okage is just as interesting. NPCs have very odd and surreal designs and their dialogues are just as weird, in a funny and engaging way. Enemies too are quite interesting to look at, chances are you there's more than a couple you haven't seen before in any other game. The cities themselves are very different from each other and have their own styles, the cities ooze creativity everywhere. Buildings look really weird, in a good way, and their insides are just as unique. There's one house, in Madril the town of Metal, that has giant cogs as tables and giant screws as chairs! Dungeons however... Every dungeon but the last one look exactly the same, same tileset, same objectives(Destroy the Urns. Sometimes you have to step on switches too, but you still have to destroy the Urns). Saddest part is that they are as bland as they are generic, quite perplexing since the rest of the game is so unique. They can get quite confusing too, specially the last one.
 As unique as the setting is, the gameplay is your standard turn-based JRPG. During the course of the game, you'll go from town to town in search for clues as to where to go next. Sadly, a couple times the game isn't very clear on where you should go next, so you'll have to try everywhere and every NPC, which isn't much fun. As you travel outside cities, ghosts will try to swarm Ari, if you touch any of them, battle ensues. There's really not a whole lot to it though, you have basic attacks and spells, you can also defend use items or run. What sets it apart, is that MP is shared among your three characters, some characters may be really strong or get great spells, but they might add a insignificant amount of LP to the pool. You can also set party members to "wait" and then combine your attack on a single enemy for major damage. A very odd design choice is that you can select what enemy to target, you can only target "packs" of enemies, but you'll quickly get used to it. One thing to keep in mind, is that if Ari dies, even if your other two party members are standing, it's game over. It kinda makes sense, Ari is so hard to notice that they probably forget about him, poor Ari.

 The game is not too hard, except a couple of bosses early on. Heck, some bosses sometimes feel very much luck-based, the... third or fourth boss in particular, I had to pray that the lesser enemies alongside the boss wouldn't gang up on Ari, otherwise they would kill him instantly. And I was overleveled for that part of the game! The last boss is also pretty tough, having a higher damage output and total hitpoints that any other boss in the game(The last boss has 10.000 HP, the second to last one has around 2000), so be ready! One of the biggest annoyances was the camera. You can turn it around(The axis is inverted, and you can't change it. WHO DOES THAT!?) but it just loves to get stuck on buildings or objects, often times it feels as if you were wrestling with it.
 As I mentioned previously, graphically, it's very unique. The game came out pretty early during the PS2's lifespan, and it shows. As unique as the whole game looks, the animations are very stiff and awkward, admittedly, it does add up to the overall quirky charm of the game. Music is downright fantastic. Tunes are usually pretty upbeat, but when it wants to get somber, it gets somber. They are also very catchy, few are the times I actually care about the music in a game, this is one of those times.
 Okage: Shadow King is a pretty different game from the norm. Half of it is really unique, the half that has to do with the presentation, the rest of the game, meaning the gameplay, is very basic and sometimes even bland. I always say that gameplay comes first, and since the gameplay is serviceable, I'd it's very much worth it to give this game a whirl just to experience the oddity that is Okage.
 7.0 out of 10.