Yeah, so I bought this game years ago, but I didn’t actually start it until about two weeks ago. I just finished it a few hours ago, so here’s my breakdown:
Story: Overall, this is the HUGE strong point of the game. If you like huge epic stories, though, you should go look for something else. Okage is like the closest thing you’ll see to Earthbound besides another Earthbound game in terms of quirky humor. The crazy thing is, though, they manage to keep it interesting and funny the entire time, while still introducing dynamic characters, serious themes, and even (!!) pathos. Whoa. Clever, well-written dialogue and good character interaction. My only gripe is that the grammar is a little sloppy, but it’s by no means unreadable.
Graphics: Consider it was made near launch? Excellent. Very well drawn 3D graphics in a Tim Burton-esque art style, and very well rendered on top of that. No complaints.
Music: Ranging from quirky to serious, when the situation calls for it. Overall, great town themes and character themes, kinda lacking on the dungeon themes. Still, a very effective soundtrack, and fun to listen to.
Gameplay: This is the one thing that keeps Okage from being straight up AMAZING. The gameplay, quite frankly, sucks. Game is split up into seven chapters, and they become sort of dungeon-heavy at around chapter 4, or even a nonsensical 15 MINUTE-LONG chapter 6. wtf. Dungeons all look and play the same (they almost all have the same puzzle gimmick), and they get boring really fast. Fights are slow and uninteresting, with the added negative of having no incentive to fight, since experience is scaled (like Final Fantasy 8), so you can just zoom off into the next dungeon and fight monsters to gain more than enough experience to level up several levels in just a few fights. The end result is that I finished less than 100 fights, and ran away from more fights than I finished.
Overall: Despite horrid gameplay flaws, the game was only 15 hours, so it didn’t get to the point where I said “Fuck this shit” like I did with Grandia 3, for example. If you’re looking for a funny story with good writing, I would absolutely reccomend this game.
Oh hey GM! You can play this game now, lol!