Finished! Woohooo!
Nov. 29th, 2006 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liralenI finally, finally finished Okami! Woohoo!
I was dreading the final, iron Ark in the frozen lake...
... so I ran around trying to get everything I could get, first. Or, at least, all the things I could think of getting, first. So that was really cool. There were some things I know that I missed completely, but I couldn't get anywhere with the thief in the Sen-an city or with some of the other things, but that turned out okay.
I actually did the Ultimate Blockhead by just DOING it. Sitting there and following the points until finally, I got all eight in my head, and I just did it. It's good that, sometimes, the random sequence turns into something that's actually a pattern. The hard thing is that it really wants the dots in ORDER as well as placed correctly.
That was hard. But I got the pot of gold dust I needed to up the power on the lightening glaive and the tundra ice rosary, so that was great. Plus racing the deer-girl through the forest took a LOT of tries, but it was cool 'cause then I could get all the cursed trees uncursed and really find all the short cuts through the area.
when I finally maxed out on the solar energy graph and felt pretty comfortable with my astral pouches and the ink (it helped a LOT to have the Emperor's Gold Ink Pot and twenty inkfinity stones), I finally went across the rainbow bridge.
Like with some of the other boss fights, Issun warned me that there was a threshold of commitment. Unlike the others, he told me that there was no way back, and more unlike it, he LEFT ME! AGGH! :-)
Issun's really become part of the game play for me, and I felt mildly naked without him. Especially since I had the thief's glove, where Issun would just steal things from the bad guys whenever I did a stray brush stroke that included him. I'd gotten a LOT of treasure that way, and I'd originally assumed that I'd had to have that to catch the thief!
Which I figured out, this morning, that I didn't... :-)
But the ark turned out to just be a boss fest. *sigh* Five of the ones I'd killed off before, now easier with the tools I had, and one HUGE ONE that had two stages, with a surprise character save for the first and Issun 'saves' me on the second stage. I decided this was probably the very end, so I used up nearly all of my large, medium, and small (20 of each) exorcism slips. That was cool. I think I did more damage with those than I might have with weapons, but I ended up hacking away at the end, too. The Sun is Good. :-)
I was mildly disappointed in the end. The Issun part of it was cool; but so much else of the game has the instant feedback of "GOOD happens when you fight evil" that I wanted to *see* the ark get better and see the world get better the way it did when the earlier saplings were restored. But no such luck, just a sail off into the sunset. I stayed for all the credits, eventhough they overloaded my poor little PS2 and the sound came out all chunky. And I stayed and got prizes at the end!
I was surprised to have it say that I never died for the whole game, when I knew that I had, but I guess an astral pouch 'saving me' counts as a save. I never did run out of astral pouches, that's true. So I never died! Yay! I also was mildly bemused to see that I'd collected more than 5 million yen during the play of the whole thing and that I got pink blossom trees for all the final stats! So I got prizes from Issun for the "next game" that sparkles and says "start at the beginning". Whee!
I'd been thinking about playing it again anyway, now I'll have a more interesting starting place than "just the beginning" again...
I finally got the walkthrough by subsane this morning. *giggles* Because I wanted to really be thorough for the replay and I NEVER got the ability to split open those amethyst looking rocks, even with the extra head-butt ability. I found out that I'd missed out on "Deluge" as a brush technique, and now I can find all the beads. *grin* I now know that I got all the possible bonuses at the end of the first game, so that's very, very cool.
I was dreading the final, iron Ark in the frozen lake...
... so I ran around trying to get everything I could get, first. Or, at least, all the things I could think of getting, first. So that was really cool. There were some things I know that I missed completely, but I couldn't get anywhere with the thief in the Sen-an city or with some of the other things, but that turned out okay.
I actually did the Ultimate Blockhead by just DOING it. Sitting there and following the points until finally, I got all eight in my head, and I just did it. It's good that, sometimes, the random sequence turns into something that's actually a pattern. The hard thing is that it really wants the dots in ORDER as well as placed correctly.
That was hard. But I got the pot of gold dust I needed to up the power on the lightening glaive and the tundra ice rosary, so that was great. Plus racing the deer-girl through the forest took a LOT of tries, but it was cool 'cause then I could get all the cursed trees uncursed and really find all the short cuts through the area.
when I finally maxed out on the solar energy graph and felt pretty comfortable with my astral pouches and the ink (it helped a LOT to have the Emperor's Gold Ink Pot and twenty inkfinity stones), I finally went across the rainbow bridge.
Like with some of the other boss fights, Issun warned me that there was a threshold of commitment. Unlike the others, he told me that there was no way back, and more unlike it, he LEFT ME! AGGH! :-)
Issun's really become part of the game play for me, and I felt mildly naked without him. Especially since I had the thief's glove, where Issun would just steal things from the bad guys whenever I did a stray brush stroke that included him. I'd gotten a LOT of treasure that way, and I'd originally assumed that I'd had to have that to catch the thief!
Which I figured out, this morning, that I didn't... :-)
But the ark turned out to just be a boss fest. *sigh* Five of the ones I'd killed off before, now easier with the tools I had, and one HUGE ONE that had two stages, with a surprise character save for the first and Issun 'saves' me on the second stage. I decided this was probably the very end, so I used up nearly all of my large, medium, and small (20 of each) exorcism slips. That was cool. I think I did more damage with those than I might have with weapons, but I ended up hacking away at the end, too. The Sun is Good. :-)
I was mildly disappointed in the end. The Issun part of it was cool; but so much else of the game has the instant feedback of "GOOD happens when you fight evil" that I wanted to *see* the ark get better and see the world get better the way it did when the earlier saplings were restored. But no such luck, just a sail off into the sunset. I stayed for all the credits, eventhough they overloaded my poor little PS2 and the sound came out all chunky. And I stayed and got prizes at the end!
I was surprised to have it say that I never died for the whole game, when I knew that I had, but I guess an astral pouch 'saving me' counts as a save. I never did run out of astral pouches, that's true. So I never died! Yay! I also was mildly bemused to see that I'd collected more than 5 million yen during the play of the whole thing and that I got pink blossom trees for all the final stats! So I got prizes from Issun for the "next game" that sparkles and says "start at the beginning". Whee!
I'd been thinking about playing it again anyway, now I'll have a more interesting starting place than "just the beginning" again...
I finally got the walkthrough by subsane this morning. *giggles* Because I wanted to really be thorough for the replay and I NEVER got the ability to split open those amethyst looking rocks, even with the extra head-butt ability. I found out that I'd missed out on "Deluge" as a brush technique, and now I can find all the beads. *grin* I now know that I got all the possible bonuses at the end of the first game, so that's very, very cool.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-29 07:17 pm (UTC)HA!! I am SUPERIOR! *falls over giggling*
no subject
Date: 2006-11-29 10:04 pm (UTC)I finished, oh, a week or so ago. I'm on my second run-through now. I finally gave in and am looking at the walkthrough to help me find beads i missed.
First time through, I missed lots of little things: buying the water tablet, catching the thief, buying gold dust for two of my weapons, getting upgraded power slash, giving round things to Sleepy... I was so upset to only get the water tablet once i was stuck in the ark last time; i'm having tons of fun running on water this time.
I got Ultimate Blockhead this time; last time i gave up. I also just kept trying until i remembered all the dots. (It took me a while to figure out the order was important as well as location; that frustrated me on four-dot blockhead, i think.) Oh yeah, i was also stuck on a few of the drawings for the little girl; i felt really silly when i finally figured out the "correct" way for the last one.
I was also very sad when Issun left, and surprised that astral pouch saves didn't count as "deaths". I actually teared up during the long "review all the nifty characters you met who believe in you" scene. =)
Wah, i want more games like this.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-29 10:18 pm (UTC)Do you get to keep the things you got the first time on the second round? Or did you go through buying the water tablet again? It *is* fun.
Yes. i want more games like this.
Luckily, as Shaterri pointed out, there may well be more games like this. I like that Waka said that we had to straighten things out on the astral plane, next. *grin* Maybe that'll be the next one? I don't know.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-30 07:02 pm (UTC)I can't believe the places i got to by lillypad previously. (I lillypadded out to the little rocks at Ryoshima coast beyond the sunken ship. *shakes head at self in disbelief*)
There's sure to be something else keen along sometime. I think the last game I enjoyed this much was Fools Errand. =)
no subject
Date: 2006-11-30 09:14 pm (UTC)Did you ever figure out how to crack/break/open the rocks/geodes with the purple crystals growing out of them? I would love to know how to do that!
no subject
Date: 2006-11-30 10:01 pm (UTC)). Well, it's in the frozen area; i accidentally jumped off a path and said "Oooooh! You CAN get up here."
no subject
Date: 2006-12-04 10:46 pm (UTC)Cool! Thanks!
I think there's another one on one of the islands in the N. Ryoshima coast, one of the islands has a boulder surrounded by pots? Knock the boulder over, and there's a hole in there! :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-11-30 12:40 am (UTC)Some of the stuff I've read about the latest Zelda has started to make me contemplate putting a Wii on my "consoles to acquire" list. Someday.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-30 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-01 09:33 pm (UTC)But now I have a new one and am off to look for Canine Warriors.
Do you learn out how to make offerings to the old statues by roadsides? Issun keeps suggesting I do so, but I can't figure out how.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-04 10:48 pm (UTC)