Okami is not only beautiful, but also contains action and plenty of hidden bonuses to find.
The game is quite beautiful, noticeable at the second you start the game. While the introduction is somewhat long and annoying (mostly due to sound effects characters make when they are "talking"), it fills you in pretty well with what happened in the past and what just went horribly wrong. The game has quite some length, so far I am 20+ hours into the game, and I can clearly tell there is plenty of game ahead of me. With tons of hidden items to find and animals to feed (yes, you feed other animals..), this game has plenty of potential to have me finding everything for quite some time.
Amaterasu, the God of Sun, is the character you control. She has been confined to the body of a wolf during her resurrection to battle evil, and the form she takes is a holy form, while many of the citizens do nothing more than consider you a common dog/wolf, some hail her. Your goal is to get all of the sacred "Brush Techniques" to restore the world and rid the darkness that carries the tradition of a human sacrifice once a year. Your other goal is to gain "Fame" which in essence levels Amaterasu up.
The game very much feels like a Zelda clone, but although it does feel this way, I am in no way complaining. There is enough innovation to help individualize this game. The only problem I have with this game is the horrifying load times. While they aren't too long, they are frequent. Every new zone has one, and everytime you feed an animal or use certain brush techniques there is a masked loadtime, but still a loadtime.
Battles can be avoided, but strongly discouraged since you will need an astounding amount of Yen to be able to afford most of the good stuff. There are 3 different types of weapons, and stronger versions of each, some that are found and some that are purchased (for quite a bit of Yen, I'll remind you). Most of the skills other than brush techniques you must purchase from a Dojo master. And you must purchase 4 different types of Food for different animals. All in all, I recommend fighting every battle you can come across to scavenge up some more Yen.
Great game, solid gameplay, and lovely music. Artistic visuals and awesome story-line. You can't go wrong with this game. While the game is available for the PS2 currently, if you have a Wii it will be released for that system sometime later.. possibly with additional content. I myself will most likely purchase the Wii version even though I just got the PS2 version. If that's not an indication of how awesome this game was to me, then I'm not sure what is. :P