I don't think I have seen a better analogue of a country since the Little States level of Pilot Wings on the N64
The highlight was the level in the royal palace where, shrunken to infiltrate the royal bedroom, you battle through a garden full of obstacles and spiders only to jump across those same obstacles in a couple of bounds a short while later after returning to full size.
We put in about thirty hours on Okami. When I came to one of the fairly infrequent difficulty spikes - like the log ride on the river - the girls would leave me to it, returning an hour or even a couple of days later when I had succeeded.
This worked well until we came to a level, perhaps three quarters of the way through the game. There's a tunnel digging challenge, similar to one or two which you encounter earlier in the game but much harder. I tried everything - on-line walkthroughs, video guides and nights and nights of practice but I couldn't get within thirty seconds of completing the challenge. And so we had to leave it at that. My children were a bit disappointed and I wish I had been able to finish the game but I think that shows the degreee to which we all became engrossed in it.
I would recommend it to anyone especially if you have some young helpers to guide you through.