Sleeper of the Week: Okage Shadow King (PS2)
Ever want to hang out with the devil? Well…not in a Rolling Stones sense of course, but in a more literally, “Hey Satan, want to grab a meal?” sense. Now you can! In Okage Shadow King, you are Ari, a young boy accidentally entangled with an evil king named Stan. In Japan, the game was called “Satan and Me” instead of Okage Shadow King however, hence the comments above. Immediately upon starting Okage Shadow King, you’ll find that it may remind you of a Tim Burton feature. All of the characters are incredibly stylized and bizarre. Your goal? To restore evil King Stan to his former dark glory! And why would you undertake such a ridiculous quest? As it turns out, Stan has managed to possess your shadow! That sneaky bastard has infested your shadow and won’t give it back until you help him regain all his power by defeating other dark lords! It’s a bizarre concept for an RPG, but it’s darned fun!
Okage Shadow King is a fairly standard RPG interface. Don’t expect a lot of surprises there. You buy items and equip weapons and armor as usual, nothing really different. Many of the characters have some unique special attacks and they’re fairly comedic. But where the game really shines is in the story and dialogue. From the subtle hints to the blatant overtures, the entire game is absolutely hilarious! Expect to be shocked by the evil of Stan, the strangeness of other party members, the random exploits of townsfolk. Unlike many RPGs, a lot of the people you talk to have interesting things to say. Not all of them of course, but I had as much fun talking to townsfolk as I had actually getting on with the game itself. Of course, I suppose you could say that talking to townsfolk is part of the game itself but then we’d get lost on a disturbing existential tangent and no one wants that.
As for battles, we find possibly the lowest point of Okage Shadow King. The dungeons aren’t incredibly long, but the attack ratio of enemies is very high. You’ll take a couple steps and get nailed every time. It’s fairly brutal and ends up a bit tedious. I found myself wanting to blast through the dungeons as quickly as possible to get back to the entertaining story. Everything about battles is pretty standard, attacks and uses of weapons and items, magic, etc. The only surprises are the oddness of the enemies you’ll fight, a standard for Okage. Later on in the game, all the enemies take an abrupt hike in difficulty as well, so if you don’t build up your characters enough and rush through the game like I did, you’ll find yourself at a point where you can’t make any more progress due to the sheer weakness of your party. After over 20 hours, trust me, you don’t want that. But if you can stand wading through the dungeons and building up your characters, man does the game pay off!
Musically of course, Okage Shadow King is an amazing game. All the music is fun and very fitting to the game, and really sets the mood well. Graphics are stunning, and while this is an older PS2 game, you won’t care do to the incredible creativeness used in the game. Of anything currently on the market, the only other game even remotely similar looking to Okage Shadow King is Psychonauts. Being newer, Psychonauts is much more detailed, but they did a damned fine job on Okage Shadow King as well!
In short, Okage Shadow King is a great game with lots of character, awesome story and dialogue, some tedious battles, and great music and graphics. If you can get through the slow parts, it’s one hell of a game (pun intended). These days, you can buy it new for around $10 as it was clearanced out of most stores when it didn’t sell. The guide for the game is also cheap, generally costing only a few bucks. I’d recommend the guide with the game simply to avoid tedious wandering around and allowing you to get past the slow parts and focus on the fun of the game. If you dig RPGs, weird Tim Burton-ish stuff, and want to have some fun, go check out Okage Shadow King!
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Originally Posted by sisko
