By completing quests, side quests, and small additional activities (such as making trees bloom into life or feeding wild animals), Amaterasu earns Praise, which can then be spent to increase various statistics of the character, such as the amount of health and number of ink wells for Celestial Brush techniques. The main story is primarily linear, directed by Amaterasu's guide Issun, though numerous side quests and optional activities allow for players to explore the game world and take the story at their own pace. The gameplay style is a mix of action, platform, and puzzle gaming genres, and has been noted by many reviewers to have numerous similarities in overall gameplay style to The Legend of Zelda series, an inspiration that director Hideki Kamiya, a self-proclaimed Zelda fan, has admitted has influenced his general game design. The player controls the main character, Amaterasu, in a woodcut, watercolor style, cel-shaded environment, which looks like an animated Japanese ink-illustration (known as ink wash painting, or sumi-e) and ukiyo-e, along with other styles of art. Mainstream adoption of the game has improved with the release of these remasters, and Ōkami is considered to be one of the best video games ever made, as well as an example of video games as an art form, aided by the improved art details and graphics resolutions.Ī spiritual successor on the Nintendo DS, Ōkamiden, was released in Japan in September 2010, followed by North America and Europe in March 2011. The port was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in December 2017 worldwide, for the Nintendo Switch in August 2018, and for Amazon Luna in April 2022. A high-definition port, remastered by Capcom and HexaDrive, was released on the PlayStation 3 via the PlayStation Network in October 2012 and for retail in Japan in November, supporting the use of the PlayStation Move motion controller. The Wii version earned similar praise, though the motion control scheme received mixed reviews. Although it suffered from poor sales, the game received critical acclaim, earning IGN 's 2006 Game of the Year.

Ōkami was one of the last PlayStation 2 games released prior to the release of the PlayStation 3. The game's name is a pun, as ' ōkami' can mean either 'great god' ( 大神) or 'wolf' ( 狼) in Japanese. The gameplay is modeled on The Legend of Zelda, one of director Hideki Kamiya's favorite series. Clover Studio switched to a cel-shaded style to reduce the processing, which led to the Celestial Brush concept. The game was planned to use more traditional realistic rendering, but this had put a strain on the graphics processing of the PlayStation 2. It features a sumi-e-inspired cel-shaded visual style and the Celestial Brush, a gesture-system to perform miracles. Set in classical Japan, Ōkami combines Japanese mythology and folklore to tell the story of how the land was saved from darkness by the Shinto sun goddess, named Amaterasu, who took the form of a white wolf. After the closure of Clover Studio a few months after the release, a port for Wii was developed by Ready at Dawn, Tose, and Capcom, and released in 2008. It was released for PlayStation 2 in 2006 in Japan and North America, and in 2007 in Europe and Australia. 'great god' or 'great spirit' also 狼, 'wolf') is an action-adventure video game developed by Clover Studio and published by Capcom.

Fox with paintbrush logo