"All that glitters is not gold" This is the best quote to describe this game.
First we view the gold. Okage has to be one of the best looking PS2 games I own. I love the sharp graphics, and the colorful characters and environments. I enjoyed the music too. The tunes are not up to the symphonic caliber of Final Fantasy games, but I found them simple, catchy, and enjoyable. I also liked the fact that this RPG was different. It was not the typical boy turns warrior, beats big bad guy, saves the world from disaster scenario, RPG's all too often turn to.
(WARNING : DO NOT STOP READING HERE, AND GO BUY THIS GAME!!!)
Ok, now we turn to the fools gold. This is one "horribly" designed game!!! The battle system has to be in the top two of the worst I have ever played (and I have played a lot of RPG's). It is extremely distracting to try and get into the battle when everything freezes each and every time one of your three party members battle bar recharges. You can literally be inches from whacking a foe on the noggin, when a partner in waitings bar fully recharges, and you literally freeze in mid air like a bad deleted scene from the Matrix. You will forever remain suspended there, until you wake up from your boredom slumber and put in the three commands to instruct your partner in waiting in what he/her is to do next. That may not sound bad to you, but try putting up with this over the length of a long drawn out battle. I will not even begin to mention putting up with it over the course of the entire game :-( . Even the wait to see what you have gained after every battle (money, items, level ups) seems like an eternity every time you finish a battle. The load times you have to endure each time you enter/exit a building, or go to a new area is unacceptable for a PS2 game. The spell animations are a joke in this game. It is a crying shame, because it seems as if even "they" got bored and cut this game short, and released a half @$$ version. It is often easy to be left scratching your head of exactly what to do next in this game. I personally scratched a few golden locks out a few times. Lets talk next about the dungeons. Wait a second!!! Why should I spend my time describing them when the programmers cut their design process short and unfinished. I will just use single words to describe them, just as the designers probably spent a single day designing them. The dungeons are uninspiring, unimaginative, crappy, confusing, boring, frustrating, and shortsighted. I hope the person who came up with the urns got fired!!!
Before you decide to drop fifty bones on this game, I "highly" suggest you rent it first, and spend a few days playing it. Shoot, as short as this game is, if you were to rent it for five days from Blockbuster, you could probably finish it (providing you have no job, school, girlfriend, or other distractions to keep you from playing this game for five days straight). The score I give this game is based only on the graphics and music. The rest is not worth rating, and is nothing more than Poodle feces in my humble opinion. I am forcing myself to finish this game, so I do not feel like a complete dufus for slapping down fifty green backs for this drink coaster...
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