Okage: The Shadow King

Satan King And I...oh wait sorry, OKAGE (which means...?), Sonys newest RPG for PS2. hrm.. how to start with this review.
By now youve probably seen screens and heard about the game. a boy begins in a normal, ordinary town to find that his sister is posessed by a ghost and now speaks piglatin. only way to save her is to summon up the powers of a demon trapped in a jar. this is no ordinary demon though! It is Stan (Satan!), the King Of All Evil! and in order to save his sister, the boy exchanges his sisters ghost posession for his soul...well not exactly. he has agreed to let Stan take over him and tag along in his adventures, hoping to eventually gain power and...(you guessed it) RuleTheWorld! but the task is not so easy. there are other imitators of evil out there now rising to power, and poor stan can do nothing. nothing Himself; but with the heros help, his unwittingly cool remarks, and twisted sense of evil humor; he hopes to gain back the power Stan once had and take over! along the way you meet other adventurers set on getting rid of this evil (as well as Stan!) too.
Game is played simple. almost tooo simple really. most environment is totally UNinteractive. Like in FinalFantasy9, youll notice little !Exclamation! points on things you can investigate/talk to, unfortunately there isnt much to look at. During some dialogue sequences, youll be able to say one of three (somewhat) funny lines. each one does pretty much the same thing. like saying "Can you tell me your dimentions" instead of "Thanks" to the female parasol girl yields the same result. The battles aren't very impressive either. choose command, attack, win, its over. so special combo system or any innovation at all really. and worse, you dont choose who to fight. if theres enemies "SquareRhino x 6" and you fight them, itll just hit one at random instead of a specific one. this part of the game was a real letdown.
Characters have to be the games strongest point. Every person in the game is different. some silly looking, some hideous, and some super-cute. the character-look was definately inspired by TimBurton's "A Nightmare Before Christmas", and it shows. a lot of the humor in the game comes from Stan. while he tries to terrorize and frighten everyone he meets, people never take him seriously and just end up laughing.

The game is not final Fantasy. Heck...its barely even up to par with Evolution on DC. but its a solid RPG and might be really good as a rental. not a buyer though. Wait for FFX and play this game on a rainy weekend.

Graphics: 5
Music: 4
Replay Value: 3
Originality: 6