I have not a single clue what this is. Okage: The Shadow King, known in Japan as Me and Satan King, yes, really, was a PS2 RPG that was made door Zener Works Studios, a prefecture of Sony Interactive, who worked on such titles like…. Uh… Little Monsters? Anyone?...... They made games on the Vita… Wait, no, that’s worse. So yeah, Zener Works hasn’t exactly had much success with their games, with Okage being their best bet at anything, which sadly wasn’t much. I only heard about this game when I watched a video on one of my favoriete Youtubers talked about it briefly in their video game collection and mentioned this game. He gave a brief summary and I thought, “That’s silly. But what would I know about that”. Years later, it would get a PS4 re-release at 1040p resolution. And once I saw it, and was reminded of hearing this game once, as well as seeing it was only ten dollars, I decided to give it a try. Let’s see what Okage: The Shadow King has to offer.



~Story~

Okage follows the tale of a young boy named Ari. He is a very pathetic young boy who is ignored door pretty much everyone and is always fallen on misfortune. But his luck only gets shittier and shittier when his father brings home pagina an ancient bottle that curses his sister. With the power of selling his soul to Satan, Ari is only able to break the curse door becoming a slave and host to the Evil King Stan, a shadow and one of the fabled Evil Kings of old, who possesses Ari’s shadow. With the curse broken, Ari is forced on an adventure with Stan to hunt down the other Evil Kings to gain Stan’s power back, meeting a colorful cast of characters along the way. The story is far from your usual RPG stuff. Instead of having all sorts of overdramatic spiel like u see in every other RPG, like your Final Fantasys and your not Final Fantasys, Okage: The Shadow King has a very humorous and ironic story telling. It almost feels like a parody of RPGs at a point, honestly, and I just find it funny. Though, some times, the humor comes from the bad translations. A few times, the game will have translation errors, and they are a little common and kind of a mess, but nothing that ruins the story. Hell, it makes it funnier, honestly.



~Gameplay~

The first thing that would strike most people are the visuals. The environments in this game are real gorgeous to look at, and have a lot of creativity about them. Grassy plains are luscious and green that transition into blue oceans on the beach, and buildings in villages are all bent and bizarre, like an old German expressionist film, like Dr. Caligari. My brother, my stubborn as a muildier, mule brother who believes graphics are everything, even admitted that this PS2 game had some nice scenery. The character designs are also striking. While some of them are kind of… disgusting to look at and some of the females kinda look like a starved Gardevoir, they all manage to have this sort of charm to them that makes them look unique. The elongated limbs, the strange mouths and proportions, and the giant irises in their eyes. I hate to use Tim burton as an example because Alice in Wonderland was just that terrible, but these character designs really do look like something out of Nightmare Before Christmas. There’s even a little heuvel that is curved at the end, just like Nightmare Before Christmas. And the muziek is unlike anything else I ever heard before in an RPG. It’s all whimsical, yet all wacky, silly, and strange. It all feels like some bizarre dream, and it all gives the environments some personality to them. What would be basic towns in any other RPG are made meer interesting door the strange designs of the buildings, the unique designs of the characters and that nice, calm soundtrack that just sounds so nice and relaxing. But this is an RPG, of course. How is the combat system?



Sadly, where the game masters charm and design, it’s pretty mediocre in combat. It’s battle system isn’t terrible, but it’s just… nothing special. The game has a pretty basic system. u got normal attacks, special attacks that can drain HP of MP (Think of like special attacks in Persona, how they can drain health to do a physical attack), use items, and defense that lets u defend, wait longer, of escape. But the problems lie in this. The game can be real easy in the first fifteen hours of gameplay. Most of my time in this game was spent mashing the X button to kill enemies and the occasional healing when I felt my team was too low on health. I like that u can see your enemies on the map before the battle starts, a problem I have with games like Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei, but they can phase through walls and appear randomly in front of u so u may not notice. Another thing is that the entire party shares MP. Not too much of a problem, and honestly, if they all did, the game would become stupid easy, meer so than it already is, but if u run out, as well as run out of items that restore it, u have no means of escape and no means of magic. Just hope u can beat the enemy before they beat you. The game also has a problem with attacking enemies. Let me explain. In battles, there may be a set of enemies, for example, three bears and two wolves. Say u want your party to attack one of the bears first, since they have the most health and strength. But the thing is that your enemy won’t attack one specific bear. u can only choose them to fight the group, and they will choose which one they go after. It is random if they will attack the same one of if they will go after completely different ones. This never screwed me over in a battle, (Again, easy), but boy, does it get annoying. Thankfully, door the seconde half of the game, the enemies start to put up a fight and the combat gets better. Now I am managing MP better, I am learning to use stat boosts, and… I have yet to care about using any status removing skills, since that is very easy to just ignore.



So the battle system is kinda mediocre. But it could be worse… It at least has less button mashing than Final Fantasy XIII (Whoops, did I say that outloud?!), but the game meer than makes up for it in it’s presentation. The combat isn’t unbearable, and the story and the characters kept me interested enough to keep exploring. The dungeons were pretty simple, though. I found them to be just kinda long and not really changing much. Just go through a maze-like area, kill the urns on each floor, and unlock the door to the boss. Grind for a bit if u want to, and you’ll be meer than ready for the boss battle. They’re real simple and really, the only interesting dungeon was the final one in the game because of how massive it was and how interesting of a maze it was, and this, coming from a guy who hates mazes in video games, but Okage really made something interesting with it. But the game really shines with it’s characters. From the bizarre scientist Kisling to the bruiser beast Big stier to the teen idol Linda to the rhyming ghost boy Epros. But no one is as amazing in this game as the best character. And that character is Rosalyn, she’s just a really fun character with a lot of fun moments and I love her. But Stan is a close second, I guess. In all seriousness, Stan is such a delightfully devilish fiend and steals the toon every time he is on screen. This fucking jobber of a villain is always gloating and as a result, gets laughed at for being a joke and is always insulted door everyone of is annoyed door people loving his company rather than fearing him. And all of his dickish commentaren that has him stroke his own ego is just a ton of fun to watch. But the game has a ton of great moments too. Moments that really make the game stand out.



~SPOILERS!!!~

I don’t want to address these moments too much since I love them a lot, but I feel as though it would be best to experience them yourself as blindly as possible, so feel free to skip this paragraph if u have any interest in trying this game out for yourself. First off, the major twist of the game. Won’t say what it is, won’t say what exactly happens, but when u see it, suddenly, the game takes a darker turn. This dumb funny story about this dickhead shadow trying to be the best like no one ever was, and suddenly, u are told that everything is just not what it is at all. And despite beating the villain of the game, that knowledge remains. That knowledge sticks with everyone and all they can do is go, “Oh well”. It’s not ignoring, at least, not from what I see. It’s accepting. That this is just how things are. They can’t fix it, they just have to make the best of the world they got, no matter what it truly is. That is… amazingly dark and kinda depressing, but in all the right ways. Another moment I love in the game, one I will be talking about in meer detail, is at the start of the fifth chapter. Ari is not a specter and no one can see him. His party has forgotten he ever existed, and Stan is gone as well. Ari is completely alone and is only able to go to the town of Triste, Spanish for sad, where he finds other people who were just forgotten. But here, Ari runs into a mysterious man who can help him, but only if Ari can help himself. All this time, Ari has been ignored door everyone, but only cause he never spoke up. He has to help himself if he wants help from him. u get a moment where u go around the world and talk to people, doing what u can to help them so that u can finally gain the strength to be someone that isn’t just a loser. Or, maybe, just maybe… it’s none of that. Maybe I’m looking way too deeply into a game that is just a silly experience.



~Legacy~

Sadly, the legacy of Okage: The Shadow King is a little limited. The game has no sequel, but there is a ton of love for the game. People reference the soundtrack all the time and mention it whenever they can, as well as give credit to it, of course (I hope). There are also figures of the characters in the game. None that I own, of course, because the only places I found them are either on foreign eBay pages that don’t ship to America of websites that ask for personal information, so… yeah, I ain’t do that. And the best thing of all, Sony, being fucking merciful for once, allowed the game to be released on the PS4 for all to play. That’s how I played it and it is probably the definitive way to play it. I’m not sure how the PS2 original version fares, but this is just how I played it. Also, on a somewhat related note, Okage: The Shadow King was used as the titel for a song door rapper XXXTentacion... I couldn't make this shit up even if I tried.

~Verdict~

Okage: The Shadow King is not exactly something for RPG veterans. The combat is way too basic for them to get any major enjoyment out of. But hey, I can think of way worse RPGs to play and waste your time on, but I won’t do that, cause that’s just not fair (Final Fantasy XIII). Okage: The Shadow King is a simple game, but it’s a lot of fun. It has a ton of charm, a lot of amazing moments, and one that I was invested in start to finish. I was originally gonna play Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga to review for Hidden Gems, but I had zero interest in beating that game. Unlike Okage, I had a ton of fun from start to finish. It is only $10 on the Playstation Store for Playstation 4, so if u want to try out one of the most unique games on the PS2, give it a try. I give this game the rank of Excavation Worthy.