The game design is necessarily a little more narrow and boxed off, but it's hard to call the platform change anything other than a success. The game's look handles the transition to the DS hardware remarkably well, definitely with a blockier style than before but with the general aesthetic in place, and even a usable camera and only a few issues with slowdown. You don't start out with many techniques, but you quickly pick some familiar ones up, along with a few new skills, mostly associated with specific partners who ride on your back and can help you fight certain enemies or cross certain dangerous terrain. The brush is a natural match for the DS' touch screen and stylus, and the system definitely works more smoothly than it did on console. Only nice months after evil was supposedly vanquished, it has returned, and you are called into service to find some friends and use the celestial brush to get rid of it once more.

In Okamiden you play Chibiterasu, the young offspring of Amaterasu, the wolf goddess from the first game.

The actual playing of the game and telling of the story is fine, but there are issues with the pace that bog down the experience a bit. The game's reach exceeds the intended scope of a portable experience and if anything the game wears out its welcome faster than its notoriously long predecessor. But it took me over twenty hours to beat and has sections that can for many minutes without save points, which is sort of ridiculous for a handheld game. The concept of Okamiden as a handheld companion to the original game, taking place in many of the same areas but putting twists on them and telling a sort of tangential story is fine. I think Capcom would have been better off making a straight sequel to Okami.

Download Okamiden: Chiisaki Taiyo