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 by 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 favorite 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 by pretty much everyone and is always fallen on misfortune. But his luck only gets shittier and shittier when his father brings home an ancient bottle that curses his sister. With the power of selling his soul to Satan, Ari is only able to break the curse by 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 you 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 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 hill that is curved at the end, just like Nightmare Before Christmas. And the music 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 more interesting by 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. You got normal attacks, special attacks that can drain HP or MP (Think of like special attacks in Persona, how they can drain health to do a physical attack), use items, and defense that lets you defend, wait longer, or 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 you 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 you so you 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, more so than it already is, but if you run out, as well as run out of items that restore it, you have no means of escape and no means of magic. Just hope you 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 you 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. You 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 or 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, by the second 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 more 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 you want to, and you’ll be more 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 Bull 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 show 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 by everyone or is annoyed by people loving his company rather than fearing him. And all of his dickish comments 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 you 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 you 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, you 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 more 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 by everyone, but only cause he never spoke up. He has to help himself if he wants help from him. You get a moment where you go around the world and talk to people, doing what you can to help them so that you 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 or 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 title for a song by 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 you 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.
~Story~
Okage follows the tale of a young boy named Ari. He is a very pathetic young boy who is ignored by pretty much everyone and is always fallen on misfortune. But his luck only gets shittier and shittier when his father brings home an ancient bottle that curses his sister. With the power of selling his soul to Satan, Ari is only able to break the curse by 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 you 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 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 hill that is curved at the end, just like Nightmare Before Christmas. And the music 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 more interesting by 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. You got normal attacks, special attacks that can drain HP or MP (Think of like special attacks in Persona, how they can drain health to do a physical attack), use items, and defense that lets you defend, wait longer, or 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 you 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 you so you 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, more so than it already is, but if you run out, as well as run out of items that restore it, you have no means of escape and no means of magic. Just hope you 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 you 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. You 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 or 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, by the second 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 more 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 you want to, and you’ll be more 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 Bull 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 show 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 by everyone or is annoyed by people loving his company rather than fearing him. And all of his dickish comments 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 you 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 you 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, you 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 more 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 by everyone, but only cause he never spoke up. He has to help himself if he wants help from him. You get a moment where you go around the world and talk to people, doing what you can to help them so that you 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 or 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 title for a song by 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 you 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.
LATER:
In the slaughterhouse, Rick quietly cuts his handcuffs (fashioned out of rope) with a wooden stick that he hid in his sock.
Man 1: You smell the smoke? You hear the shots? He could be dead.
Man 2: The hell we doing here? The whole place could be going up.
Man 1: You went on one roundup and you blew protocol. We don't deal with security. That ain't our job. This is... Hey, look at me.
Rick: (appears out of nowhere) FOR GLORY! (stabs the knife into his knife, killing him instantly).
Man 2: Oh man.. Thank god that wasn't m- (
Rick: (stabs him in the neck, and than in the stomach, brutally killing him).
Man 2: (dying) Tell my friends I died kissing a girl!
Rick: No! (keeps stabbing him).
Rick: (taking out his AK47 as he prepares to fight his way out) Stop.. Let them turn... Cross any of these people, you kill them. Don't hesitate.. They won't.
Bob: I- Is Rick being INTELLIGENT?
Glenn: Yeah... Kinda creepy, isn't it?
In the slaughterhouse, Rick quietly cuts his handcuffs (fashioned out of rope) with a wooden stick that he hid in his sock.
Man 1: You smell the smoke? You hear the shots? He could be dead.
Man 2: The hell we doing here? The whole place could be going up.
Man 1: You went on one roundup and you blew protocol. We don't deal with security. That ain't our job. This is... Hey, look at me.
Rick: (appears out of nowhere) FOR GLORY! (stabs the knife into his knife, killing him instantly).
Man 2: Oh man.. Thank god that wasn't m- (
Rick: (stabs him in the neck, and than in the stomach, brutally killing him).
Man 2: (dying) Tell my friends I died kissing a girl!
Rick: No! (keeps stabbing him).
Rick: (taking out his AK47 as he prepares to fight his way out) Stop.. Let them turn... Cross any of these people, you kill them. Don't hesitate.. They won't.
Bob: I- Is Rick being INTELLIGENT?
Glenn: Yeah... Kinda creepy, isn't it?
#20: The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas Gamecube Version
Wow. We’re just starting off really strong, aren’t we. The first Flintstones movie wasn’t exactly Oscar worthy, but at least it wasn’t the sequel, Viva Rock Vegas, a movie that nobody liked and was probably made because of a lack of ideas. So naturally, with a movie that bad that was a sequel to a not great movie based on a cartoon show, it only makes sense that this movie would get a game based on it. A Dreamcast version was planned, but was later cancelled and the game was then ported to the Playstation 2. It was a racing...
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Wow. We’re just starting off really strong, aren’t we. The first Flintstones movie wasn’t exactly Oscar worthy, but at least it wasn’t the sequel, Viva Rock Vegas, a movie that nobody liked and was probably made because of a lack of ideas. So naturally, with a movie that bad that was a sequel to a not great movie based on a cartoon show, it only makes sense that this movie would get a game based on it. A Dreamcast version was planned, but was later cancelled and the game was then ported to the Playstation 2. It was a racing...
Okay, let’s talk about Fallout. I never played the first two, ut I hear they are all time classics. Fallout 3 was interesting, 4 was okay, and as much as we’d all love to forget about 76, Bethesda fucks up enough to keep it in the everyone’s crossheirs. But I didn’t mention New Vegas, so you know which ones on the list.
New Vegas follows a young man or woman known only as the Courier, who happens to get roped into some bad stuff, involving a fancy dressed man named Benny, voiced by Chandler from Friends. Boy, how will the Courier get outta this one? He won’t. He gets shot in...
Despite being a huge baby when I was a kid, there were few horror games or movies that scared me. I was mostly scared by trivial things, like the boulder in Crash Bandicoot or the PS1 startup screen. I was never really scared of anything horror related… Resident Evil Remake was that one exception.
Being worked from the ground up to reimagine the original game and make it even more stunning, the game follows the S.T.A.R.S. team as they go into the mountains to investigate mysterious murders. There, they find a mansion full of zombies and monsters and now must survive to uncover the truth...
