The Evil King and I

[villain]

has anybody else played okage: shadow king for the ps2? it was one of my favorites back in the day (i think it came out c. 2001) because it was a bit goofy. your sister is cursed to speak in pig latin, so your father performs a ritual to summon a demon (stan) from a bottle who promises to remove the curse. as payment for removing the curse, he takes up residence in your shadow so you guys can track down all of the fake, impostor evil kings that are running around. aesthetically, it’s obviously inspired by henry selick. for the u.s. version, they toned town everybody’s eyes.

one of your party members was cursed with a pink shadow so she’s always carrying around a parasol to hide her shadow. she looks like beatrix from ffix.

it plays like a pretty generic turned-based rpg. oh it has wicked music, too.

[villain]

[disestablished]

Back in the day, I watched my best friend play a healthy portion of this, during a couple of sleepovers. (He and I still did sleepovers in High School). I remember enjoying it. But I don’t remember any specifics, other than the graphics and visual style.

[Mikey]

Man someone throw one of those AI-powered upscalers at this one

[villain]

last time i tried, which was a while ago, this game didn’t emulate that great. i think you had to use software render mode, otherwise you get a ton of slowdown, and even then, you still get it around npcs, i think?

also, it’s pretty buggy, so if you use the actual in-game save system there’s a chance it’ll eat your save (this happens when playing legit on a ps2).

[villain]

I want to say this is one of those 15-20 hour games, so this might be good for people who don’t have a lot of time to piss away on an rpg.

---

uhhh i guess this is a thing?

[villain]

trailer

[sleepysmiles]

i love this game to bits and just started a play through of it like a month ago!! Have some screencaps i took. They have high nutritional content

there’s more in the games you played thread

It’s a cute lil game. it feels low-budget in a way that’s very dear, and tries to squeeze a lot out of a pretty tiny world. i should pick it up again cuz i stopped right when the story starts getting cool. i wish it was better translated but the awkwardness fits the tone i guess

i had this game in high school and i thought Rosalyn was awesome. so i ripped off her name and design for a character that i still draw to this day lol

[villain]

prior to this, i want to say they (zener works, the developer) had only done a series of gameboy games called little master, so i doubt the budget was high for this game.

[problyfine]

Love the UI in those Okage screens.

[villain]

it has a rad title screen, too

[sleepysmiles]

i wish they hadn’t made Ari’s eyes smaller in the US version what a bizarre change

[toups]

this game doesn’t use prerendered backgrounds tho

okage is like the last good tim burton movie

I wanna replay it. I need a good crt.

[parker]

I guess it’s not quite 20 years ago that I rented it, but close. I can’t believe I allowed myself to ever get this old

[rasterradio]

I love the UI for this game. Playing also made me realize that I’m much more forgiving of RPG writing when it’s not anime.

[villain]

you can probably still get this super cheap if you collect good video games. it was a blue bottom disc, though, so if your ps2 had problems with those, then you’re probably better off with the psn port (i think it’s on psn?).

[sleepysmiles]

Yeah im playing it on PS4

[sleepysmiles]

I’m up to chapter 5 in Okage, which is about 3/4 of the game. ~20 hours on the clock. It’s so good to have an rpg I can beat in a couple weekends.

Its been a decade+ since i last played this game. I remembered that it had a good aesthetic and a sorta neat story and abysmal mechanics. Replaying it has been so much fun because all the good things are even better than i remember, and feel very fresh to me now. I forgot how much inspiration i took from the art style and narrative (which goes to a way cooler place than i remembered in the chapter i’m on)

and the mechanical parts are… functional! At worst, kinda bland! Like the dungeons are by far the most boring part of the game, but they have, yknow, level design. The combat is basically store brand ATB. it’s… fine. Everything in this game feels very made with care, even the boring jrpg parts (which to be fair, are the hardest parts to nail)

here have more tasty screens

these are from a part where you go back to your house and your party hangs out with your family and bonds, it’s cute!

Rosalyn is my favorite party member but my second favorite is Linda, the idol singer demon who you inadvertently coach into becoming a star. at which point she uses her pop song to brainwash the people of Madril so they can only babble “Linda’s hot” and you have to fight her

there’s a side quest where you have to solve cryptograms. fun!

[scratchmonkey]

My wife and I played through this game when it came out.

For whatever reason, we still say “Spider babies! Get 'em off me!” from time to time.

[thecatamites]

i still want to play this one although for whatever reason the art style keeps reminding me of this image from the unity asset store