Okami isn't just another game about saving the world. It's an epic quest of rejuvenation, elemental and ornate, in the context of an extended action/RPG/platformer. It’s built from artwork that upstages anything you've seen on a next-gen console. Not since Shadow of the Colossus has a game world been presented so lovingly and evocatively.

The setting is a mélange of Japanese mythology that, even if it doesn't make much sense, is utterly enchanting. When a flute-playing monkey wearing a fez comes down out of the sky, I have no idea what Japanese cultural touchstone I'm seeing, but it doesn't matter. Come on, it’s a flute playing monkey wearing a fez! Because Okami is so marvelously effective at conveying tone and spirit, these incidentals don't much matter. It's like watching a Miyazaki movie and having no idea why you're seeing what you're seeing, but still being moved. There's a reason myths are myths and pop culture is pop culture.

You'll spend plenty of time in Okami’s unique take on Japan. This is no ten-hour flash in the pan, and not just because it opens with an absolutely interminable intro and occasionally and for no good reason refuses to let you speed through dialogue text. It's a long game, more on par with an RPG than a platformer or action game. It's brimming with reasons to look around and try different things. The world is full of collectibles and side quests, some more useful than others. I was dismayed to learn that getting a 100% faction rating for baby boars gets you nothing other than the satisfaction of a 100% faction rating with baby boars. And the fishing is far too tedious for me to bother with, even though I normally really dig on a little fishing in my epic quests.

But there's a rewarding character development system that exists mainly to ease you through the progressively difficult combats, where you can use special moves to cause items drops that are one of the collecting games. In addition to building up the main character, you can also find basic inventory items, which can be put in primary or secondary slots for various effects that change how combat plays. It's a bare bones but effective equipment system, complemented by a more conventional inventory for potions and such.

One facet of the game's progression is a painting gimmick by which you learn brushstrokes that can change the game world on the fly. To paint, time will pause and everything goes black-and-white, at which point you have full camera control so you can get the angle just right (this is particularly handy during combat). Using the analog stick and buttons, you then drop a brush tip onto the word and draw lines. Although the drawings are always simple -- it's very much like the gesture system from Black and White -- it can be hard to get used to. There's a learning curve through the first few hours of gameplay when, for instance, you might have a hard time getting a circle right. The whole time, you're probably thinking 'This game would be perfect for Nintendo's Wii or DS'. But it gets easier and eventually you’ll get to do some clever and creative things with it. Just trust the movements of the analog stick. This might sound painfully obvious, but to make a circle, don't try to make a circle. Instead, just move the stick in a circle. It's very Zen, but eventually it feels natural and it flows as easily as warm honey into the game world.

The graphics look better than great. They look unique. There have been plenty of games about trees -- throw a rock in your local EB and you'll hit a game with a talking magical tree -- but none that have captured so well the point of trees. They're powerful old presences that perennially die and live and die and live, often with spectacular results. Miyamoto's Pikmin was inspired by gardening, but Okami seems to have been inspired by the larger spectacle of spring. The idea is that the world is being polluted, and if a champion can give nature room to breath and maybe coax the sun out, there will be a glorious return. It's breathtaking when it happens in Okami: an explosion of color and life that looks better than anything merely photorealistic.

Clover's character design is as outrageous as ever. If you played Viewtiful Joe, you'll have a sense for the lengths they'll go to stock their crazy cel-shaded worlds. The mad geniuses at Clover are the most innovative artists working in videogames today, the Picassos of their craft. Their hares and hatters and queens, all wrapped in flowing clothes and inversions and exaggerations, populate Okami's Japan as if it were the Alice in Wonderland of the Rising Sun.

Front and center is Amaterasu, or Furball, or Snowball, or whatever name he's called at any given moment (the wolven incarnation of this goddess is deliberately gender neutral, but he/she/it has got far too much personality to relegate to the gender neutral pronoun 'it'). He's a beautiful creation, with the classic wolf's grin and fluid graceful animation. As a character, Amaterasu is perfectly humble, happy to let an annoying midge bounce on his nose or willing to allow clumsy ineffectual old men believe they're saving the world. He'll even let them hold forth while he curls up to doze. He's regal and strong and kind.

In terms of tone and message, Okami is similar to one of this year's best and most overlooked games, Chibi-Robo. I hesitate to make cultural generalizations, but these two games present something very unlike the Western concept of heroes, in which a powerful Siegfried forges blades and destinies, slaying his way to glory. Amaterasu and Chibi-Robo don't appear epic and mighty. Their chief occupation isn't battling foes and intermittently defeating bosses (although they both do that).

Instead, they're humbly toiling, day and night, often behind the scenes, to set things right by helping people, usually unnoticed and unappreciated. They're kind to animals. They help families. Unlike the fastidious Chibi-Robo, Amaterasu has a mischievous streak. He'll dig up holes and playfully bite pompous farmers. But then he'll feed birds and patiently watch over them while they're eating, like a canine St. Francis of Assisi. He'll rescue a boy's trapped pet, like a fireman from a Norman Rockwell painting. He’ll let sleeping bears lie.