Alright, I finally got my hands on this game, so I can say a few things for sure.
1) It is heavily "influenced" by Zelda. The area I played in was basically a glorified Kakarico, which, if you're looking for something really different may not be what you want to hear, but for myself I found it to be a good thing. It more or less feels like what Cel-da should have been.
2)The visuals are incredible. Everything just looks cool. A mountain in the distance looks like three pen strokes, but that makes it charming, unique, and a pleasure to see in a videogame. Definitely presentation-wise this game stands atop the rest. Except for the voices. They sound like Animal Crossing voices, except worse. If they didn't pitch them up so much it wouldn't be so bad, but they did, so it is that bad.
3)The gameplay is, well, alright. Controlling your character is a lot of fun, and the little visual touches that accompany your character's actions definitely keep your eyes busy. The celestial brush really doesn't feel right at all though. Sometimes you know what it is you have to draw but it will take the game 14 or 15 times to recognize it. It is a very rigid system, and ultimately it feels incomplete. You can use your brush to slice enemies, but aside from that you only really bust out the ink skills when the game demands it of you. Because of that, it becomes and extremely linear excercise in a mundane play mechanic, instead of the grand adventure that it feels like the rest of the time. I don't think the Wii controller would have aided/hindered the brush function, it's basically just poor level design and a lack of imagination that ruined what could have been a really unique gameplay mode.
All in all, it is a great game, and is proof that there is still life to be found in the current consoles. It does conform to many adventure game staples, but it does feel and look different, so it is actually fun to go through all the puzzle solving cliches we've been handed before. Now, I only did play what I think is the opening stage, so the game may blossom into something truly unique by the end, I can't say for sure. My impression of the game was that it's strengths far outweigh it's shortcomings. It is a gem, and it's too bad we won't see an Okami 2 on the PS2, as I'm sure it would have been something incredible to play.
