Like the Stray Beads. Here's me celebrating that last bead.

The highlighted bead was the bitch. It's the Devil Gate in Kamui. It took me three attempts to clear it out... it's a series of ten ultra-tough battles that you have to do without leaving the area. I used a pile of Vengeance Slips to get through the last three waves. The whole sequence took me an hour and a half.

Getting all 99 Stray Beads was enough of a challenge. I did not buy all of the weapons (saving yen for the Brown Rage attack, which I still can't afford), and I did not feed 100% of the animals (came awful close though) and I did not go after all the collectible treasures or fish.

This was the absolute worst jump in the game. Getting TO that little island was enough of a timed-double-jump pain, but then you have to make it back. The trick is to run around in a tight circle well enough to get Ammy's speed up, then go for the jump without checking yourself against the invisible ridge that keeps you from simply walking off any given platform. Balls.

And what was on that island that I had to have? One of the informational scrolls that you can collect. Fin.

Battle-damaged Waka takes time out from the tense ending for a typo. (An itso, even.)

The results. Over 60 hours, so my prediction was right on. Funny that those last two numbers are the same. Creepy.

Those two deaths are from the Kamui Devil Gate failures, when I Continued instead of simply Restarting. Still got the "God" rating though (the pink tree icon)... I would have been pissed if those stupid Continues had cost me one of the game's secret rewards. Which are those dog heads.

As you can see, I Godded every category there, and I wasn't really trying. I didn't even know that the categories existed. They're all a function of time, really (except for the Deaths one), so anybody who devotes serious time to Okami is going to get them.

Here's the secret rewards payout. Most of those are alternate dog characters, so your second playthrough could be as Amaterasu the Boxer, I guess. The scrolls are for the artwork/video galleries and the Secret Theater (which you get for playing more than 30 hours, another time-based reward). The 100th Stray Bead is the big pearly thing and the string of beads is an item that gives you invincibility.

Of course, Okami is another stupid game that makes the shitty mistake of kicking you out of the gameworld once you kill the final boss, so to test out all of these new toys you have to start a new game. So I did. I mean, I can guess what invincibility does, but I wanted to see the dog costumes. (They're nothing special. Most of them are damned difficult to tell apart from the garden variety wolf Ammy.)

What's cool about the new game, apart from being INVINCIBLE, is that you get to keep most of your skills and items, including your money. So should I play more, I can finally get Brown Rage and see just how gross they were about upgrading the Golden Fury attack.

It would almost be worth a second run. It is such a great game, a PS2 must-have. I remain shocked and dismayed that nobody bought it.