I don’t think the DS is an excuse for how bad it was. It certainly doesn’t explain how pointless and lazy the plot was.
Sure it was made worse by the terrible way they split the map, but that’s their fault for trying to replicate the exact areas from Okami instead of trying to make a new game adapted to the hardware they had.
That’s true, but the way they cut up the larger map environments into smaller ones to fit it in the DS’ smaller ram and the DS’ poorer touch screen sensitivity really made the game significantly worse, if not unplayable to an extent. I don’t think I ever finished it because it needed me to draw something and the game just wouldn’t recognize the shape I drew as correct because of the awful touchscreen. It was basically soft-locked.
The lazy and poor plot was bad enough on its own but the technical problems I encountered were so bad the game was basically unplayable.