Okami HD- PS3

[Zaarock]

I always imagined that if they had had the time & money they would've added in a hard mode but it wasn't a priority (this is the creators of viewtiful joe and DMC after all, they surely knew how to make a hard game work well)

[Obiwanshinobi]

Capcom made three Zelda games for Nintendo handhelds. They knew how to make a Zelda clone work well as well.

[Op Intensify]

DMC3 is a fighting game. Ōkami isn't.

DMC3 is a "3D battle action" game, and there isn't any genre that claims exclusive domain over difficulty. There's really no way you can argue that Okami wouldn't be improved by a hard mode.

Of course, the "pause and draw lines to attack" mechanic is rather antithetical to challenge.

[Obiwanshinobi]

The point is, DMC3 is all about fighting. As an action adventure game it's not even on a par with Onimusha (which also is about fighting first and foremost), let alone The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages.
Ōkami was almost certainly NOT designed to be DMC-, God Hand- or Viewtiful Joe-hard. I don't even think any hard mode (more difficult to survive) was on the designers' minds to begin with. Could use a bonus dungeon à la Crimson Tears, Onimusha or BoFV: Dragon Quarter, but considering how much variety (and difficulty) there is in the existent minigames, I'm inclined to suspect they scrapped the bonus dungeon idea here for the lack of idea how to keep the game nice looking and fun to play while making the combat more difficult. The performance going south frequently as it does would make harder combat a joke I suppose.