Even the basic gameplay loop of platforming and defeating common enemies involves moment-to-moment decisions about how best to use your skills beyond "shoot the thing." It's about timing and reflexes, and quickly sizing up as much of a situation as you can and acting accordingly.
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Ori isn't on rails, and it's not full of quicktime sequences. Performing well in Ori feels amazing, because it isn't easy. You will die, a lot in all likelihood, until you learn the minimum necessary to overcome the challenge Ori is putting in front of you. I don't want to mislead you: This is trial-and-error design. These are Ori's boss fights - sections of the game where you have to keep moving or die, though moving to the wrong place will also kill you. In fact, where other games would place difficult enemies that take direct violence to bring down, Moon Studios has placed difficult, twitch-oriented navigation puzzles. It's worth pointing out that shooting and fighting isn't actually Ori's focus. Ori kills you so often it keeps track of it, a trait it shares with games like Dark Souls 2. Per the in-game statistic, by the time the credits rolled, I had respawned 308 times in my initial playthrough. I should probably mention here that Ori and the Blind Forest isn't an easy game. Instead, it practically demands you use the new parts of Ori's arsenal on a regular basis almost as soon as you find them, in scenarios ranging from simple enemy encounters to elaborate platforming challenges that will kill you for too many mistakes. As the game progresses, Ori finds new abilities that should be familiar to genre vets, like wall jumps, the ability to float and more.īut Ori and the Blind Forest isn't content to use its abilities as one-off keys to new areas, or even rote tools to be employed the same way over and over. When you encounter a barrier you can't traverse, or see a spot you just can't reach, it's because you haven't found the skill you need to make it happen yet.
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You're free to go more or less wherever you want from the start, impeded not by invisible walls but by Ori's physical limitations. Per its influences, there's plenty of exploration in Ori and the Blind Forest. Moon Studios has prioritized this mechanical foundation, resulting in incredibly tight, responsive controls that make Ori a joy to play. Other genres have borrowed Metroid's name and smashed it into other games to try to make something new, but I've never played a game so determined to take and develop those ideas and augment them with incredibly refined, responsive mechanics the way Ori does. Ori and the Blind Forest's skeleton is deeply rooted in the item-gated action-adventure genre that reached a sort of platonic ideal with Super Metroid in 1994, and in that respect it isn't unique.
Ori's traditionalist streak isn't limited to its visual concepts. Ori also artfully manipulates the emotional impact of these moments with a sweeping orchestral score. There's a quirky, distinctive art style to the characters themselves, and they are painstakingly animated to express the character their absence of much spoken dialogue at all can't provide. The second reason should be apparent with even the most cursory of glances: Ori and the Blind Forest is strikingly beautiful. There are villains in the forest, but there's no clear evil, not really. Ori treats its characters with care and respect, granting them motivations and personalities, all with almost no dialogue to speak of. Moon Studios takes enough time at the beginning of the game to invest you in the story and its leads before putting everything in danger, all without feeling too cutscene-driven. It's not the most original premise, granted, but Ori and the Blind Forest gets away with it for two main reasons.įirst, there's real characterization and personality to Ori and the other inhabitants of the forest. With everything he cares about at stake, Ori meets the spirit Sein and sets off to restore the Spirit Tree and save the forest. The pair live a happy life until one night, when the Spirit Tree is corrupted, leaving the forest "blind" and dying. Ori is found and adopted by the kind Naru, who raises Ori as her own. The leaf, it turns out, is a cat-like creature named Ori.
Ori and the Blind Forest begins as a storm buffets the ancient, life-sustaining Spirit Tree, and a single, magical leaf is blown away to land in the forest below.
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