With excitement everything is an adventure

There are two types of sequel installment in video games, one is where they were planned from the start, with scripts stretching to thousands of pages like the Mass Effect trilogy. And the other one such as The Last of Us or Life is Strange, creating a more spontaneous sequel, purely thanks to the success of the first game. Having found a golden goose on your hands, it seems reasonable to bet on a successful franchise rather than risk starting with a new one. Ironically, this often has the opposite effect of the desired one, that sometimes it is very difficult to continue a story that has already ended. Even if the ending offers possibilities, it ultimately stands in its rightful place. There is no need to scribble or convert them into commas because those full stops are made to provide perfect play.

Ori and the Blind Forest is one of the first title that blew up in metroidvania genre, it's a beautiful and amazing game. Its success sparked a new wave of similar genres, including the likes of Hollow Knight and Dead Cells. After the success of Ori and the Blind Forest and winning awards, Moon Studios finally release the sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Ori and The Will of The Wisps continues the ending of the first game's story. Ku, Kuro's son who is the main enemy in the Blind Forest is now adopted by Naru and Gumo. Because his wings were damaged from birth, Ku was unable to fly like other birds. With the help of his mother's wings that Ori had used in previous adventures, Ku tested his new wings with Ori. Unfortunately, because of the storm, the two of them had to be separated and had to find each other and find their way home.

The story telling of the Will of The Wisps could be said kinda similar to the Blind Forest, this can be considered a positive or negative thing depending on your opinion. However, in this second game, more characters fill Ori's adventure. The majority are some kind of merchant which is a shame but many of them provide their own backgrounds and their influence on the world around them, giving the game a "denser" story and not just about Ori and his responsibilities. Despite being a new character with the background of being the antagonist's son, Ku is a good character to the point of being a motivational driver for you to finish the game. Ori and Ku may have very little interaction, but you will be made to feel cared for like your brother. So when he is hurt by the new antagonist, you feel his revenge. But it turns out that the antagonist also has his own background, creating a feeling of sympathy when you have to fight him. Even with the lack of dialogue in the game, Moon Studios has again succeeded in creating a story that feels like an emotional roller coaster.

The first game is already a pleasant experience with the presentation mainly visual and audio, the second game is basically an upgraded and enhanced version and that is a good thing to appreciate. Moon Studios has once again proven that the Unity engine can provide stunning visual quality like a painting. Now, Ori's character and the environment around him look more alive with a very touching character. Ori's adventure in the new, darker jungle feels very tense and gradually touches towards the end of the game. By mixing and matching bright and dark colors on the same screen, Moon Studios succeeded in creating an atmosphere that matches the theme of the story. And the same can be said with the audio. Ori is not a game with a lot of dialogue peppered with good voiceovers. However, the telling of the story feels even deeper thanks to the melancholic music that accompanies it. Moon Studios is very skilled at placing background music at the right moment. When the atmosphere is relaxed, you will find background music that soothes your heart. Likewise, in tense situations, you will be treated to music that will stimulate your adrenaline. Huge props to Gareth Coker for making phenonemal and melancholic soundtracks that truly depicts the sadness behind the beauty of the game's setting back to back.

Now for the main aspect that is probably made huge difference between the two games and that is the gameplay. Ori and the Blind Forest is a game that has inspired many other developers to make similar games. Team Cherry admitted that they created Hollow Knight because they were inspired by Ori. Now, the same thing is happening again, where Hollow Knight actually becomes the inspiration that gives rise to many new ideas to be injected into Ori and the Will of the Wisps. If the Blind Forest focuses on difficult platforming with a few combat moments in it then the Will of The Wisps is more of a 50:50 of the two. Combat now no longer just uses spirits, but Ori now has its own fighting system. Starting with a regular attack that resembles a sword, slowly but surely you will continue to add to your skill set from exploration or buying it directly from the merchant. This is different from the first game where you can only initiate limited movesets. Now here comes the biggest change in the game, the yellow spirits you get while playing no longer function like EXP, but are currency in the second game which can later be used to buy skills or shards which are passive buffs in this game. With a new directions that add more action, the combat system in the game is not groundbreaking and the majority of your time will just be spent spamming the attack button but each hit feels very satisfying because of the particle effects and sound effects that come out when your attacks hit the enemy. When you have all the skills, you can do the wildest possible combos by switching skills between the 3 action buttons, or if you're too lazy, you can always rely on the main attack.

Platforming in the sequel can be said to be easier than the prequel. Comparing it to the prequel, the adventure or platforming sessions in this game are made much easier and forgiving. Ori will not immediately die if hit by thorns or a pool of poison so you still have a chance to find a safe place.
Ori's movements in this game feel much more flexible and agile so the exploration process itself feels very enjoyable. However, you still have to be careful because the world has many traps and secrets that are invisible to the eye. In essence, your brain, eyes and fingers must work in synergy with each other in order to overcome the various obstacles that exist. While being easier could be a bad thing for many players as well as a long-time fans, i appreciate the new design that Moon Studios did on this sequel. The game may not be as difficult as before but it is still challenging because the level design is still tricky to pass.

Is Ori and the Will of the Wisps more of the same as last time? In a way, one can answer yes, but the correct answer is rather that the game is a further polish and perfection of an already magnificent concept. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a game that you will delight in for its beauty and magnificent game mechanics, and possibly bring you to tears for its sadness and melancholy. Moon Studios managed to take the experience of the previous game and make the sequel even better. It is a game that offers even more variety than its predecessor, and if you play on PC, you are also guaranteed a game that flows well and never ceases to surprise you when it comes to the visual presentation.

Meu Deus, que jogo maravilhoso ! Esse jogo me deixa tão feliz, tão alegre por dentro, que eu nem sei oque dizer direito, me diverti demais com ele e aproveitei o máximo que eu podia. A gameplay desse jogo é gostosa de mais, os gráficos lindos de morrer, e a história desse jogo é uma das mais lindas que já vi, confesso que quase chorei algumas vezes. Me diverti muito do inicio ao fim. Mesmo eu não gostando muito de metroidvanias, se tornou um dos meus jogos favoritos de todos os tempos. Isso pessoas não é um simples jogo, é uma Obra Prima!

Also made me cry. Everything about the first game, but better.

The controls and abilities are all more streamlined, allowing the player to pick up the pace of both exploration and combat even more.

The art team really outdid themselves on this because wow, what a beautiful game to experience. The FX and backgrounds are especially beautiful. I love the way that the game has you backtrack when you get new abilities. Classic formula, but the pace of this game makes it fun to go back through old areas to find new paths and items.

I can't recommend this game and its predecessor enough.

5/5 - Amazing

How do you make a good video game sequel? There are a few different approaches to do it. A sequel may try something different, adding weird new gimmicks or alternate gameplay styles to spice things up. A sequel may attempt to evolve a series in a way, advancing and modernizing its gameplay into something newer and grander. While some sequels simply try to perfect their predecessors - to take what had worked and improve it, and take what didn’t work and fix it. Doing this may, in certain situations, prove to actually be the most difficult of these approaches, requiring a profound understanding of exactly what does and doesn’t need changing and exactly how to change it to get just the right result. Ori and the Will of the Wisps decides to take this approach in its attempt to succeed Ori and the Blind Forest, and to me, it manages to execute it nearly perfectly and stands as one of the best sequels I have ever played.

I want to start with a refresher - Ori and the Blind Forest was a game I thought was very good, but it wasn’t quite one of the greats, due to a few important reasons. But first, I have to reiterate what made it good in the first place, so we can see how Will of the Wisps pushes it even further. Blind Forest’s strongest points were its core mechanics, fluid animation and feel, and unique and varied level design. All the things that make for a great action platforming Metroidvania game were there and executed excellently.

The animation was a major talking point for me for a reason: It's incredible how satisfying just moving and leaping around is - from how he'll do a spin in the air on your third consecutive jump, to how he might do either a backflip or a spin when jumping from a wall to the backflip also does when pushing back before a jump or even crouching, such small details that make Ori feel so smooth and satisfying to control when combined. And this just might be the only element Will of the Wisps doesn’t seek to outright improve, as it just didn’t have much higher to go. Ori feels as excellent as ever to play.

But another reason for Ori’s excellent feel in this game is his amazing moveset, and this is an area that was definitely improved. in the Blind Forest, Ori had some very exciting and fluid moves to use, but Will of the Wisps pushes it a step further. Ori has been granted various new tricks, special maneuvers, tools, and mechanics, that allow him to push what was possible in the previous game even further. The more this game progresses, the more you truly feel the level of freedom and fluidity grow and grow, and it’s hard to describe just how fun Ori feels to play as by the end, allowing for marvelous action sequences and platforming challenges even the best of traditional platformers rarely ever reach.

And it is at this point that I feel it is important I bring up an interesting structural change between the 2 games. While Blind Forest felt as much like a Metroidvania as you would expect, Will of the Wisps often feels a bit more like a linear action platformer. It still has plenty of exploration im every area, a large growing moveset and stats, and a big interconnected world, but the way you progress through the adventure just feels different here. This game opts to give you most of the most integral platforming abilities faster than you would expect out of a genre that is often built on giving you game-changing moves very late, and this is clearly done in service of allowing the game to make full use of Ori’s full potential as early as it can. The game is the structured by letting you enter it’s different areas in any order you want, but these areas, while having a lot of things to find, are progressed through linearly at their core, and played in a static order with limited revisits, loosening the Metroidvania feel. New abilities found later on also often feel more specific and situational, but they still feel like a blast to use. All of this makes the game feel a little different. But… this is not an issue. I found that the intended benefits of this structure did come to fruition here, and it also allowed the game to stand out from its predecessor more.

And now, the level design, of course. As a game that is mostly focused on platforming, that platforming better be good. And I’m happy to say it is even better here than ever before. Every area has some of the most meticulously well-crafted level design I have ever seen in a platformer. They’ll frequently introduce new moves, gimmicks, and setpieces to keep the game surprising at every turn. They have you swinging, digging, swimming, and blasting yourself across the screen in dangerous yet perfectly orchestrated designs that are just an absolute blast to play. Creativity, variety, tightness, and challenge are all in abundance here. It’s hard for me to find anything unique to say cause it’s just excellently made. Playing this game is a joy.

But then, these are all things the original game did well too. The sequel does them better, sure, but what about the things the original game screwed up? Well, I’ll start with something simple: I was happy to see that my complaint about the game’s abrupt ending has been addressed. Unlike its predecessor, Will of the Wisps’ last collectible leads into a final climax area - a last dungeon, the hardest area in the game, with highly climactic visuals and music, the most powerful new ability in the whole game, and a big finish at the end. A noticeable improvement from the last game having you get every main collectible, expecting it to lead into a final climax dungeon, and abruptly cutting to credits. This game overall feels like a much more complete experience than its predecessor does. I’ll use this opportunity to also discuss the presentation - this game is yet again one of the most beautiful games I have ever seen, and it owes it to its stellar art direction, environments that feel like paintings, an incredible level of detail, and stunning graphical effects, that look undeniably impressive even on the Switch.

But of course, all of these are secondary to what I and many others can clearly see as Blind Forest’s greatest fault: The combat. Blind Forest’s combat was downright terrible. It was comprised of incredibly disconnected and incoherent moves, it felt slow and clunky, it was shallow, and it just left you bored every time. It was the game’s greatest sin. Will of the Wisps, on the other hand, has combat that is not just good, it is excellent!

The biggest point elevating this game’s combat is the weapons. Instead of 4 random incoherent ways to attack, you now have a large arsenal of proper weapons to use. These weapons are wielded by Ori himself and not some floating orb around him, meaning that attacking has real weight and consequences on your character instead of being mindless button-mashing. Weapons are varied, and they’re all very satisfying to use. There is a weapon for any situation. The fact that energy is now only used for optional weapons, leaving you no reason to conserve it, and that swapping weapons using the weapon wheel is incredibly fast and simple, help you take full advantage of your entire arsenal. The second point that elevates the combat is the movement - as previously stated, this game’s movement is stellar, even better than the last game, and while this also allows Ori to resonate really well with the arenas he’s placed in and use them to his advantage, some moves especially stand out, such as the dash, which not only makes platforming faster but can also serve as a much-needed dodge button, and the bash, which was present in the last game, but didn’t resonate with the rest of its systems nor feel as frequently used as much as this game. The enemy variety is also largely expanded, with lots of fast yet small enemies to play around and big brutes that take a lot of firepower to take out. This system is just excellent - dodging attacks, striking with different skills, and using the world and the enemies against themselves, it’s immensely smooth, fluid, and fun.

I also need to give a mention to the story. Now, this game’s main plot remains rather uninteresting to me, just like the last - I feel it’s attempting to have strong emotional moments way too hard without having the substance to back it up, ending up leaving me feeling nothing in particular. It tries to be thematic without backing that up with the plot itself. It doesn’t even have the incredibly strong opening from the last game, as this game’s intro never hit as hard. But… I don't find these things mattered as much. I believe this series doesn’t demand a super strong plot, but rather it’s built on its beautiful world - a world that, in this new game, is much more well-developed, with new areas, characters, and NPCs with their own storylines and side quests that make it all feel richer than ever.

But unfortunately, there’s one catch. They almost solved everything, but there’s one element that Will of the Wisps just screws up that keeps it from perfection. The boss fights. With a combat system this good, you would expect some great bosses, but that is unfortunately not the case. They’re plagued by a few major issues: Their health is far too high, leaving some phases lasting an eternity as you keep wailing on them, their hitboxes are completely sporadic, as these massive models move in very loose ways that leave random body parts hitting you in places where it does not feel like they should, and your own ability to infinitely heal by using the constantly respawning energy crystals and healing move, making them all just completely tedious and unchallenging, until one of their phases places you in water or in the air where you can’t heal, which feels like a major difficulty spike to the point that shows me clearly that the developers did not at all consider the fact you could heal on the ground in the first place when designing any of these bosses. It all feels completely undercooked and leaves you with bosses that are just annoying and tedious to battle. If not for these fights, I may have called this a perfect sequel, but I simply can’t. Yet, with how few of them there, and with your ability to mostly skip them by temporarily lowering the difficulty if you want to (which I never did but is allowed), while I cannot use these as valid excuses, they just about make the boss fights tolerable enough to allow me to still name this an amazing game. No game is perfect, but this one is quite close. Especially when the dungeons that don’t end with bosses instead conclude with the same stellar, tense and challenging chase sequences the last game prided itself on. If only we had those in every dungeon without bosses like the last game - while that game's lack of bosses felt then like a negative, this game makes me wish that was still the case…

But even still, Ori and the Will of the Wisps is an absolutely amazing game. A true work of art. It's hard to forget how strikingly beautiful, rich, enthralling, and engaging it is the whole way through. It's one of my favorite games to this day.

The Ori games suffer from the same fundamental flaw as all "cinematic platformers": their striving after beauty, spectacle, and drama directly undermines their gameplay by prioritizing aesthetic and narrative splendor & awe over clarity and autonomy.

In my review for 1991's Another World—a progenitor of the cinematic platformer subgenre—I wrote about how "I didn't feel like my failures were teaching me to play the game as a whole, I just felt like they were teaching me the particulars of each level design." Ori avoids this problem throughout most of its gameplay, but it falls into the same trap any time it leans into the cinematic.

Every boss fight inevitably involves an initial adjustment period (usually requiring dying one or two times) of figuring out just which parts of your gargantuan opponent taking up half the screen is safe to touch and which parts will cause you damage — a question made more complicated, and more frustrating, by each boss having not only highly elaborate "cinematic" attack animations, but multiple phases typically bridged by "cinematic" transitions, complete with environmental transformations. Each of these transitions presents new, never before encountered and completely unpredictable ways of more or less instantly killing the player.

The chase sequences (an oft-relied upon trope) exacerbate the issue: the game expects you to follow a precise sequence of particular moves, with a narrow window of error, in order to make your "by the skin of your teeth" getaway from the big bad. In each of these sequences there are at least one or two moments where the specific action required of you is incredibly opaque due merely to the environment design prioritizing sheer visual spectacle over clarity of communication, and it's only through trial and error and repeated death that one figures out what's required to advance. Ultimately, successfully completing each of these sequences requires no ingenuity on the player's part and allows for no creativity in problem solving. It's simply a matter of following a tightly choreographed script to the letter, as the player is relegated to a performer within a cutscene, a gameplay mode with only one degree more sophistication than the dreaded "quick time event."

And I haven't even mentioned all the platforming sections where glowing, blown out, lens flare-laden backgrounds blend in completely with your character, making it impossible to see wtf you're doing!

I suspect many will see all this as nitpicking. Fair enough. Don't get me wrong: for the most part these games are incredibly solid platformers; exceptional and innovative, even. Hence my four star rating. But I think they fall short of the "masterpiece" status so many seem intent on conveying them. And the reasons for why they miss the mark mostly come down to being unable to make up their mind whether they want to be video games or Pixar movies.

Moon Studios continues to pour years of talent and effort into developing some of the prettiest environments and smoothest controls in the entire industry. But they still CANNOT make an actually interesting Metroidvania. The world design isn't particularly memorable when it needs to incorporate Ori's movement, the enemy variety is still horribly lacking, the addition of quests was underwhelming, and exploration / backtracking is still as unrewarding as the original. The first game had an incredibly strong emotional hook carrying the player through while this one really stumbled to connect with me. But in the end it was still overwhelmingly pretty and quite fun to play so I guess I didn't mind?

The best parts of the game are practically linear anyway so hot take: the sequel to Blind Forest should have doubled down on a linear structure to really take advantage of the movement and combat first and foremost, rather than making a halfbaked 'vania. That may have been fine in 2015 but by 2020 so many better examples of the genre exist out there.

So in the end, many parts were drastically improved, some parts were worse, some aspects were underbaked or didn't deviate enough from the first title and as such kept many of its issues. It's fun and a brilliant visual spectacle, but five years in the oven for a game that's kind of "Ori 1, but again" is definitely a bit of a shame.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is an emotional pulling game. I feel like the areas were more varied in regards to Ori and the Blind Forest from what I remember. Each area provided a different opportunity to use abilities you were getting throughout the game and I highly appreciate that! The boss fights were amazing! Also amazingly difficult for me at times. But, the challenge in those bosses definitely was rewarding in regards to feeling accomplished after defeating them. So, highly recommend Ori and the Will of the Wisps! Especially if you enjoyed the first one!

A masterful Metroidvania from start to finish, Ori and the Will of the Wisps not only fixes every problem I had with the original but it improves everything Blind Forest already did so well. Platforming, visuals, combat, music, characters, map, boss fights, etc. nearly everything outside of maybe the story is a step up from an already good game.

On the topic of the story though, it’s not even really a downgrade, I just personally think the emotional beats and core characters were marginally better in the original.

The only other nitpick I have is that the Metroidvania elements aren’t are strong as I’d like them to be, but when looking at what this game does right these things I’ve mentioned seem like minor issues when they’d be bigger problems in any other game.

I can’t recommend this game enough, if you’re in the mood for a beautiful Metroidvania with some of the best music in the industry coupled with a compelling story and fun combat then look no further.

9/10, quite possibly the best game Microsoft has ever published

This game has left me speechless. It did not, however, leave me at a loss for words, quite the opposite, so I'll just type this review in silence. 5 years after Blind Forest and lots of hype around it, Moon Studios released their Magnum Opus: Ori and the Will of the Wisps... And after setting the bar this high, beating this will be a tall order. Where to even start?

I guess the best way forward is to compare it to its predecessor. When Blind Forest released, modern indie metroidvanias were still niche, and it was at the time a massive step forward for the genre. However, by 2020, the standards were much higher, some examples being Hollow Knight being hailed as a masterclass, and Bloodstained, a metroidvania by actual former Castlevania devs. For Will of the Wisps to succeed, it'd need to compete with these games.

Luckily, in the meantime, Moon Studios was improving upon the existing foundation and fixing what wasn't quite right with the first game. I actually struggle to find fault with this game, the only thing I could mention - it sometimes taking a couple of minutes to close - isn't even a fair complaint. Anyway, I digress, onto the review proper.

In my Blind Forest review, I mentioned that it was a great platformer held back by lackluster combat and a lack of boss fights. In it, most of your offensive capabilities relied on mashing a single button, and it was hard to predict enemies so you could dodge their attacks. This time around, combat is a highlight. This game isn't very hard (Granted, I played on Normal, but changing it to Hard would just make enemies hit harder, not change their attack patterns), but they managed to make normal enemies much better to fight against, both by giving Ori different offensive skills and by improving readability. Ever since right at the beginning when Ori got a sword, I knew they weren't playing around. And the bosses are the apex of this new combat system. There's still chase sequences like in the first game, but now you actually fight back, and these fights get even better as the game goes on and you unlock new abilities and skills.

Speaking of abilities and skills, they were revamped in the sequel. Originally, to unlock new skills, Ori had to gather spirit light to buy them like XP, and the skill trees required you to unlock them in order. Now Ori uses spirit light as a currency, and can freely buy skills from vendors and equip them by assigning them to one of 3 buttons. Not only that, but very much inspired by Hollow Knight, there's now the spirit shards: Passive skills you can equip as badges. Personally, I like the new system a lot more; it takes some getting used to coming from the first game, but it's a lot better once you get the feel.

In the first game, the story was simple but cute, about family and forgiveness. Things aren't much different here but the improvements are noticeable. This time, it keeps the themes from the original but it's also about friendship and sacrifice, and while the first game made me smile, this one almost made me cry, be it through direct narrative (Ku...) or environmental storytelling (Papa Moki...). To accompany the main story, there's also sidequests this time. They're mostly basic fetch quests, but I think they add a nice touch and are an extra motivator for you to explore and talk to people. The NPCs, which act as vendors, quest givers, or are there merely for flavor and worldbuilding, are all nice, some appearing more than others (Not counting the dozens of Moki around the map).

The map is much bigger, and yet it never felt boring to explore. This is because of the much improved gameplay and systems I've already mentioned (Which is an amazing feat by itself since Blind Forest was already great at platforming), and because of the environmental variety of this game: You go through deep forests, swamps, caves, lakes, deserts and snowy mountains, each place with their own platforming gameplay flavor (Such as burrowing in the desert and the darkness in the deep forest). And once again, the game rewards you for pulling off stunts using your skills, with some patience and the right abilities equipped you can get a lot of stuff early and feel great about it.

Of course, you can't talk about the environments in an Ori game without mentioning how this game looks, and to say the least, it's stunning. Unironically one of the best looking games ever. Every place has been carefully hand-painted, and so it looks like a playable painting, you could take a screenshot and in most place it would be wallpaper material. Everything from the colors to the shapes to the lighting makes it all special, and it looks crispier, less blurry than in Blind Forest, which already looks great. Another noticeable step up is in the environmental storytelling, backgrounds will tell you tales and give you hints of what happened, and in certain places they'll change based on your progress and actions, like Papa Moki... 😭

Complimenting the locations, moments, and emotional strings is an ever present soundtrack, and this game would lose half its weight if it wasn't as good as it is. I won't spend a lot of time here because there's not much to say besides "it's peak", and that it manages to be even better and more memorable than in the first game. I will, however, talk a bit about the sound design. It's something that is overlooked most of the time by gamers, and only really appreciated by the most attentive of players. In Will of the Wisps, even more than it already was in Blind Forest, Moon Studios did a great job with it. From ambience, to attacks, to Ori making movement sounds, everything sounds so good and "fitting" (And once again, Ori sounds very cute, especially when calling for Ku).

Honestly, I fear for this franchise, it's been 4 years since 2020, and there's no news about it. And considering that Microsoft (IP owner) cut ties with Moon Studios and allegations of a toxic environment, I don't even know who could make a new Ori game, especially one that hits the same notes and standards. A game like this is a once in a generation phenomenon for a game studio, and I really hope that, somehow, Microsoft finds someone that can replicate the Ori feel (Hand-painted scenarios, gameplay, etc) to make a new game.

This game will forever stand as one of the best metroidvanias ever, and is a must if you like the genre at all. It has everything a game could possibly offer, and while it has more content than the first game (Took me 21:30 hours, 8 hours more than Blind Forest), it never felt like it dragged on, on the contrary, I wanted more by the end. A truly special experience, one that I must recommend to everyone.

SCORE: 10/10

Oh wow, this is how you make a sequel. I really liked Ori and the Blind Forest, but there were a few things about it that I thought could be improved on and this game managed to fix all of them while improving on what the first game did so well. In my mind a good sequel should do three things:

1. Take what the first game did right and expand on it. Don't try to fix something if it isn't broken - they kept true to their vision of the first and didn't reinvent the wheel with their Metrodivania layout or platforming.
2. Take what the first game does wrong and figure out a way to make it work - they made the combat more fun and got rid of the out-of-place Soulsike aspects.
3. Expand upon the story, the characters, and the world in a way that feels genuine and worthwhile. It should contribute to its predecessor, not contradict it - many lesser sequels, I feel, are overtaken in arrogance and try too hard to make something different than the first. Why? We love the first for a reason, don't try to undermine it. Will of the Wisps evolved the world that the first one laid out in a meaningful way.

Much like the first game, Will of the Wisps is an exemplary showcase of visual storytelling. Their is little dialogue; most of the story is conveyed through purposeful actions, music, and visuals. The way they manage to capture such emotion with such little dialogue should be applauded. It helps when your game looks this good. I mean holy damn, this game is stunning. The colors, the environments, the music, it's all so breathtaking to look at. I got emotional several times throughout the story and that's in large part because of how gorgeous it all looked and felt.

The only thing I didn't like was a cheap copout at the end of the story (I don't want to spoil anything) and, even though it was a significant improvement on the first game, the combat was still the weakest part of the game. But I can forgive the combat because the platforming was flames, and that was the bread and butter of the gameplay.

I really loved this game. I also appreciate it being relatively short; I can't do longform Metroidvania. This may be my new gold standard for the Metroidvania genre.

I loved Ori and the Blind Forest when I played it, but Will of the Wisps completely blows it out of the water. This game is a masterpiece. I wish I got to it sooner.

Off the bat, combat is actually fun now! Ori does the fighting themself this time, and the customization is really nice. They have different weapons to pick from, and shards which work as stat boosts and weapon upgrades! You also unlock the bash ability really early on this time, meaning there isn't a sense of waiting for the game to get good like in the first one.

There are full on boss fights now, and all of them are awesome! They're pretty challenging but never frustrating, they hit that perfect balance. It's so satisfying to counter their attacks or outmaneuver them.

The dumbass save system from the first game is gone now thankfully, and the world itself is a lot of fun to traverse through. There are even side quests now which encourage you to revisit areas later on! Each area is distinct and memorable, and wow so pretty...

This is the prettiest looking game I have ever seen, ever. All of the environments are absolutely stunning and the way characters are animated just had me in awe throughout the game. The use of 3D models this time rather than everything being 2D is a change I wasn't sure about but it looks absolutely amazing, especially when the game plays with its camera movement.

Without getting into spoilers, holy shit I love this story so much. I love how much this game is able to show emotion with characters that don't talk. Some characters you run into do talk to you throughout the game, but all the main ones that are the core of the story's emotional beats, everything is conveyed through zero dialogue and it is so powerful. And that ending man...MAN...

This game is amazing, I love it so much. I really can't do it proper justice, just...I fucking love Ori.

Besides a slower, debatably clumsier first bit than the original, it’s pretty much entirely better. Art and character design are top notch, combat is refined and excellent, there are more characters than just the core 5 of the last one, and the game is unique for it atmospherically. The ending made me cry too, god. Absolutely MISERABLE ending crafted in such meticulous detail to make me sob. It worked! Great video game, took a bit longer to hook me, so that’s literally the only thing preventing me from 5 starring it. This is a STRONG 4 and a half star rating though.

The sequel to Ori was just as beautiful and engaging… at first.

However there was a specific moment during playing when I realized that things didn’t feel as special to me as they did with the first game. I think the main reason I dropped this game was the difficulty and there are some interesting reasons as to why that is. The first games difficulty I would liken more to Getting Over It. All the pieces are laid out for the player to get familiar with the move set and then master it to become quicker and more accurate but the sequel tries to do the same thing while also bringing in a lot more Metroidvania traits. This causes the game to feel much more confusing and complex then the first which is good from a content perspective but becomes frustrating when you simply want to progress and don’t have the resources to do so. Everything is essentially the same as the first game just more but they forgot to make certain aspects more streamlined to fit a more open game. The Will of the Wisps has a much denser and harder to navigate world compared to the first and I ended up dropping the game entirely because I simply could not figure out how to progress. Perhaps it was simply my own ineptitude but even with the help of the internet I was unable to move forward. So I gave up. I didn’t want to because I was for the most part just as engaged as I was with the first game but I wasn’t going to restart so oh well. It still had all the elements that made me love the first game but I’d much rather return to that game then this one unfortunately. Still great game I’m sure and I’m sorry I never saw how the story concluded.

Apparently the devs are scummy too so looks like we are never getting a third game…

Oh yah and by the way I did like the combat better in this game it felt more natural and heavy hitting. The side quests and character additions were welcome too.

Ok bye bye!

This is a much better game than its predecessor, but I can't help but feel like it lost some of its uniqueness in becoming that better game. You can feel those five years between games, and what came out during them. Let's start with the positives, movement is much better. Triple jumping and being able to stick to walls help mitigate some weird movement, and launch is such a fun ability. Combat is better too, you have more options than you did in the first game.

I think I prefer the story of the first game, but the beginning and ending sequences in this game were both beautiful and touching. However, having NPCS to talk to did nothing for me. They feel tacked on, this game is always strongest when there are no words. Their quest system and purchasing upgrades instead of having a skill tree also feels tacked on, more an obligation than something that really suits the game. It's very... video gamey. And there's nothing wrong with video gamey, I love video games, but it's out of place here in Ori's world of beautiful simplicity.

It's frustrating when there are two pieces of art that could become something more fantastic than either of them if they just married their best traits (the 2003 FMA anime and the manga/Brotherhood is my go-to example) and I think this is another case of that. Ori is best enjoyed one game after the other I feel.