Ori and the Blind Forest is a good-to-great game that probably should’ve been WAY better. None of its issues were anything that single-handedly bogged down my experience too much, but it’s filled with a bunch of minor irritations that really started to add up at a certain point. I still dig it overall, but I can’t help but feel let down since what should’ve been a free 9/10, genre-defining title ended up being more like a 7/10 that tbh I probably won't revisit.
I’ll start with the soundtrack since it’s without question the best aspect of the game IMO. The soundtrack is full of gorgeously orchestrated fantasy tracks that adds so much atmosphere to an already gorgeous game; from haunting to ethereal to whimsical... this is what we call a certified hood classic. Just, y'know, in terms of soothing and emotionally provocative video game OSTs, I guess. While I can’t say the game's visual aesthetic is something I vibe with too much, the soundtrack absolutely is. I'd be hard pressed to place a comparison in terms of other game OSTs, but more broadly, it does feel reminiscent of the earlier, more fantastical tracks found in Kevin Penkin’s OST for the Made in Abyss anime. And while I’m not sure I like the OST to that same extent nor does it have the same tonal range, it’s certainly right up there in quality and I’ll def be revisiting it in the future, especially for non-intrusive background music while reading and writing.
Mechanically, the game is sort of a mixed bag, though to start with the biggest positive- the movement and progression of movement are phenomenal. The versatile and free-form toolkit from which you can move around the map by the end of the game is top tier from my experience with metroidvanias and 2D platformers in general. You have so many options of traversal that it completely makes up for the restrictions placed upon you early in the game, which were a main source of my frustrations. Finding “in-map” upgrades always feels like a huge deal- huge enough that you feel compelled to revisit every inch of the already-explored map to see how you can apply your newfound skill and unlock new secrets and areas.
Additionally, even the “ability point” upgrades feel significant in that they help smooth out the edges of your already vast toolkit and become natural extensions of those more major ability upgrades. Everything you do in the game seems to feed back into expanding your ability to move more freely; upgrades lend you a wall jump, double jump, a glide, a dash, a bash, wall climbing, and much more. But even progressing in seemingly unrelated ways, like conquering temples, grants bonuses throughout the map. Conquering temples grants you a greater sense of freedom with your movement through rewards like creating huge wind gales to carry you vertically and purifying water sources which lead to previously uninhabitable areas.
The freedom of movement serves as a phenomenal foundation for this style of game, though unfortunately it is hampered by what is probably my biggest complaint: Lack of visual clarity. Personally, I really value readability in my 2D platformers, since precision is so important in them, and Ori simply doesn’t have it to the extent that I'd like. It makes a trade-off of visual cohesion at the expense of visual clarity in a way that is quite detrimental to the moment-to-moment gameplay. Enemy projectiles blend into the background, foreground foliage covers platforms and paths, overly dark areas muddle your surroundings and require you to turn the game’s brightness up and contrast down just to be able to see where you’re landing, etc. These sorts of issues brought a lot of unnecessary frustration to what should’ve been a satisfying experience- perhaps even a comfy experience given the game’s strong atmosphere.
This lack of clarity applies to some minor aspects of the game as well. The UI, for example, isn’t great in terms of readability either. Especially the health depletion, since it makes it look like you have more hp than you actually do from a quick glance. It, for some reason, slowly drains into empty orbs despite not ACTUALLY slowly draining in practicality. It’s basically like if Earthbound’s “rolling HP bar” didn’t actually allow you to tank fatal blows and the game just assumes you have whatever lowest number the HP will eventually roll down to. It’s… probably not as big a deal on lower difficulties where combat isn’t as tense, but minor issues like this are weird and easily avoidable obfuscations.
In terms of overall challenge, the game kinda gets easier as it goes, weirdly enough. I felt that a lot of the game’s difficulty tends to come from weird jank and intentional restrictions in the first half of the game. But because that stuff slowly disappears as you progress and collect upgrades, the endgame feels a lot more manageable and satisfying to complete. None of it is all that difficult because of its innovative spirit link system. The system allows you to create save points on the fly to regain health, serving as these sort of temporary save states, to quickly retry more challenging segments. But I definitely had the most trouble early on since the aforementioned lack of visual clarity compounded the restrictive movement to make a much for a much more frustrating experience than it probably should've been.
Another aspect of the game’s challenge I feel is worth noting is the balance of Ori’s strength and resource management, both of which I feel aren't great overall, for two main reasons. For one, the normal attack felt completely outclassed by the stomp immediately upon unlocking it. Maybe this was because I played on hard mode, but the normal attack quickly started taking upwards of 10-20 shots just to kill enemies on the main path, even after unlocking the spirit flame strength and quantity upgrades. Meanwhile, the stomp kills just about everything (in a fairly generous radius) right when you unlock it in just a couple hits- while also reflecting all enemy projectiles. It also destroys ground mines even if you land straight on top of them, making almost all enemies helpless if you can safely stomp near them. On top of all that, it also more often than not flips enemies over or staggers them so they are helpless for a few seconds, which is yet another benefit stomping has over using your main attack. So combat in the second half mostly amounts to reflecting projectiles back at enemies with bash and stomping repeatedly as soon as something gets close to you. To be fair though, it’s not that different from the early game combat which is also super mashy- just with spirit flame mashing instead of stomp mashing.
Secondly, the balance of resource management felt pretty weak throughout as well. I will say that I really do enjoy the spirit cell system which makes saving/healing and charge/dash attacks run off of the same currency as one another. It seemed bizarre at first but it actually works pretty well in practicality. It serves as a simple yet effective trade-off between offense and defense. You can save whenever you have energy, but if you’re confident enough, you can sacrifice the checkpoint for an additional powerful attack or two. However, early in the game I found myself constantly depleted of spirit cells, while in the endgame I had more than I knew what to do with.
The low point of the game for me was definitely the ice/wind temple since it doesn’t focus much on what makes the game feel so good to move and explore within. It mainly focuses on a weird gravity mechanic which slows your movement to a crawl, inverts your controls, and wasn’t taught through gameplay as well as it probably could’ve been. At that point in my playthrough I'd unlocked the portable light ball/bash combo so I was able to bypass the first half of the temple without paying much thought to gravity manipulation. But then all of a sudden, it expected me to use the gravity manipulation mechanic in a fairly sophisticated way and I had no idea what it wanted from me for a good 20 minutes before I stumbled upon the solution. An easy fix would’ve been to ban the portable light ball during the temple since it isn’t even used otherwise, so I wish they’d done that to avoid the possibility of confusion altogether. It also ends with a frustrating chase sequence which consists almost entirely of memorizing falling icicles and rocks- the latter of which instakilled me several times despite having 9 hp orbs at that point.
On the other hand, the fire temple which immediately followed was the highlight of the entire game for me. Not just because it’s your main opportunity to put all the tools you’ve collected to the test and implement them in tandem with one another. But also because it just felt a lot meatier, more substantive, than the first two temples (the first temple is also fine tho). It has like eight different sub areas that affect your exploration of the main area upon completion. More importantly though, it’s gimmick free and provides a challenge that is almost entirely platforming-centric.
The chase sequence is better in the fire temple too, though it had WAY too much screen shake. I get that it’s there to add impact and visual weight to the climactic encounter with Kuro, but at a certain point, it just becomes nauseating and distracting. I was also expecting it to go a fair while longer than it did, since it’s the very final challenge of the game. But it kinda just ended up being another short little trial like the prior two.I’m cool with the game not having boss battles or anything like that, but I definitely felt like the last chase sequence should’ve been multi-tiered or something. Oh well.
I won’t go much into narrative since I don’t really care about narrative one way or the other when it comes to 2D platformers or metroidvania. If it resonates with me, then cool. But if it fails to land for me, then there’s no foul either, really. The game’s opening cinematic is fairly impressive with the way it conveys emotion without any direct character dialogue (there is a narrator but tbh I didn’t feel like it added much for the scene and felt ultimately a bit unnecessary). However, I felt the emotion it captured was in large part due to the expressive animation and incredible score that accompanies it. Also, none of the story after the game starts properly did anything for me whatsoever. But again, that doesn’t really matter to me since it’s not why I’m playing this type of game to begin with.
While not the genre-defining experience I felt it probably could’ve been with some fairly minor changes, Ori and the Blind Forest is a very solid game. I didn’t really want to put it down from the moment I started, and once I unlocked the full range of movement, I pretty much played through the entire second half in one sitting. It may not have lived up to what I hoped it could’ve been, but it sets a great foundation for its sequel. So I’m pretty optimistic about seeing how it will further capitalize on the game’s cathartic sense of movement and exploration in the next entry.
I’ll start with the soundtrack since it’s without question the best aspect of the game IMO. The soundtrack is full of gorgeously orchestrated fantasy tracks that adds so much atmosphere to an already gorgeous game; from haunting to ethereal to whimsical... this is what we call a certified hood classic. Just, y'know, in terms of soothing and emotionally provocative video game OSTs, I guess. While I can’t say the game's visual aesthetic is something I vibe with too much, the soundtrack absolutely is. I'd be hard pressed to place a comparison in terms of other game OSTs, but more broadly, it does feel reminiscent of the earlier, more fantastical tracks found in Kevin Penkin’s OST for the Made in Abyss anime. And while I’m not sure I like the OST to that same extent nor does it have the same tonal range, it’s certainly right up there in quality and I’ll def be revisiting it in the future, especially for non-intrusive background music while reading and writing.
Mechanically, the game is sort of a mixed bag, though to start with the biggest positive- the movement and progression of movement are phenomenal. The versatile and free-form toolkit from which you can move around the map by the end of the game is top tier from my experience with metroidvanias and 2D platformers in general. You have so many options of traversal that it completely makes up for the restrictions placed upon you early in the game, which were a main source of my frustrations. Finding “in-map” upgrades always feels like a huge deal- huge enough that you feel compelled to revisit every inch of the already-explored map to see how you can apply your newfound skill and unlock new secrets and areas.
Additionally, even the “ability point” upgrades feel significant in that they help smooth out the edges of your already vast toolkit and become natural extensions of those more major ability upgrades. Everything you do in the game seems to feed back into expanding your ability to move more freely; upgrades lend you a wall jump, double jump, a glide, a dash, a bash, wall climbing, and much more. But even progressing in seemingly unrelated ways, like conquering temples, grants bonuses throughout the map. Conquering temples grants you a greater sense of freedom with your movement through rewards like creating huge wind gales to carry you vertically and purifying water sources which lead to previously uninhabitable areas.
The freedom of movement serves as a phenomenal foundation for this style of game, though unfortunately it is hampered by what is probably my biggest complaint: Lack of visual clarity. Personally, I really value readability in my 2D platformers, since precision is so important in them, and Ori simply doesn’t have it to the extent that I'd like. It makes a trade-off of visual cohesion at the expense of visual clarity in a way that is quite detrimental to the moment-to-moment gameplay. Enemy projectiles blend into the background, foreground foliage covers platforms and paths, overly dark areas muddle your surroundings and require you to turn the game’s brightness up and contrast down just to be able to see where you’re landing, etc. These sorts of issues brought a lot of unnecessary frustration to what should’ve been a satisfying experience- perhaps even a comfy experience given the game’s strong atmosphere.
This lack of clarity applies to some minor aspects of the game as well. The UI, for example, isn’t great in terms of readability either. Especially the health depletion, since it makes it look like you have more hp than you actually do from a quick glance. It, for some reason, slowly drains into empty orbs despite not ACTUALLY slowly draining in practicality. It’s basically like if Earthbound’s “rolling HP bar” didn’t actually allow you to tank fatal blows and the game just assumes you have whatever lowest number the HP will eventually roll down to. It’s… probably not as big a deal on lower difficulties where combat isn’t as tense, but minor issues like this are weird and easily avoidable obfuscations.
In terms of overall challenge, the game kinda gets easier as it goes, weirdly enough. I felt that a lot of the game’s difficulty tends to come from weird jank and intentional restrictions in the first half of the game. But because that stuff slowly disappears as you progress and collect upgrades, the endgame feels a lot more manageable and satisfying to complete. None of it is all that difficult because of its innovative spirit link system. The system allows you to create save points on the fly to regain health, serving as these sort of temporary save states, to quickly retry more challenging segments. But I definitely had the most trouble early on since the aforementioned lack of visual clarity compounded the restrictive movement to make a much for a much more frustrating experience than it probably should've been.
Another aspect of the game’s challenge I feel is worth noting is the balance of Ori’s strength and resource management, both of which I feel aren't great overall, for two main reasons. For one, the normal attack felt completely outclassed by the stomp immediately upon unlocking it. Maybe this was because I played on hard mode, but the normal attack quickly started taking upwards of 10-20 shots just to kill enemies on the main path, even after unlocking the spirit flame strength and quantity upgrades. Meanwhile, the stomp kills just about everything (in a fairly generous radius) right when you unlock it in just a couple hits- while also reflecting all enemy projectiles. It also destroys ground mines even if you land straight on top of them, making almost all enemies helpless if you can safely stomp near them. On top of all that, it also more often than not flips enemies over or staggers them so they are helpless for a few seconds, which is yet another benefit stomping has over using your main attack. So combat in the second half mostly amounts to reflecting projectiles back at enemies with bash and stomping repeatedly as soon as something gets close to you. To be fair though, it’s not that different from the early game combat which is also super mashy- just with spirit flame mashing instead of stomp mashing.
Secondly, the balance of resource management felt pretty weak throughout as well. I will say that I really do enjoy the spirit cell system which makes saving/healing and charge/dash attacks run off of the same currency as one another. It seemed bizarre at first but it actually works pretty well in practicality. It serves as a simple yet effective trade-off between offense and defense. You can save whenever you have energy, but if you’re confident enough, you can sacrifice the checkpoint for an additional powerful attack or two. However, early in the game I found myself constantly depleted of spirit cells, while in the endgame I had more than I knew what to do with.
The low point of the game for me was definitely the ice/wind temple since it doesn’t focus much on what makes the game feel so good to move and explore within. It mainly focuses on a weird gravity mechanic which slows your movement to a crawl, inverts your controls, and wasn’t taught through gameplay as well as it probably could’ve been. At that point in my playthrough I'd unlocked the portable light ball/bash combo so I was able to bypass the first half of the temple without paying much thought to gravity manipulation. But then all of a sudden, it expected me to use the gravity manipulation mechanic in a fairly sophisticated way and I had no idea what it wanted from me for a good 20 minutes before I stumbled upon the solution. An easy fix would’ve been to ban the portable light ball during the temple since it isn’t even used otherwise, so I wish they’d done that to avoid the possibility of confusion altogether. It also ends with a frustrating chase sequence which consists almost entirely of memorizing falling icicles and rocks- the latter of which instakilled me several times despite having 9 hp orbs at that point.
On the other hand, the fire temple which immediately followed was the highlight of the entire game for me. Not just because it’s your main opportunity to put all the tools you’ve collected to the test and implement them in tandem with one another. But also because it just felt a lot meatier, more substantive, than the first two temples (the first temple is also fine tho). It has like eight different sub areas that affect your exploration of the main area upon completion. More importantly though, it’s gimmick free and provides a challenge that is almost entirely platforming-centric.
The chase sequence is better in the fire temple too, though it had WAY too much screen shake. I get that it’s there to add impact and visual weight to the climactic encounter with Kuro, but at a certain point, it just becomes nauseating and distracting. I was also expecting it to go a fair while longer than it did, since it’s the very final challenge of the game. But it kinda just ended up being another short little trial like the prior two.I’m cool with the game not having boss battles or anything like that, but I definitely felt like the last chase sequence should’ve been multi-tiered or something. Oh well.
I won’t go much into narrative since I don’t really care about narrative one way or the other when it comes to 2D platformers or metroidvania. If it resonates with me, then cool. But if it fails to land for me, then there’s no foul either, really. The game’s opening cinematic is fairly impressive with the way it conveys emotion without any direct character dialogue (there is a narrator but tbh I didn’t feel like it added much for the scene and felt ultimately a bit unnecessary). However, I felt the emotion it captured was in large part due to the expressive animation and incredible score that accompanies it. Also, none of the story after the game starts properly did anything for me whatsoever. But again, that doesn’t really matter to me since it’s not why I’m playing this type of game to begin with.
While not the genre-defining experience I felt it probably could’ve been with some fairly minor changes, Ori and the Blind Forest is a very solid game. I didn’t really want to put it down from the moment I started, and once I unlocked the full range of movement, I pretty much played through the entire second half in one sitting. It may not have lived up to what I hoped it could’ve been, but it sets a great foundation for its sequel. So I’m pretty optimistic about seeing how it will further capitalize on the game’s cathartic sense of movement and exploration in the next entry.
2 Comments
fr tell em allie
AllieKatsu
2 years ago