I hated the first game. After seeing a bit of gameplay, I decided to give it a go, but all it did was irritate me. Left disappointed and annoyed, I discovered the sequel. Learning that it was a much bigger game with higher public approval was a good sign but, from what I could tell, it maintained the same core elements, so I wasn’t convinced to play it. However, it weighed on me. How could they have salvaged it? Was I missing out on a great game because of my stubbornness? I gave into my urges, perhaps out of spite for the first game, and gave it a go. As expected, it felt similar at the beginning. But quickly after, I realized that the two games were in totally different leagues. Put simply, Ori and the Will of the Wisps is the greatest increase in quality from a prequel to its sequel that I’ve ever experienced in a game. And in a way, I’m glad I disliked the first one since, for that reason, my expectations were at rock-bottom only to be launched skyward. Much of my love for this game comes from the leaps and bounds made from the first one, demonstrating how to breathe life into a game and make it flourish. But even beyond that, it stands as a brilliant game in the genre.
One of the subtle yet significant ways it improved is through the visuals. There’s a wider variation of colour, more detailed background art and a great use of lighting. The areas in the first game felt too similar and blended together in my brain, whereas here, it ranges from the flashy and vibrant Luma Pools to the pitch-black Mouldwood Depths. Lighting and colours are used to emphasise the abundance of life or to illustrate its absence. On top of this, lighting is used in climactic story beats to add to the feeling conveyed. For example, at the end of a hard-fought battle and sad revelation, Ori stands in front of a low sunset with a warm orange covering the sky—a bittersweet scene of melancholy and hope. The music has the same effect in elevating the important scenes. But even throughout the rest of the game, the music is consistently and noticeably impressive. The developers had a clear vision for each area and moulded that with the music. Considering the setting for the game is a fantasy-like forest full of nature’s beauty, the aesthetic and atmosphere are essential. And with music and visuals like this, they were able to fully immerse me into their world.
However, the strongest factor in that immersion doesn’t come from the audio-visuals. I remember one reason I disliked the first game was because the world felt empty and suffocating, which isn’t bad per se, but it didn’t feel intentional. The game tried to capture the natural beauty of a forest, like I mentioned before, but every about it felt oppressive, even the areas that weren’t meant to feel that way. It was as if every insect, platform and living-being existed solely to be an obstacle and to kill me—far from being natural, it was as if they were specifically engineered for gameplay, rather than it being a coherent and believable world. In the second game, though, the world is revived. NPCs are added that sell items, give quests or just deliver casual dialogue. A central hub is added for meeting these NPCs, developing a community, shopping or just to relax in. The enemies are more diverse in appearance and species, and more fitting to each area, creating living and breathing ecosystems. This time, it feels like adventuring through a pre-existing world—like a fish in an ocean—instead of the world revolving around yourself. It still nails the oppressive atmosphere when it decides to, but this time, due to the contrast between the areas, the level of threat is exacerbated and it’s as if the might of mother nature weighs down on you because of the believability of the world. In addition to the more fleshed out lore and narrative, the second game creates a completely different environment and breathes life into the world, which is the driving force for the immersion.
To complement the worldbuilding, the exploration has been designed to provide incentive to unravel it. Life and energy cells, which have a huge impact on the combat, are scattered throughout the map. Skills and abilities are hidden as well, which transform everything from the combat, movement, and aid in even more exploration. Quests are also given to incentivize finding more NPCs and going to certain areas. The key element here, though, is the reward system. Exploration is massively rewarded and required; exploring some subsections of the map can even give you +25% damage on all attacks with no cost, which is shocking. What’s more, the main story’s exploration is structured similarly to Breath of the Wild—there is a big boss in each corner of the map that you need to explore. So even if you want to B-line the main story, you’re still made to explore the world and there is no way around it.
Despite all the improvements I’ve discussed, the greatest of all is the combat. Though, the first game set the bar pretty low, this game turned the combat into something incredible. The core of the prequel’s combat was straightforward: you stood near the enemy and spam click, to which your attacks would lock on. During this, enemies would attack with a limited and simple move-set, although not necessarily easy—they were simple but in a very annoying way. Most of the enemies would either run straight at you or shoot something, either being very fast and strong or covering a huge area, making it hard to avoid. Actually, for most of the enemies you had to move back, move forward then hit, move back and repeat. Because of this, the fights were pretty awkward since you were forced to do the same thing over and over with no way to speed it up or approach it differently—the solution to defeating them was easy to figure out but annoying even if you did. However, the sequel elevated the combat in every way. Firstly, the core of the gameplay is no longer sitting back with an auto-aim. In fact, you can shape the core of the gameplay however you want since even the basic attack is not set in stone. The player’s attacks are as diversified as you can imagine. You can run in with a huge hammer, sit back with a bow and arrow, set them ablaze, launch a crushing spear of doom (my favourite) and more. On the enemies’ end, there is a massive increase in their move-set, movement, complexity and so on. Through this, the approach the enemies take and the approach you can take yourself in the combat is made unbelievably personalised and dynamic.
Adding to the combat, in gaming, one of the most important combat-related aspects for me are bosses. So, you can imagine my disappointment when I found out the first game didn’t have any. Bosses are powerful for story beats and intense and memorable moments, especially for this genre. Luckily, though, the sequel has bosses, albeit not many. And, oh boy, do they pack a punch; the game prioritized quality over quantity because the bosses that they do have are brilliantly designed. Each boss fight has a diverse move-set with interesting ways to counter and avoid. The weight of their attacks are greatly conveyed. But, what impresses me the most is how the environment is integrated into the fights. The arena uses elements from the area you explored to get there, meaning that you are required to use the mechanics you learnt in interesting ways. Each boss is so different because they involve totally different mechanics and in completely different arenas—even within singular boss fights the arena is constantly changing. On top of this, the game specialises in ‘escape sequences’ where you are chased by the boss and have to manoeuvre obstacles with little room for error. And the developers don’t hold back with these. Intense music is played with the environment shifting the whole time and a massive enemy chasing you from behind. If you’re too slow, you get one-shotted. These scenes are sometimes used before a boss fight or between the first and second phase and are amazing ways to build tension, elevating the fight and the player’s excitement. Another thing I like is that healing resources are provided within the arena, so there is never a point where you have lost and should give up. There is always an opportunity to comeback by healing because there is always a way to heal. This lowers the emphasis on perfection and more towards focusing on doing the best you can with what you have.
Unlike the combat, one of the things I actually liked in the first game was the movement. And even still, the sequel made it so much better. Ori and the Will of the Wisps has some of the best feeling and mechanically dynamic movement systems in any game I’ve played. You want to get from point A to B? Sure, you can just run most of the way. OR, you could roll twice, triple jump then glide, bash upward and grapple onto the ceiling, dive into water and propel yourself up, burrow into the ground and dash out of it, spin around a vertical pole and zoom sideways, throw a fireball and parry that to go further, or even launch yourself in any direction. Simply put, the movement is versatile and smooth like butter—Ori is frictionless. With so many mechanics and features that can be stringed together and used in any way you see fit, it adds so much to the feeling of exploration, combat and gameplay in general.
There are also a few quality of life features that make the game easier to play. For example, the interface is more detailed and easier to navigate. Also, one thing that irritated me in the first game was how I couldn’t just click on a teleport point on the map and go there, but that was fixed in the sequel.
But, even with all this praise I’ve given, there are a few issues I have with the game. The first issue is with the difficulty. I played on hard mode, which is the highest difficulty they had, and honestly found it too easy. Because of this, I avoided power-ups for a long time so I wouldn’t be overpowered. It took me a long time to get pushed to the point of needing to upgrade, so a lot of the personalisation was lost for me. As well as this, I think the way the difficulty was increased was rather artificial too. The only clear way that the hard mode was made hard was through the enemies dealing more damage and having more health. In fact, the bosses were sort of exhausting because of how long it took to chip down their HP bit by bit. Another thing to mention is how the saving system works. In this game, it is automatically managed, whereas you had to save manually in the first one. Although it is convenient, it might be too convenient as there isn’t any cost to dying most of the time. Even in boss fights there is a save checkpoint halfway through or after the chase scene.
However, the weakest aspect of the game for me is the narrative. It certainly improved from the first game, but is nonetheless not that powerful. Rather than a compelling story that I completely bought into, it felt like I was completing the main story just because I was told to do so. At times, they were adding little bits and pieces of lore here and there but didn’t give me enough reason to care. The game is almost too easily understood as there isn’t any requirement to understand what’s going on, so there isn’t much motivation to. I suppose there are some loose themes here and there, such as being rejected by love leading to rejecting it yourself, or of hope, but nothing notably concrete or thought-provoking. And, as a side-note, I thought it was pretty weird for Ori to be trying to save the forest while brutally murdering the animals and insects within it at the same time. Personally, I think narrative and story are not necessarily imperative for games, but are still powerful and important. This game seems to treat the story as important but doesn’t execute it to a high quality.
And as a small criticism, it does take a lot of inspiration from other games. I say small because it makes the game a lot better in many aspects but prevents it from standing out in the genre and carving its own path. For example, the parallels with Hollow Knight are pretty funny: the emblem/spirit shard system, the healing system, the spirit cell/soul energy system, the gibberish the NPCs speak, the map guy you need to find in each area, the bosses and so on.
Having said all that, I don’t have any major criticisms. The game was an absolute joy to play—especially because of how much I disliked the first one. The gameplay is smooth and satisfying, the world is vibrant and exciting and is overall just a beautiful work of art. 9/10
One of the subtle yet significant ways it improved is through the visuals. There’s a wider variation of colour, more detailed background art and a great use of lighting. The areas in the first game felt too similar and blended together in my brain, whereas here, it ranges from the flashy and vibrant Luma Pools to the pitch-black Mouldwood Depths. Lighting and colours are used to emphasise the abundance of life or to illustrate its absence. On top of this, lighting is used in climactic story beats to add to the feeling conveyed. For example, at the end of a hard-fought battle and sad revelation, Ori stands in front of a low sunset with a warm orange covering the sky—a bittersweet scene of melancholy and hope. The music has the same effect in elevating the important scenes. But even throughout the rest of the game, the music is consistently and noticeably impressive. The developers had a clear vision for each area and moulded that with the music. Considering the setting for the game is a fantasy-like forest full of nature’s beauty, the aesthetic and atmosphere are essential. And with music and visuals like this, they were able to fully immerse me into their world.
However, the strongest factor in that immersion doesn’t come from the audio-visuals. I remember one reason I disliked the first game was because the world felt empty and suffocating, which isn’t bad per se, but it didn’t feel intentional. The game tried to capture the natural beauty of a forest, like I mentioned before, but every about it felt oppressive, even the areas that weren’t meant to feel that way. It was as if every insect, platform and living-being existed solely to be an obstacle and to kill me—far from being natural, it was as if they were specifically engineered for gameplay, rather than it being a coherent and believable world. In the second game, though, the world is revived. NPCs are added that sell items, give quests or just deliver casual dialogue. A central hub is added for meeting these NPCs, developing a community, shopping or just to relax in. The enemies are more diverse in appearance and species, and more fitting to each area, creating living and breathing ecosystems. This time, it feels like adventuring through a pre-existing world—like a fish in an ocean—instead of the world revolving around yourself. It still nails the oppressive atmosphere when it decides to, but this time, due to the contrast between the areas, the level of threat is exacerbated and it’s as if the might of mother nature weighs down on you because of the believability of the world. In addition to the more fleshed out lore and narrative, the second game creates a completely different environment and breathes life into the world, which is the driving force for the immersion.
To complement the worldbuilding, the exploration has been designed to provide incentive to unravel it. Life and energy cells, which have a huge impact on the combat, are scattered throughout the map. Skills and abilities are hidden as well, which transform everything from the combat, movement, and aid in even more exploration. Quests are also given to incentivize finding more NPCs and going to certain areas. The key element here, though, is the reward system. Exploration is massively rewarded and required; exploring some subsections of the map can even give you +25% damage on all attacks with no cost, which is shocking. What’s more, the main story’s exploration is structured similarly to Breath of the Wild—there is a big boss in each corner of the map that you need to explore. So even if you want to B-line the main story, you’re still made to explore the world and there is no way around it.
Despite all the improvements I’ve discussed, the greatest of all is the combat. Though, the first game set the bar pretty low, this game turned the combat into something incredible. The core of the prequel’s combat was straightforward: you stood near the enemy and spam click, to which your attacks would lock on. During this, enemies would attack with a limited and simple move-set, although not necessarily easy—they were simple but in a very annoying way. Most of the enemies would either run straight at you or shoot something, either being very fast and strong or covering a huge area, making it hard to avoid. Actually, for most of the enemies you had to move back, move forward then hit, move back and repeat. Because of this, the fights were pretty awkward since you were forced to do the same thing over and over with no way to speed it up or approach it differently—the solution to defeating them was easy to figure out but annoying even if you did. However, the sequel elevated the combat in every way. Firstly, the core of the gameplay is no longer sitting back with an auto-aim. In fact, you can shape the core of the gameplay however you want since even the basic attack is not set in stone. The player’s attacks are as diversified as you can imagine. You can run in with a huge hammer, sit back with a bow and arrow, set them ablaze, launch a crushing spear of doom (my favourite) and more. On the enemies’ end, there is a massive increase in their move-set, movement, complexity and so on. Through this, the approach the enemies take and the approach you can take yourself in the combat is made unbelievably personalised and dynamic.
Adding to the combat, in gaming, one of the most important combat-related aspects for me are bosses. So, you can imagine my disappointment when I found out the first game didn’t have any. Bosses are powerful for story beats and intense and memorable moments, especially for this genre. Luckily, though, the sequel has bosses, albeit not many. And, oh boy, do they pack a punch; the game prioritized quality over quantity because the bosses that they do have are brilliantly designed. Each boss fight has a diverse move-set with interesting ways to counter and avoid. The weight of their attacks are greatly conveyed. But, what impresses me the most is how the environment is integrated into the fights. The arena uses elements from the area you explored to get there, meaning that you are required to use the mechanics you learnt in interesting ways. Each boss is so different because they involve totally different mechanics and in completely different arenas—even within singular boss fights the arena is constantly changing. On top of this, the game specialises in ‘escape sequences’ where you are chased by the boss and have to manoeuvre obstacles with little room for error. And the developers don’t hold back with these. Intense music is played with the environment shifting the whole time and a massive enemy chasing you from behind. If you’re too slow, you get one-shotted. These scenes are sometimes used before a boss fight or between the first and second phase and are amazing ways to build tension, elevating the fight and the player’s excitement. Another thing I like is that healing resources are provided within the arena, so there is never a point where you have lost and should give up. There is always an opportunity to comeback by healing because there is always a way to heal. This lowers the emphasis on perfection and more towards focusing on doing the best you can with what you have.
Unlike the combat, one of the things I actually liked in the first game was the movement. And even still, the sequel made it so much better. Ori and the Will of the Wisps has some of the best feeling and mechanically dynamic movement systems in any game I’ve played. You want to get from point A to B? Sure, you can just run most of the way. OR, you could roll twice, triple jump then glide, bash upward and grapple onto the ceiling, dive into water and propel yourself up, burrow into the ground and dash out of it, spin around a vertical pole and zoom sideways, throw a fireball and parry that to go further, or even launch yourself in any direction. Simply put, the movement is versatile and smooth like butter—Ori is frictionless. With so many mechanics and features that can be stringed together and used in any way you see fit, it adds so much to the feeling of exploration, combat and gameplay in general.
There are also a few quality of life features that make the game easier to play. For example, the interface is more detailed and easier to navigate. Also, one thing that irritated me in the first game was how I couldn’t just click on a teleport point on the map and go there, but that was fixed in the sequel.
But, even with all this praise I’ve given, there are a few issues I have with the game. The first issue is with the difficulty. I played on hard mode, which is the highest difficulty they had, and honestly found it too easy. Because of this, I avoided power-ups for a long time so I wouldn’t be overpowered. It took me a long time to get pushed to the point of needing to upgrade, so a lot of the personalisation was lost for me. As well as this, I think the way the difficulty was increased was rather artificial too. The only clear way that the hard mode was made hard was through the enemies dealing more damage and having more health. In fact, the bosses were sort of exhausting because of how long it took to chip down their HP bit by bit. Another thing to mention is how the saving system works. In this game, it is automatically managed, whereas you had to save manually in the first one. Although it is convenient, it might be too convenient as there isn’t any cost to dying most of the time. Even in boss fights there is a save checkpoint halfway through or after the chase scene.
However, the weakest aspect of the game for me is the narrative. It certainly improved from the first game, but is nonetheless not that powerful. Rather than a compelling story that I completely bought into, it felt like I was completing the main story just because I was told to do so. At times, they were adding little bits and pieces of lore here and there but didn’t give me enough reason to care. The game is almost too easily understood as there isn’t any requirement to understand what’s going on, so there isn’t much motivation to. I suppose there are some loose themes here and there, such as being rejected by love leading to rejecting it yourself, or of hope, but nothing notably concrete or thought-provoking. And, as a side-note, I thought it was pretty weird for Ori to be trying to save the forest while brutally murdering the animals and insects within it at the same time. Personally, I think narrative and story are not necessarily imperative for games, but are still powerful and important. This game seems to treat the story as important but doesn’t execute it to a high quality.
And as a small criticism, it does take a lot of inspiration from other games. I say small because it makes the game a lot better in many aspects but prevents it from standing out in the genre and carving its own path. For example, the parallels with Hollow Knight are pretty funny: the emblem/spirit shard system, the healing system, the spirit cell/soul energy system, the gibberish the NPCs speak, the map guy you need to find in each area, the bosses and so on.
Having said all that, I don’t have any major criticisms. The game was an absolute joy to play—especially because of how much I disliked the first one. The gameplay is smooth and satisfying, the world is vibrant and exciting and is overall just a beautiful work of art. 9/10