This review contains spoilers
I'm really torn on Omori. For context, I played the "good ending" route without the bonus Basil scene.
I don't mind messy RPG Maker games - in fact I love a lot of them - but parts of Omori are messy in ways that aren't interesting. The early game especially tends towards weak map design and merely "okay" cute wacky story sequences that didn't really pull me in.
There's an interesting tension in the fantasy world sequences about how invested you can really get in what you know isn't real, about these characters you know are fake in the game's own fiction - but that tension doesn't really hold for ~10-15 hours of gameplay.
Up until the last few hours I thought it was okay, if not great. The late-game twist feels, honestly, incredibly unearned and mawkish. It feels timed and written to prioritize shocking the player and making the player feel sad over accomplishing its narrative and thematic goals. I see a lot of players making memes about how sad the game made them, so I guess it worked for some people, but it just didn't land right for me.
According to the wiki, there's internal text for the "Truth" photo album that tells the story of Mari's death in lurid detail. It feels intended specifically for wiki dataminers who need every detail, and, honestly, those details are better left untold. The scene's more effective by being told vaguely and leaving the player room to interpret; leaving it carefully written out frankly takes away from it. Worse, it makes players start thinking about whether it's even possible for it to have happened, and at the point players are thinking about "could this even work" you've lost the mindset you need for this kind of horror to work.
For the same reasons, I ended up finding Basil a more interesting and nuanced character. You're not given as much detail about what happened with him, or how to think about him, and it leaves a lot more room to think about it.
A version of Omori that's about 10 hours shorter and less focused on "making players sad" would be a lot more interesting.
I don't mind messy RPG Maker games - in fact I love a lot of them - but parts of Omori are messy in ways that aren't interesting. The early game especially tends towards weak map design and merely "okay" cute wacky story sequences that didn't really pull me in.
There's an interesting tension in the fantasy world sequences about how invested you can really get in what you know isn't real, about these characters you know are fake in the game's own fiction - but that tension doesn't really hold for ~10-15 hours of gameplay.
Up until the last few hours I thought it was okay, if not great. The late-game twist feels, honestly, incredibly unearned and mawkish. It feels timed and written to prioritize shocking the player and making the player feel sad over accomplishing its narrative and thematic goals. I see a lot of players making memes about how sad the game made them, so I guess it worked for some people, but it just didn't land right for me.
According to the wiki, there's internal text for the "Truth" photo album that tells the story of Mari's death in lurid detail. It feels intended specifically for wiki dataminers who need every detail, and, honestly, those details are better left untold. The scene's more effective by being told vaguely and leaving the player room to interpret; leaving it carefully written out frankly takes away from it. Worse, it makes players start thinking about whether it's even possible for it to have happened, and at the point players are thinking about "could this even work" you've lost the mindset you need for this kind of horror to work.
For the same reasons, I ended up finding Basil a more interesting and nuanced character. You're not given as much detail about what happened with him, or how to think about him, and it leaves a lot more room to think about it.
A version of Omori that's about 10 hours shorter and less focused on "making players sad" would be a lot more interesting.