SPOILERS FOR OMORI SINCE THE SPOILER WARNING ISN'T SHOWING UP FOR ME

I feel it imperative to preface this review with the following statement: when I was done with Omori, I wholeheartedly loved it. This was, in no small part, product of the impact one of the game's closing scenes (which, even in retrospective, I consider a huge highlight).

However, the more I discussed this game with friends and started dissecting it, the more I disliked Omori. The game is by no means bad, nor do I hate it, but I also want to express all the things I dislike about it.

There are many things in this game that I started to despise when trying to replay it for the hikkikomori route. Wanting to experince said route was a wake-up call on how a lot of things in this game simply do not work or aren't important.

First, I'd like to talk about the keys from the hangman. There is absolutely no reason why the game doesn't properly communicate their importance (as they're obligatory for progression), and that you can't get all of them on the normal route (which is the route everyone gets first). I was lucky that I focused on gathering as many as I could, and pity those that missed a few and had to traverse Omori's uninspired, bland dreamworld on a treasure hunt that doesn't really justify its own existence.
And yet, in my struggle to gather all of them in my first run, I crashed into this unsurmountable fact that makes me heavily question Omori's design: you cannot gather all keys on a normal run. This is expressed nowhere as far as I can tell. I was getting so frustrated I had to google where I could find the only key I needed at the time, only to find out you can't get it on a normal run (the number of unobtainable keys being 2). While I do understand that both of those keys are not needed for the hangman's completion, I do not find a reason for the game not explaining that you can't possibly reach the key. This is early on in the game, mind you. You do NOT have a clue if this is a key you'll need later, or if the keys despawn. So if you can't get it, nor know if you'll need it, why not clearly state that it's unobtainable?
This might seem nitpicky, but it's a point I want to strongly emphasize since it's a recurring problem with Omori's design: Omori doesn't really care for your investment on it, or at least there's not much of a reward for the time and effort you exhert in order to enjoy all of its nooks and crannies.

Omori is filled to the brim with content that ultimately leads nowhere. Scattered throughout its colorful dreamworld are jokes to write down in order to appease a weeping ghost, and golden doors that ask of you to repeat a secret passcode. And what is your reward for having to slowly traverse multiple areas? ...a shitty sword and some more drab dialogue. While I understand that enjoying Omori's fluff of NPCs is subjective, I cannot remember a single one. Unlike Undertale, whose NPCs were talked about for years due to their uniqueness, Omori fills areas with NPCs whose charm is null.

The dreamworld, despite taking the game hostage for most of it's runtime, is mostly inconsequential. Most of the adventures you'll go through don't really have any weight attached to them, since they don't really have a real world counterpart. This wouldn't be a problem since they're midly entertaining (except for the whale, which sucked), but since it takes up a big portion of the game, it makes the pacing slow down to a crawl.

The many sidequests to be found are really, really bland. Some of them are a bitch to complete (ghost party, sprout moles), and pretty much all of them just kinda... end. The equipment rewards are useful, though, but I do find it really annoying that the game has a lack of a NG+, since the hikikkomori route is a lot more combat oriented, so you'll have to do the sidequests all over again (torture I decided do abstain from).

Remember that coral tree that only existed to explain things to the audience and hand out a completely meaningless decision? Yeah, that's the dreamworld for you.
And the optional area that just had a secret boss and a way to farm items? Like, that was really all it was. Just a secret boss and a mountain of healing items.

The final problem I'll talk about is related to the ending and twist, which is the reason why this review is flagged with a spoiler warning.
Despite my initial awe at the twist... I can't really say, in retrospective, that it works. Yes, it's shocking, but it's also kinda... forced?
This criticism is a little iffy, I know, but stick with me here. Is there really a reason why they would carry a dead body and fake a suicide? And I understand that it was shock that led them to make such a grave mistake, and they were not acting rationally. But it still tugs at my mind, how the whole hanging just kinda exists for the sake of a twist and, ultimately, feels like a cheap shot at shocking players. And yeah, I was shocked to find out the truth, but I also feel a little cheated over how completely out of left field it is.

Then comes another problem: Sunny's "redemption". This one might be a persona misunderstanding of the resolution, but I do think it's kinda stupid how Sunny comes to terms with his sins because he constantly thinks his friends are gonna be fine with it. And while I know that's not what his resolution is completely made out of, it still feels a little dishonest for him to imagine all the people he lied to and made suffer to accept him, and that fantasy being the thing that makes him step forward.
Overall, I think Omori's writing just cornered itself in order to be shocking, but it crumbles before the weight of the steps that its main character had to take in order for the twist to be realized.

Still, I do think Omori is fine. The Sunny sections I found to be really charming.
The sidequests were a lot more than the dreamworld ones, and the much more concise world made it a lot more bearable to walk from point A to point B.
Wanting to find out the truth behind Mari's death and trying to repair this friendship that was tragically broken felt gripping. I grew to really like Kel, Aubrey, and Hero. Even Mari, whos memory lived thanks to them.

The combat, even if it is just a rock-paper-scissors buff/debuff system, was really fun to play around with. You really can do a lot of different strategies and experiment with the different emotions. The UI looked great and brimmed with style. Animations looked good, and I loved the portraits.

And some moments, man... were really well done. The duet is, obviously, the biggest highlight of the game. But I also really liked the picnic at Mari's gravestone, and getting to hear different characters' way of dealing with her death was really, really nicely done. Don't even get me started on watching Hero cry at the piano...

And Omori doesn't just handle emotional moments right. All the horror parts were great. Every single mirror appearance was awesome, and really well done.


Omori is... bloated. It is filled to the brim with stuff that, ultimately, doesn't really contribute towards anything and spoils a lot of the experience for me. As a whole, it feels unfocused and, like its main character, is unable to maintain the juggling act between the two realities it presents to us. If a lot of the dreamworld was trimmed, and there had been a larger focus on strengthening its narrative, I think we would be discussing where it would sit alongside other RPGmaker games as a new classic. But alas, Lisa the Painful it is not.