Ori and the Will of the Wisps (2020)

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is another helping of bouncy platforming through gorgeous luminescent biomes. The combat has been changed to a system where Ori basically wields a sword, which helps put more control in the player's hands but also leaves it feeling a bit too close to Hollow Knight sometimes for my taste. Boss encounters often ended up frustrating me with their stacked health pools and large contact damage hitboxes, but still impressed visually. The platforming still feels great if not better and as such I see this as a bit of an overall upgrade over its predecessor. If you enjoyed that it's worth giving this a try.

Early on Will of the Wisps felt oddly heavy in dialogue and cutscenes. Like sure, you need to get your story set up, but the first half hour or so was mostly just comprised of only that, which wasn't really what I was ready for. Thankfully the story itself is pretty decent for what it is. It tugged on my heart in the right ways and some of the places it went pleasantly surprised me. It's mature without feeling like it's trying too hard to be dark/sad, and features some characters I grew pretty attached to as I played.

As with the previous entry in the series, the environments are simply bursting with color and light. This game is a treat to look at and virtually every moment of it is gorgeous from start to finish. It does still suffer from some of the visual clarity issues of its predecessor as well. Sometimes I'd straight up lose Ori in all the particle effects during combat and I'd take otherwise avoidable damage as a result. This sort of leads into my discussion about combat.

Having revamped the combat system, this game places a larger focus on battles in order to take full advantage of it. While movement is very fluid and responsive, enemies (especially bosses) often don't appropriately convey upcoming attacks in a satisfactory way. With so much happening onscreen and all the flashing lights it can be really easy to miss the tell for an incoming attack, assuming it's even possible to see it. This made most but not all bosses into frustrating experiences and I more often felt relieved to finally be able to move on to something hopefully more fun when I beat them than anything else. If you're not going to have enemies properly telegraph attacks, you can't have those attacks be capable of killing you outright at high HP.

Thankfully the platforming feels superb! Early on I felt pretty restricted but the shackles quickly came off as I unlocked abilities and before long I was gleefully zipping around, exploring every dark corner of the world I could get into. The game keeps tossing new mobility tools your way up until the very end and they felt pretty well paced, so I always had some new toy to mess around with as I traversed the game's world. Save for the occasional blunder, the fast paced escape sequences did a decent job of allowing for intuitive navigation the first time, which felt great to pull off.

I don't feel like there's a ton else to say. I wouldn't skip the first game, as it's very good as well, but I feel like this one comes out a bit ahead in spite of the clunky bosses. As I said, if you've already played the first game, there's no reason to not check this out if you can. It really is more of the same stuff, just tweaked, and I had a great time playing through it.

I advise you to find my prequel review to understand my opinion, but in short: the dilogy itself is very beautiful and fabulous.

What distinguishes the first part from the second? What do I like and dislike?

I like the gameplay of all. It is slightly unbalanced (gatlingator go brrrr) but it's still more dynamic than in the prequel, which was just good, and the game now looks more dynamic and cinematic in its own way. Ori has become much more mobile, and the accuracy and smoothness of his animation and movement have become much better, just running, jumping, flying and moving around in this game in a bunch of available ways is really nice, so I calmly cleaned up the entire game and the map... 4 times?

Bossfights... Oh, yeah... I don't even want to say anything about them, but they also add artistry, because they are absolutely beautiful and emotional. The feature of the series in the form of Escapes has become even better, more cinematic, and there are more of them in general. It pleases.

And the only thing I don't like... Story... It is just weaker...

I'll explain briefly for those who haven't played: it lacks morality and depth, the game seemed to be divided into good and bad, when in the last part it was not clear where what was.

Now for those who have played or are not too worried about this:

The antagonist... Unfortunately, she is faceless. In my opinion, she is the one who is "evil because she is evil," they explained to us why this is, but... I don't like the way they said goodbye to her. She simply died from an unfair world of suffering, and it is unlikely that her anger and hatred could have died out in the end. I sincerely feel sorry for this creature, which is even a shame for her, because the story has lost its depth... However, the cycle ended, as did the dilogy, with Ori becoming the new Spirit Tree. This is logical, given the additional plot from the Definitive Edition of the previous game, the whole life and the whole world is a cycle.

Everyone who hasn't played it yet... Everyone who played the first part, but did not play this one, play it.

Just play it.

An absolutely gorgeous and emotional experience. I had a lot of apprehension coming into this because while I enjoyed Ori 1, I found its gameplay pretty lacking and its story just decent. But this one fixes almost all of the issues I had with the first game, providing much better combat, even different combinations of combat you can use throughout the game, and making the platforming feel even more fluid and enjoyable. The story was also done much better, making things much higher stakes, including new emotionally complex characters, which all have beautiful ends to their stories, and just making the world feel a lot bigger, and you a lot more important within it. I still had some issues with some of the gameplay occasionally feeling a little samey or backtracking being a little annoying, but this is really up to personal preference and I feel like I could have easily just started using other combat styles or movement to make up for this.

Overall had a great time, and the ending was phenomenal.

Incredible game, decent port, but overall I stopped at 92% completion due to constant crashing. About 50% of the time, whenever I dock or undock my Switch, the game will crash, and I think it has to do with leaving it running for long periods of time, strongly pushing me to believe it's a slow memory leak.

I've also had to manually close the game about 10-15 times (out of estimated 30 crashes in my 14 hour playthrough) because of the slow zone loading, causing Ori to drop into the floor.

I am aware that a patch was pushed out closer to the time of the release that apparently "fixes" those issues, but my copy was fully up to date and I experience non-stop problems.

Normally these types of hiccups wouldn't phase me, but it takes over 3 minutes to get back into the game again which really deflates your desire to keep going, the endless opening load animation, the Microsoft Studios, Moon Studios, slow fade in, game load... it just takes forever. Once the game is in, it's an absolute blast, but I have to knock a star off my final rating. If it booted back up in 30 seconds I wouldn't even be writing this but after so many issues I can't help but feel frustrated at it after putting it back on the shelf.

The last straw was wandering around for an hour, looking for my last few collectibles, when I experienced yet another crash, and I decided I had had enough.

Overall the Ori Collection was a fantastical and gorgeous ride and I highly recommend them both, I just wish the sequel was as polished as the first.

There is something that I can't still completely get around in this saga and it's the physics of jumping off a grabbed wall. Instead of having full control, you kind of jump in a forced diagonal. then, if you are holding to a pillar and want to get on top of said pillar, you have to do a weird 270° turn also with little fine control on where you land. I thought it was something unintentional after playing the first but now that I'm on the second, I feel like it was a design decision and one that I don't understand.

Well, that or I suck at the game.

This was such a great sequel. I don't think I'll ever be able to play the first one again though, because it'll just make me wish I was playing the second instead lol.

The two most notably impressive aspects of the game are the visuals and the score, both of which are utterly phenomenal. The level design was also really great, which is often the key to having a successful metroidvania. The combat in this game was also a serious step up from its predecessor. The combat in the first game felt clunky and uninspired. The combat in Will of the Wisps clearly takes from Hollow Knight to result in a much more engaging fighting system.

One thing I did have an issue with was the difficulty of the game. Ori and the Blind Forest was incredibly challenging to the point of being almost unfair at times, but this game was nowhere near challenging enough. There were a few bosses that I had to face a few times in order to master the battle, but throughout my whole playthrough I found myself wondering, "When is it going to get as hard as the first one?" Nevertheless, the aspects of exploration, puzzle solving, finding secrets, fighting enemies, and completing quests were all very rewarding and resulted in a really great game.

Originally, my biggest gripe with ori was the story, but on a replay it clicked way more. Now I have zero complaints, I love this game so much. It did borrow a ton from hollow knight, but still it is nearly perfectly designed.

All the abilities are so fun, the world is complex and gorgeous, the combat is so much improved on from the original, the platforming is a blast. I loved the map design and how they incorporated telling you where things are.

I’m sad the series is dead, and I really hope more AA/AAA devs take on this genre. This game proves what a big budget and backing can produce - a nearly perfect metroidvania.

Awesome game, Moon Studios did an amazing job. While I don't pay much attention to the story, the general plot was nice to follow. But the stand out of this game is the mechanics, art and music. Ori just controls perfectly and is really fun to move around. This is a quality game with amazing visuals.

The combat in this game feels great since Ori controls so we'll but my main complaint is that unlike other Metroidvanias I found that Ori powers up to quickly or it's that the stronger spells\moves are given to you very early on. This made enemies and even bosses pretty easy (at least on the default difficulty). With that said I can't deny that the bosses are creative and fun to fight. Sadly the overworld enemies are just repetitive. Usually just a different variation based on location of the same overworld enemy. This wasn't a huge issue but it's just something I noticed.

The platforming is what draws me to this game and it has plenty of it, while enemies may be tedious, jumping around and solving platforming "puzzles" is entertaining. The tight controls makes it fun to grab the collectables found in the game. Mixing your spells and movement skills to get as much movement out of them as possible just feels great.

Overall and awesome sequel to the first Ori game and definitely recommend.

wish I could rate this higher. The artwork and story seem like they'd make for a great side-scrolling platformer.

My core issue is with the gameplay. The tricks involved in getting past barriers start at difficult and became impossible once the torchlight vector launches began. I simply couldn't advance. Perhaps the issue is with the Steam port, perhaps my controller wasn't sensitive enough, but I've had no issues in the past making it through a number of platform agility games.

If you can try it first for your system's gameplay compatibility first, I would do that.

I wish I could rate this higher. The artwork and story seem like they'd make for a great side-scrolling platformer.

My core issue is with the gameplay. The tricks involved in getting past barriers start at difficult and became impossible once the torchlight vector launches began. I simply couldn't advance. Perhaps the issue is with the Steam port, perhaps my controller wasn't sensitive enough, but I've had no issues in the past making it through a number of platform agility games.

If you can try it first for your system's gameplay compatibility first, I would do that.

This game is obviously made with care and detail, and I like some things about it in my first couple of hours, but I’m not really feeling it too much overall yet. Not surprising since I didn’t really like the prior game, but from all the acclaim this got, I thought it might be a different enough experience to really grab me.

For now, I’m getting annoyed more than I’m getting immersed. The main appeal for me is methodically clearing through the game’s more puzzle-y platforming areas, but I think I might as well just go play Celeste or something at that point instead of plowing through another Metroidvania-style action platformer that is less appealing to me than so many that I’ve already played.

I’ll give props for the cutscenes, which while not really my style, are obviously well-done. The default attack feels good, a fast, furious sword flurry that I wish the enemy designs allowed you to enjoy a bit more. The generous checkpointing is exactly what a certain similar game would benefit from to reduce its tedium. Overall I do agree with the consensus that this is a clear step up from the last game.

Another great platformer with a touch of metroidvania mechanics (I wish we had a better name for this, I'm not a huge fan of naming a mechanic after the game(s) that invented or popularised the design). Personally I was struck with how much it wore its Hollow Knight inspiration on its sleeve, not that that's a bad thing, it's one of my favourite games. As with the first game I really enjoy the core movement of this one and how each upgrade makes you faster and faster and more and more versatile with your movement options. The fact that I went back and 100%'ed it after I finished the game simply because I enjoyed zipping around the map is a testament to how well both the movement mechanics and the maps are designed. My favourite mechanic from the first game - launching yourself off of projectiles and enemies - made its return here as well, and I am happy with how early I got it.

Difficulty wise I wish there were harder platforming sections, or a really hard optional area where you could really prove your mastery of the system. Combat I didn't care much for, not because it was bad but it was simply not why I was there. I played it on normal, didn't really have any difficulties with any of the fights and that's ok. I think I cheesed most of them so I could get back to what I enjoyed.

Overall a great experience to keep me distracted while I wait for Spelunky 2 on PC.

Game of the Year for 2020 is up in the air. Will it be Animal Crossing New Horizons? The Last of Us Part 2? Ghost of Tsushima? Could it be a dark horse like Hades? Well, in my opinion, one game that needs to be in the conversation is Ori and the Will of the Wisps, perhaps the biggest surprise announcement so far in 2020 for the Nintendo Switch.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ori, it start out as a first party title for Microsoft X-Box. It's a beautiful metrovania style game featuring the title character going on an adventure in a vast, gorgeous world. The first title, Ori and the Blind Forest, came out to the Switch after Microsoft announced it was letting a few of their first party titles go over to the console. It was a major success, but many were doubtful the more graphically intensive second title, The Will of the Wisps, was going to make the transition. Well, we were treated to a wonderful surprise when we learned that yes, it was coming to the Switch. Not only does it run on the platform, but it runs very well in fact.

If you liked Ori and the Blind Forest, you will find Ori and the Will of the Wisps familiar, but even better in many ways. For starters, many of the complaints of the first game have been corrected, such as saving progress (now the game autosaves, and does so generously, compared to the limited opportunities in the first one), attacking enemies (you get a sword like weapon early on, which makes fighting so much better than in the first one), and overall cheapness of certain challenges (platforming, boss fights, escape sequences, etc.) There's still a lot of challenge, but it's much more balanced and fair.

The awesome graphics and music of the first game return, but even better. The game is art in so many ways and really tugs at your emotions. The atmosphere is mesmerizing. The feels the game produces are things I more found in great literature and film, not video games. It's amazing.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is one of the best games I've ever played, and needs to be in serious consideration for 2020 Game of the Year. You can play it on X-Box or PC, but it fits the Switch like a glove and runs very well on the console, both in handheld and docked mode.

Look at this Ori Collector's Edition craziness. It's $169 USD to ship to Canada. That's just simply too much for me. I didn't like the first one enough to drop almost $230 CAD on this. But it is really pretty. I just wish I could buy the games separately for the standard single game cost.

It’s still Ori. It’s still awesome and if you’ve played the Blind Forest you’re going to love Will of the Wisps. And if you’ve not played the first game yet - don’t read this - read about the first one and play it.

This game takes what was great about the first one and delivers more of the same quality with some quite welcome improvements. Those seem heavily influenced by Hollow Knight and they work really well. To be honest they almost feel ripped of to be specific. Shards adding extra skills that can either be bought or earned - really neat addition though not an original one. The map maker seems like a character from Hollow Knight and does exactly the same.

That said the game is still awesome and worth picking up. The combat is tight although at times there’s a bit too much light flashing. Soundtrack is strong as previously - honestly one of the best soundtracks in games ever. Platforming in form. Level design and platforming puzzles top notch. Bosses and enemy designs are interesting with a great sense of scale.

The charming magical world is still there and just a wonder to be a part of.

From the new stuff, there’s a couple of things. There are already mentioned shards with specific abilities you can equip at any time. There’s also some new abilities you can or need to use to progress or aid in your fights. It’s interesting because you can assign them to the buttons at any time to change your gameplay style - neat. There’s also races (time trials) you uncover and can compete against a ghost. Challenge areas - where you fight multiple waves of enemies to unlock new shard slots.

There’s also a lot more smaller missions and a lot of charming characters with fetch quests. You also get tasked (optionally) to collect some things and help out with building a settlement for the Moki.

A lot of secrets to find and uncover as well - which I really liked.

And the movement just feels so fluid with the abilities you can chain for a really long air time.

Overall it’s a great game, one of my favourites for sure. I don’t think it’s worth comparing it against the first one as both are great and in my opinion should be treated almost as one. Can’t praise it enough.

Read safely, spoilers are blurry. Image's descriptions may appear when you hover over images and may contain spoilers, beware.

Total time played: 15 hours

Difficulty: Hard

TLDR.

This game can be a GOTY. The game overall is great, it has great gameplay, it's full of emotion and amazing boss battles. However there are some not so unnoticeable drawbacks. Sometimes it feels like the game needed more polishing.

PROS

• The traversal mechanics in this game may be at the level of Marvel's Spider-Man or Just Cause 2. It's quick, it's well animated, you have lots of ways of doing it and you get to learn how to move around.
• Sound effects are pretty good
• This game succeeds in giving you real emotions. Feelings of joy, distress, excitement, fear, deep sadness and surprise. It doesn't need a lot of storylines to do it, and that's simply unbelievable. It's amazing.
• The graphics and art! Oh my. I don't know if I'll ever experience the astonishment I get with the scenery and well-crafted imagery in this game. It's simply amazing. Sometimes I just sit there, staring at the beauty of the scenes this game offers.
• The music is great. Each ambient has its piece of music which sets you in an immersive atmosphere.
• Character design is amazing, each character has its charisma. And enemies, mini-bosses and bosses can get scary and imposing.
• Spirit trials and combat challenges are addictive and add a cool competitive layer to the game

CONS

• Some battles are bugged. (e.g Mora's boss fight as you can see it here). (I spent around 3 hours trying to kill her, just to give up, go kill other bosses, get power-ups, and coming back later to kick her ass)
• Waiting for the map to show up every time you press "Options" on Xbox One X is long enough to become annoying. It can take up to 4 ~ 5 seconds.
• You can't decide where you want to respawn as in OATBF, hence sometimes your saves are in inconvenient contexts, or you get spawn insta-kills in hard mode. It's annoying.
• In hard mode, button bashing is there every time you have a boss/escape moment. You'll get to train your fingers for some action, and it can get ridiculously extreme.
• A bug in which you go inside walls, then instantly dying without any chance to go back can happen very often.
• FPS in Xbox One X can quickly go down in boss battles or moments with too many particles moving in the scene.

Now a gallery of my in-game captures:

Different ambients:

Bosses:

Cool sightseeing: