Game Details
- Publisher: Microsoft
- Developer: Moon Studios
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: 2D Platformer
- Pros: Amazing visuals; incredible music; outstanding gameplay; great story
- Cons: Escape sequences
- MSRP: $20
It should be noted that the original release of Ori and the
Blind Forest that came out in March 2015 is no longer available and has been
replaced with a “Definitive Edition” of the game. The Definitive Edition adds some new areas, abilities, and story
elements as well as selectable difficulty options and a theater mode to fill
out and improve what was already a stellar game. It is available both as a download as well as a physical copy at
retail for $20 and is worth every penny whichever way you decide to get it.
The story in Ori and the Blind Forest takes place in a
mystical land called Nibel that is protected by a great Spirit Tree. A magical leaf – which turns out to be a
little magic cat / fox thing named Ori – is blown away during a particularly
intense storm. Ori is saved and adopted
by a forest creature named Naru and they live happily together for a
while. The forest around them is slowly
dying, however, which leads into the rest of the story.
Sharing too many details will pretty much ruin it, so I’ll
leave it at that. Just know that Ori
and the Blind Forest is an emotional roller coaster full of genuine joy and
happiness along with deep and crushing sadness. The game doesn’t really have many cutscenes or much dialogue –
just brief narration here and there – but the characters personalities and
motivations and emotions are portrayed so well through their animations and
actions that the story is very easy to understand. The game does an incredibly good job of making you emotionally
invested in Naru and Ori right from the very start and seeing their story
through to the end is a real driving force while playing the game. I like to compare it to Disney / Pixar’s
“Up” mixed with Studio Ghibli movies like “Princess Mononoke” and “My Neighbor
Totoro”, to give you an idea of the nature of the blend of happy / sad and
darkness / light you’ll find in Ori.
The story really does drive you to keep playing, but the
gameplay is also absolutely fantastic in its own right. Ori and the Blind Forest is a 2D
Metroidvania-style platformer where you explore a large open world to discover
new abilities that let you explore new areas of the map. The focus in Ori is much more on platforming
than combat, unlike most Metroidvanias, but there are still some enemies
present. Your abilities include double
and triple jumps, floating on a feather, energy blasts to fire at enemies, butt
stomps, wall climbing, super jumping, and more.
An interesting thing about Ori and the Blind Forest is that
the first ten-minutes or so tricks you into thinking it is just a run of the
mill slow and easy platformer, but that isn’t what the game really is. Ori, in actuality, is a hardcore precision-based
2D platformer that ramps up in difficulty significantly. I’m honestly not a fan of the current indie
game trend of making everything super difficult and hardcore, but Ori does a
few very smart things that make it much more accessible and playable than many
hardcore 2D platformers. First, you can
make your own checkpoints anywhere you want.
You might paint yourself into a corner by placing a checkpoint poorly,
of course, but if you’re smart you can power through anything. Secondly, none of the difficult platforming
sections or puzzles overstays their welcome.
You generally only see a type of puzzle or tricky platforming section
used once, so the game has a ton of variety to it that keeps things
interesting.
And the third smart thing Ori and the Blind Forest does with
its gameplay is that it just plays incredibly freaking well. Ori feels really great to control. Too many other hardcore 2D platformers ask
for extreme precision but give you sloppy controls. Ori doesn’t do that. You
always have perfect and precise control over everything the character does,
which makes the difficult sections of the game bearable because everything is
very fair. When you die, and you will
die a lot, it is because you screwed up and can do better, and there is
something satisfying and rewarding about that.
The only things I’m not a huge fan of are the escape
sequences that essentially serve as boss fights in Ori and the Blind
Forest. These sequences, where you must
quickly escape a flooding tree or volcano or something, require absolute
precision and lightning fast reflexes in order to get through them and
represent easily the most frustrating moments of the entire game. They are hard! As I said, though, you persevere because the story is too good to
stop playing and the gameplay is so tight you know that you can do it if you
just give it another try. As
frustrating and momentum killing as the escape sequences can be, however, they
also represent some of the biggest moments of pure gameplay satisfaction in the
entire game when you’re successful.
You’ll love them as much as you hate them.
The presentation in Ori and the Blind Forest is also pretty
incredible. The hand drawn visuals are
simply gorgeous and amazingly detailed and the animation is some of the best of
any 2D platformer. It isn’t just the
characters that are animated, either, as the screen is filled with movement in
the foreground and background to make the world really feel alive.
I also can’t say enough how great the sound is. The sound effects for everything are great
and fantastic and perfect, but it is the soundtrack that really ties the entire
experience together. A sweeping
orchestral score perfectly matches the action onscreen and really sets the
mood. And I absolutely love the main
menu theme that sets the stage from the moment you boot up the game that you
are in for a truly special experience.
Compare that to a game like Unravel that seems like it
was built with a “How to Make a Game of the Year” checklist in hand only to end
up feeling forced and hollow instead like an “Oscar Bait” movie that totally
backfires because it is too obviously fake and phony. Ori and the Blind Forest, on the other hand, was built with heart
and love from the beginning, not GOTY ambitions, and that heart and love shows
through in how polished every single aspect of the game is. Great presentation, awesomely fun and
satisfying gameplay, and a touching story all make Ori and the Blind Forest one
of the best games not just on Xbox One but of the entire PS4 / XONE generation
so far. Buy it. For the love of everything that is good, buy
it.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.
