izigame.me

Ori and the Blind Forest clearly resonates with a lot of people, and there's some good to be found here—the visuals are pleasing, the music is generally good (although I found the constant interweaving of the main theme into every track a little tiresome), and there are sections where, once you get the platforming down, it feels really good.
However, I can't really bring myself to recommend this game.
There's a certain sense of "imprecision" to the controls at times which is kind of hard to explain (but which other reviewers have attested to already). For instance, there are a few places where you need to jump onto a pillar or other raised spot, and in most platformers, you'd just press in the direction of the raised spot and jump on it, but in Ori, you'll automatically jump *away* from the thing you're trying to jump on. It's not especially hard to make such jumps once you're aware of this, but it's counterintuitive and fussier than it ought to be. In general, it feels like the controls aren't designed to deal with the moments where you need to make a precise landing, and although the game is pretty generous with checkpoints (since it lets you make your own almost anywhere at the cost of some of your "mana"), I felt like I was dying a little more often than I should have been.
The combat isn't really a high point of the game. Ori defenders will say that the game "isn't about combat," and to some extent, that's true (since there's more of a focus on exploration and precision platforming)... but it still *contains* plenty of combat, and it's not very good. Mostly you'll be just spamming the same homing attack over and over at a short distance from the enemy. You eventually get the ability to repel certain projectiles back at enemies, which is kind of cool, but it's not enough to turns things around, and the wimpy homing attack is still going to be your go-to at times, even as the enemies become total damage sponges in the late game.
I think my biggest issue, though, is that the visuals, while beautiful to a spectator, don't always communicate information to the player as clearly as they could. Some enemies shoot projectiles that will leave fire or some other hazardous stuff on a platform, but it doesn't always stick out as clearly from the background as it could. There's one area late in the game where a slightly dull-colored water turns out to be acid that kills you instantly, but it's only slightly dull in appearance (and not, like, bubbly and bright green and flagrantly unsafe to touch). Heated floors that damage you as you stand on them are a little too subtle in their glowing animation; the first time you get hurt by them, it feels like a bit too much of a surprise. During the "escape sequences" at certain points, where the game switches heavily to a precision platforming focus (which, again, the controls don't always feel quite suited to), I had several points where I wasn't sure where I was supposed to jump next, and because I missed the narrow two-second window when I was supposed to do whatever, I died and had to repeat that section. It doesn't help that some of the encroaching hazards, like the rising water in the first escape sequence, actually move *faster* if you're doing better, taking away whatever extra time you would have otherwise gotten to think through the next step; this sort of "rubber-banding" feels antithetical to the design of a good escape sequence. Once you get those sections down, the flow feels pretty good, but it felt like I had to slog through too many "gotcha" moments for me to get there.
All this being said, there are clearly plenty of people who really like this game, and your mileage may certainly vary. I wouldn't say it's bad; it's just full of too many little annoyances that start to add up by the end, and having completed it once, I don't think I'll be going back to it again.