izigame.me

It's a multi-color, super-cute game with side-to-side viewing.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is an excellent Metroidvania-style game that’s simply a must-play for every fan of the genre. However, make no mistake – despite its appearance, the game can be quite challenging
Released in 2015, Ori and the Blind Forest was a surprise hit, since it was the first-ever game from developer Moon Studios. It received impressive reviews (OpenCritic score: 90) with a lot of praise in regards to its story, visuals, gameplay and music, although some other aspects of the game – mostly the combat, short game length with little replay value and some occasional frustrations thanks to difficulty spikes - were met with criticism. Despite last playing it in 2018, I still remember how frustrating some of the escape sequences could be in particular.
Five years after the initial game, in 2020, Ori and the Will of the Wisps released, a sequel that’s not only continuing the story but also aims to address the aforementioned criticisms. The combat has been reworked, as you’re no longer spamming Sein’s flames – instead, one of the first skills that can be obtained for Ori is the “Spirit Edge”, a sword of light for melee combat. In fact, there are multiple new active skills to be found which provide new options to attack enemies – for example, Ori can now use a bow (“Spirit Arc”) which makes for a great (ranged) combat option. The same can’t be said for all of the new abilities, unfortunately, as I found some of them to be quite a lot weaker than others. Still, overall I found the combat to be much improved, although I’d still argue that it’s probably the weakest aspects of the game. It’s fine but since you’ll mostly fight the same standard enemies over and over again, it can get quite repetitive. And considering just how good the remaining game is, just being “fine” simply sticks out.
To no surprise, Ori and the Will of the Wisps looks and sounds exceptionally well, just like the first game did. I didn’t encounter any performance or technical problems and was pleased to see that the game supports HDR as well, although I wish the game provided better options to set it up right (e.g., example pictures). The music, once again composed by Gareth Coker, is a delight and the visuals are a treat – I wouldn’t mind playing through 10+ games in the same art-style.
But what’s probably the best part about Ori and the Will of the Wisps for me is traversing its world consisting out of multiple biomes. The most fun I had with the game was when I was figuring out the movement puzzles, especially the late-game ones that make use of all of Ori’s expanded movement skills. Gliding through the air, triple-jumping, dashing and then using the “Bash” ability to propel yourself forwards using hostile projectiles to cross that one gap - it’s these exhilarating moments that really made me love the game. Ori’s full movement set is full of different option to either gain height or cross vertical distances, but it never feels too complicated to use or even overloaded – I never had any trouble with the controls even with Ori’s full skill-set unlocked.
That said, while Ori and the Will of the Wisps looks like an all-ages experience, it’s actually not without challenging moments, even on “normal” difficulty. The sequel took away with the ability to save at (almost) all times from Ori and the Blind Forest and opted for auto-saves instead. While most of these auto-save-points are well placed, there are a few lengthy (jumping) puzzles – or the returning escape sequences - in the game that only offer a single checkpoint at the beginning, which can be quite frustrating if you only missed the last jump or something similar. Still, moments like these are an exception, with even some of the boss fights offering checkpoints in-between their various phases.
I found the boss fights of Ori and the Will of the Wisps to be well-designed encounters with some nicely telegraphed moves, which ask you to make combine your combat and movement abilities in order to evade incoming attacks and strike at the right time. However, I do feel like the hitboxes of some of their attacks are hard to predict – especially since most of the bosses are quite big, with parts that hurt you, parts you need to hit to hurt them and parts that do nothing at all. Still, even with the occasional “why did that hit me?” moment, the boss fights never felt unfair – when I died, I always knew what went wrong on my end. If you want to ease the challenge, you could also always go for collecting all of the many life/mana upgrades for Ori in the game – this is a Metroidvania-style game after all.
What I adore about Ori and the Will of the Wisps is that it’s a Metroidvania-style game that’s so well-designed that it manages to evade most of the problems of the genre. Thanks to various side quests and main quest icons on the map, for example, you’ll always know in which general direction to head next – but they’re never placed in a way that you lose out on the fun of discovering just how to get there, they’re just making sure you won’t look in an entirely wrong place of the big map. I also love the option to buy maps of the various places in the game, which show you a broad, grey outline of the rooms and corridors – making sure that you can’t miss entire rooms if you’re going for that 100% save. Additionally, you even got (pricier) options to buy map upgrades that show the location of various collectables.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps also introduces a few timed races with online leaderboards, if you’re still not satisfied with 100%ing the game – although that admittedly doesn’t really increase the replayability of the game by much. There are achievements to beat the game without getting hit, without getting upgrades, in a short time and so on though, force those looking for excuses to play through it multiple times.
Thankfully, as long as you’re not going for the 100% save, you won’t spend too much time backtracking in the game, since the areas are smartly spread out and offer fast travel options to make sure you’ll get to new biomes quickly. After a straight progression during the first few hours, the game also opens up halfway through, allowing you to tackle the main story objectives in an order of your choosing. Ori and the Will of the Wisps does an exceptional job of allowing you to discover new routes, areas and abilities while simultaneously providing just enough guidance so that you’ll never feel lost – an impressive feat.
Tying everything together is an emotional story told through few words but well-presented cutscenes instead which – in combination with the music - simply moved me to tears on a few occasions. I’ll admit that Ori and the Will of the Wisps does not a tell an especially complex story, nor a very surprising one, but it’s told in such a heartfelt way that its emotional conclusion managed to keep me weeping throughout the entirety of the credits, which is as good as it gets.
Concluding, Ori and the Will of the Wisps is an excellent Metroidvania-style game that - while not entirely without flaws – is certainly amongst the best games of the genre, improving on almost every aspect from it’s already great predecessor. It’s simply a must-play if you even remotely like the genre, although I recommend playing through the predecessor for story reasons first.