Reviews from

in the past


bad combat. cool visuals. but such bad combat. and a confusing metroidvania system(s). i tried really hard to like the game, but the lame world layout and combat kinda ruined it for me. play hollow knight insteaddd 2.5/5 stars

I love metroidvanias, and I'd heard a lot of good things about this game, so I assumed it would be a slam dunk for me. Unfortunately, while this is still definitely a good game, I found myself a little disappointed.

One of the core appeals of metroidvanias as a genre is slowly unlocking more and more movement options to allow you to explore your environment and eventually uncover every nook and cranny. For that to work, the movement has to feel good. There really is nothing like playing a metroidvania with fluid, perfect movement. Ori and the Blind Forest just doesn't do it for me. This game isn't mechanically tight enough for my liking, which wouldn't be as big of a deal if the game didn't have some of the demanding segments present here. It should feel much better to play than it does.

Combat is so pointless I wonder if it was just included to tick a box. It's incredibly simplistic and never evolves, aside from bashing projectiles back at enemies, and the enemy variety is paltry. The game already nails tense and climactic finishes to dungeons (the escape sequences) without big boss fights, so I honestly think the whole game would be better if more attention was given to the movement and combat was cut out.

As for something else I feel could have been cut, I wish the story was told completely wordlessly. It's simple, but charming and beautiful, and I think not having narration would just amplify that. Nothing is stated that isn't obvious visually, so the descriptions are just distracting.

I wish I liked this game more, and the pieces are here for something special. As it is right now, it's just a better than average metroidvania, with plenty of better options out there.

I love the music and the art is very well done. I couldn't get into the setting or the story. The combat is lame. Everything is dark, and it can be hard to tell what's going on visually. I also just don't like metroidvanias. I thought this might change my mind on the genre, but it didn't.

One of the last Metroidvanias on Game Pass I hadn't beaten yet, I stayed away from Ori until now because I tried it on PC last year and bounced off of it hard. I decided to give it another chance, in a year of several second chances in my games beaten list, and I'm kinda glad I did. A lot of the problems that turned me away from Ori when I first tried it are absolutely still there, but I was able to push past them and find a sorta happy medium. I 100%'d the game on normal mode and it took me about 7 hours.

Ori and the Blind Forest is about a small sprite named Ori. He gets separated from his home in the great tree in a storm, and the tree tries to emit a massive surge of mystical light to find him, but is fatally wounded in the process. A creature called Naru finds Ori and raises him as a friend up until the decay caused by the great tree's death reaches their grove. Ori mourns the loss of his adopted mother and then sets out on a quest to find what destroyed the great tree and if anything can be done to fix it. The story is very simple but sweet, but it isn't trying to be anything more than that. The real focus of this game is its presentation, and it absolutely nails its look.

A soooorta 2.5D look (although more often 2D-looking), Ori and the Blind Forest is an absolutely beautiful game packed with color, detailed animations, and painting-like environments. Ori seems like a game that was made specifically to seem like a work of art come to life, and it absolutely achieves that. No loading screens means everything flows together visually as well as in pacing as you explore. Lots of ballad-y music brings the sort of somber yet hopeful tone of the visuals to life in a way that works well (although it certainly isn't my kind of music).

Unfortunatley, Ori's biggest strength is also one of its biggest flaws. The environments are SO detailed in the foreground, background, and everything in between, and packed with so much color that it can often be hard to tell what you can actually interact with. There were many times that I was super cautious when I didn't need to be because I thought something in the background was in a plane that I could interact with, and just as many times where I was suddenly killed or heavily damaged out of nowhere because something I thought was in the background was in fact something I could interact with. The game's visual design is very loud, too loud, and that really brings down the game's platforming often enough to be a consistant nuisance.

The other biggest design bugbear about that is that there are a ton of one-hit deaths and quite tricky jumps in the game, so not being confident in what you can even interact with can get you killed a LOT. The game's main saving grace in this respect is its save system, which is almost save-anywhere. Hold B and you make a save point where you're at where you can also assign skillpoints from. It makes what could be an infuriating time a much more forgiving one (but also kinda hilarious given that the game DOES have a hardcore "only one life" mode).

Ori's gameplay is a Metroidvania, but one that takes things a little bit differently from most others I've played. The closest thing I can think of would be Yoku's Island Express, as not only is Ori also about a small creature trying to save a beautiful, colorful wooded world, but the main mechanic is movement. Combat is handled almost entirely by mashing X to launch homing projectiles at nearby enemies. There is almost no aiming other than an optional, not that great grenade projectiles, that's more for hitting switches than fighting. The main mechanic of Ori is its platforming and world exploration, and it doesn't exactly come off on the best foot there either.

A lot of early game stuff is weirdly hard, and I'd say many of the game's hardest platforming is in its first hour or two before you get things like the wall jump or double-jump. Later platforming is hard by virtue of lots of instant-death traps, but early platforming has a lot of jumps very easy to miss if you aren't really trying (heck one of the first jumps in the game is one of those). The maps feel like they were designed with Ori's mid-game or end-game moveset in mind instead of the moveset you'd have when you first reach that area, and as a result the game's best content and flow is after the first hour or two.

The game has a skill point system that you can use after you've killed enough enemies to level up or found an instant level up item hidden in the world. There's an achievement for beating the game with no skill points used, so these level ups are entirely for making the game easier to play for the player. That on top of some optional yet very useful unlockable traversal skills (like the dash and aforementioned grenade) go towards making the game more or less as tricky as the player wants it to be (to a point). Much more powerful homing projectiles, the ability to see hidden walls far easier, and even a second double jump lie in wait if you just get enough skill points. This is a really neat idea as a way to allow the player to grind to make the game easier despite the lack of a combat focus, and is definitely one of the more ingenious elements of Ori's design.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Part of my lower recommendation for this is certainly due to me preferring different Metroidvanias. The focus on platforming rather than combat isn't quite my cup of tea. But the bigger part of it is how the game stumbles so significantly on the one thing it's supposed to be the best at mechanically. A cluttered visual design hindering the platforming was the recurring mistake that kept me irritated with the game over and over, just as I had started to enjoy it again. Between that and the weirdly omnipresent yet indirect combat, the game struggles with an identity crisis from start to finish that isn't deal breaking but is also quite hard to ignore. That probably won't be a problem for a lot of people, but if your time for Metroidvanias is limited, I think a lot of people can find games (especially on Game Pass) that will better suit their time than Ori.


Ori is the 3rd game I played and completed on the SD and I LOVED every single moment of this game.
Let's start with the beautiful unique art style, on an OLED screen this thing pops like nothing I have seen before, STUNNING.

The score is so beautiful I am a sucker for a orchestral score and it hits.

The gameplay is a addictive and rewarding, I have never really been a hardcore Metroidveniana fan but this has made me one I need to play more of them.

There are curtain parts in this game where you are in a "cinematic" action scene that makes you traverse in one scene they are stunning to play and watch.

The story brought me to tears within the first 10 minutes. The themes of this story are beautiful and very much themes around what it is currently happening with the world.

I love this game and am really excited to play all there future games.

Jogo muito lindo, trilha sonora tranquila e enredo simples, mas bem cativante. Explora bem os elementos de metroidvania e plataforma.

The projectile-dash mechanic is fun and placing your own checkpoints is kinda interesting. I felt like it peaked at the tree-dungeon escape sequence and slowly decayed over the rest of the game. I really don't think about this game ever.

9:19 game complete
10:39 100%

Se ha sentido un poco injusto en algunas partes pero no puedo negar que el juego ha sido precioso

Ori is one of the cutest, thrilling, hardest, most emotional, satisfying, saddest, most beautiful, varied, inventive, imaginative and funniest platformer that I've ever played, and it comes with both, a perfect visual art style, and a perfect music score, which makes it so much more fun to play. For a platformer it comes with so many interesting features you wouldn't expect, like small puzzle games to advance, or even a leveling system so that you can upgrade your character individually (at least to a degree) to meet your personal play style. And it's - in a way even an open world game - sure, there are parts you cannot reach due to a lack of certain abilities (yet), but you are free to move and sometimes there are two or more choices that are open to you. And then there are end bosses - each with their unique play style that you need to adapt to, to being able to defeat him, using all the abilities in your repertoire.

All in all, it's just a really wonderful experience, and a game that I am actually really excited to revisit soon. With [for me] 17 hours to play it's also a rather compact game that you can squeeze in-between bigger games (like for me RDR2 and RDR :D ), but it feels like the prefect size (as the game is of course getting more and more challenging with every bit of progress, and in the end you'll be restarting a couple of times to master a certain sequence or end boss).

L'évolution du gameplay est quasi parfaite. Il n'y a pas de lassitude au bout d'un moment car on manque d'un pouvoir ou quoi que ce soit. Le jeu est beau, très beau. L'histoire est touchante et la musique l'accompagne parfaitement

After 2 unsuccessful tries to get into this game I finally gave it a full honest shot and I'm so glad I did. This game while very short and a little too easy is easily one of the better metroidvanias out there. The art style, soundtrack and gameplay are all top notch. I felt iffy about the movement and abilities early on since they all felt a little sluggish and floaty but as the game went on and I became more and more equipped I really appreciated them. The story despite some issues is simple and charming and fit the world they created and was paced well. I appreciate this game not really having any bosses instead ending each big area with a long escape sequence. I'm personally a huge fan of the final escape.

My only real issues were difficulty and exploration. I always love picking through metroidvanias for secrets and becoming overpowered and this was no exception but I did feel that the game kind of gave away its secrets too quickly and discouraged exploration since you'll quickly get an ability that just shows you where everything is. I also with the game was a tad longer but I guess I can just play the sequel since I want more.

Another metroidvania finished during the infinite wait for Silksong

Precioso metroidvania, tanto visualmente como jugablemente, el diseño de niveles es exquisito y da gusto ir superando cada zona a medida que vas avanzando y aprendiendo cada nuevo poder. La historia no se queda atrás, muy interesante y wholesome.

Ori 1 só não é 5 estrelas pois existe ori 2 que eleva muito tudo do primeiro, mas não fica pra trás apesar de ser o primeiro da franquia.

Sono riuscito a terminarlo nonostante sia principalmente un platform, già questo sarebbe sufficente

What I did like:

- The art direction. This is one of the most beautiful platformers I've played.
- The story is short, simple and punchy and knows how to hit the right emotional notes.
- At times, the platforming momentum feels excellent.

What I didn't like:

- The combat. I feel like there should have been more options with the spirit flame, and it was a lot more effective most of the time to dodge or use the abilities.
- Some very frustrating platforming levels, especially where the spikes were involved.
- A weird bug on PC where sound wouldn't play through my mixer, and certain actions would bug the screen.

an artistically perfect game with a fluid movement system and strong story to support it.

4☆ - An incredible metroidvania game, the art, the music is incredible. The only thing this lacks is interesting combat but its sequel improves upon this issue. Other than that, the game is awesome.

Bom metroidvania com design de arte lindíssimo. Às vezes o gameplay é desengonçado e o jogo fica visualmente poluído, e houve momentos em que a jogabilidade me fez querer arrancar um dedo fora com os dentes, mas tudo bem, nada grave. A música não me agradou muito, mas também não ofende. Na verdade, me deu sono.

Quanto à história, não consegui me importar com nada do que acontecia. Só lembro de uma coruja cabulosa que às vezes aparecia pra tocar o zaralho e a voz irritante da bolinha de fogo que acompanha o personagem.

A exploração do mapa, juntamente com as habilidades que o jogador adquire, fazem uma ótima combinação. Realmente, metroidvania é igual pizza: mesmo quando não é muito bom, ainda é bom de alguma forma. Não é perfeito, e tudo bem, nem tudo é (exceto Hollow Knight, que é perfeito).

explores both platforming and metroidvania elements really well (especially the platforming) - looking forward to trying out the sequel soon!

Jogo lindíssimo com uma arte maravilhosa e trilha sonora impecável. Recomendo muito
Obs: zerei com 7h

Gameplay, trilha sonora e arte, tudo perfeito. Cinema 2

Beautiful game, amazing story, the only half point is due to the combat being underwhelming and platforming quite finicky where i thought i wasnt supposed to go to an area but it turns out i wasnt jumping on the exact pixel of a rock to get the height


Este jogo é só maravilhoso em tudo, arte, música, história, chorei e choraria de novo, perfeito demais.

I usually do not like platformers or metroidvanias, however, I loved this one.
This is one of those games where it seems as though it gets prettier and prettier every time you look at it. The art is truly stunning, it was actually what drew me to the game in the first place.

The worst part about this game I would have to say is its combat. The combat is dull and never interesting, but it's not something that ruins the overall experience.

I like this game a lot, it has everything you expect from this type of game, and it executes most of it really well. The art is stunning and the story is solid. I would recommend playing to anyone who likes these types of games.

Un metroidvania realmente precioso que quizás le hubiera podido ganar a Hollow Knight (al menos en la parte de arte si le gana), pero parte de sus mecánicas y jugabilidad dejan que desear. Sin dejar de ser uno de los mejores juegos indie.

To rejogando, depois de completar o replay eu altero a nota e review.