Every time I beat a game, I'm usually able to write a review immediately afterwards on here, and am able to collect most of my thoughts and write them all out pretty easily. However, Omori is the first game that I've had to sit down and think about for a week on how I truly felt about this game. From the second the credits started to roll, I knew this game would be a 7/10. However, it was incredibly hard for me to get the words as to why. But I think I have those words after an entire week.

Omori really conflicts me; it has some of the most beautiful and well put together story telling I've seen in any game, and is also able to represent its themes in a coherent and great way to the point where even someone who hasn't gone through things like trauma and loss can still have an adoring love for the game. But at the same time, the gameplay just got agonizingly slow and boring as it progressed, and also horror elements that are just bad, uninteresting, and most of all not scary.

I want to start with the good since I think it overall outweighs the bad. And starting from the top, the story in this game is just so good. From the very beginning where it starts dropping hints about what's going on, making you question what's going on with Mari and whether you can trust her or not, meeting old friends and seeing how they've changed, and discovering what caused everything to happen. The build up to everything is so well done in fact that in some ways it brought down other parts of the game, making me get annoyed with the last two areas of Headspace. It's hard to describe why the actual story itself is so good, it's just something you get. Everything in the game works around it and it points you towards it the entire time, and when you finally put all the pieces together everything starts to make more sense.

There's also the characters, who, if you ignore Headspace, are all amazingly written. Each one, including yourself, has their own story and way they dealt with the situation. My favorite of which was bar none Aubery, who starts out seemingly completely different, being much more rude and bullyish, which is a complete 180 to how you're introduced to her in Headspace. The peak of not only her character, but also this game, happens inside of the church.

You and Kel have been searching around for her all day, fighting each of her new friends to find more information about her whereabouts, until you're finally notified she's at church. Despite Kel's wishes, you both go inside the church during a Sarum to confront Aubrey. When you talk to her, you learn two bomb shells of information: not only is it finally revealed that Mari died, but you also learn how alone Aubrey felt. After everyone split up due to Mari's death, Aubrey thought that everyone had moved on from it, and that she was the only one who actually cared. This caused her to put her all into remembering Mari, including visiting church very often and going to Mari's grave every single day, something no one else in the group could bare to do. This, along with a bad home life that's revealed later on, made her turn against the world and against her friends. Kel and Aubery's talking eventually turns into arguing, which causes you to fight her in the middle of the church. This entire fight sequece is the best and one of the most emotional moments in this game, and nearly everything about it is perfect, especially the song that plays during the fight, which is my favorite in the game. As you fight, you hear whispers of churchgoers around you, talking about the way Aubrey behaves and dresses. Whether you beat her or not, the fight comes to an end and Aubrey runs out of the church, completely embarrassed and distraught about what just happened. When you follow her out, you make it to her house and watch as she throws something into the trash, that being Basil's photo album. This is the first of a few times where Kel offers to high five you, however this was the only time where I didn't feel good about anything I just did. That's just a small example of Aubery's character, and there's so much more I could go over. While every character in the main cast is a great character, none get close to Aubrey and her arc.

I also love the art and music for this game. Disregarding the pixel art which I'm not a huge fan of (especially when it's animated) this game has such a beautiful art style. Omocat's style adds so much personality to fights, able to make characters either super cute or incredibly threatening. Every enemy also has a few frames of idle animation, which adds so much to battles. And there's the music, which is just amazing. I didn't completely notice until relistening to all the game's music that what makes Omocat's music stand out is its ability to convey emotion. Even without the context of the game, a long of these tracks are powerful enough to convey the emotion and overall feel it was going for scarily well. That also leads to some songs where it's able to create music for emotions that are almost indescribable, which I think is most apparent in Black Space's music. There's also the battle music which is almost always a banger. And while I mentioned this game not really being scary to me, the scary music and ambience is by far the scariest part about this game.

I'd also like to mention the general combat here. It's really simple and really fun, however I will say it started to get repetitive. The combat also becomes a joke once Aubrey learns Headbutt, which is an absolutely broken move that can break every fight, to the point where I didn't die a single time in the game.

Also, as a note to end off the good part, there's a LOT of other good things that I forgot to mention. This game is filled to the brim with little details, plenty of which I'm sure I don't even know about. However I don't want to spend all day researching for a review. Also I want to do a short list of great things about this game I couldn't find the words to compliment:
-The reveal of the meaning behind Something's design
-The scene where you put back all of the photos with the entire group, sans Basil and Mari, inside of Aubrey's house
-The visuals in Black Space and how they foreshadow everything without being too direct
-The title screen changing dynamically near the end of the game, once while in Black Space and again after the ending.
-The gut-wrenching use of My Time as the credits theme for the worst ending.
-The hand drawn animation, especially during the final fight
-The final fight itself and all of Omori's dialogue during it.
-An entire extra optional area to explore if you're into the Headspace gameplay.
-That one track that plays during awake moments with the backwards singing it in that scares the shit out of me.
-The entire Black Space sequence is really good and creates an amazing other worldly vibe. It actually felt like I was going through the repressed and distorted memories of a person who had been broken.
-The writing in the aforementioned scene is also really good too. (The one part with Basil and the spiders really got to me in particular for how Basil acts towards the spiders before realizing they're a genuine threat).

While there is quite a lot of good in this game, there's also a lot of bad that I usually see go unmentioned or brushed off. I could 100% understand seeing this game at the level that others do if you hyperfocused on things like the story, characters, combat, etc, however these weren't enough to completely save the bad parts. Do be warned though, this next part will basically be me just shitting on Headspace.

The biggest, off the bat flaw is how much the game starts to drag in the later third or so of the game, at least inside of Headspace. Everything from the start of Deep Well to when you first enter Black Space is so ungodly uninteresting that it hurts. I didn't care for Deep Well or any of the characters inside of it, and it didn't really seem like the game wanted me to either. I remember when I first got to the casino, I accidentally spun 100 clams while trying to figure out the controls and ended up getting 200x that, or 20,000 clams, which basically set me for the rest of the game monetarily wise and made the game much less tense, which I would say is a bad thing for a game that felt like my money was always limited. The parts inside Deeper Well were actually kinda interesting, however you then meet Humphrey. I genuinely hate everything about this next part. I've never felt so bored, uninterested, and had a strong feeling of wanting to move on and see the actual good parts of this game in any other piece of media. The visual design was boring, the music was boring, the characters were boring. The writing of the characters in Headspace up to this point had never been that great and had only really existed as a means of contrast, however it really started to rub off on me here just how bad it was. The only slightly interesting things about this part was the puzzles and the final fight against Humphrey, which that entire sequence was once of the most tense sequences in the game (especially coming from someone with a irrational fear of being digested). I could understand the existence and got the importance of Deep(er) Well, however the entire Humphrey part felt like pointless filler. I really think it should've been optional side content like the desert area, which I think would've massively improved the pacing and would've let me enjoy the final hours of this game even more.

That's not the only problem with Headspace. As I mentioned before, the characters and overall writing inside of Headspace is just not that interesting or good. I get the importance of it, but when 80% of the game takes place in this world, you can't expect me not to get sick of the writing really quickly. A lot of things just feel random and quirky for the sake of being random and quirky. One particularly bad moment that stuck out to me is that scene where a cheese wheel blocks your path. Not only is there a fart joke during this segment, but Hero for some reason calls a hamster from out of nowhere, who eats the cheese and leaves? This part wasn't really clever or funny, it felt incredibly forced, and there's other scenes like that too. There's also the original characters inside of Headspace, who I personally just didn't care for. Space Boyfriend, Sweetheart, Jawsome, and the Slime Girls (who yes are actual fetish characters) are just one note characters with barely any depth. These characters might get development in optional parts of the game, but I never saw those things... nor particularly care too. One final note about the writing that my friend pointed out to me is that all of the characters, especially the ones at the playground, all feel the exact same. And once again I get the point of it, but that doesn't make it any more fun to go through the slog that is Headspace.

The final major thing that I mentioned before is that I didn't really feel scared by this game. I've heard people mention before that this game's representation of phobias is terrifying to even those without these fears, but I disagree. None of these parts were scary, most notably the part with spiders throughout your house. The idea of spiders filling my house is a scary one, but this game doesn't represent it in the best way possible. Sunny just walks through his house without problem despite it being covered head to toe in spiders. Also the whole "scary thing appears for 2 frames before disappearing" is very overused and got old after the first few times. The only scare that really got me was at the beginning. There's that whole scene with Mari at the door, but that's not the scary part. The thing that really got me was checking the mirror afterwards only for that same sprite to appear right behind me. And it didn't just disappear instantly, it stayed there until I left the mirror. I just sat back for a good minute or two during this, surprised by how direct this scare was for the game up to this point while also getting pretty spooked by how it was technically endless. No point in the game scared me afterwards.

Just like with the good, I want to list a few miscellaneous bad parts of this game:
-The stiff sprite animations in this game, especially for the main cast, was really noticeable.
-The Recycultists in the real world were really stupid and broke immersion in otherwise very grounded portions of the game.
-Pluto's second fight was disappointing.
-This is more of a nitpick but I wish you could've fought more planets other than the two (Earth and Pluto) already in the game.
-The whole character switch system felt weird. Some of them made sense, but then you have Hero who I used literally like twice in the game and never again. Contrast that to Aubrey who's skill is so useful it sometimes feels better to just play as her.
-A few other things bothered me but I can't recall them.

Overall, Omori is just a game I can't quite place my finger on how I feel. When I think about the good parts of the game, I could easily give this game a 9/10. However when I think about the bad parts, it quickly sinks to a 5/10 or lower. I truly wish I could've loved this game as much as everyone else seems to, as there is a lot to love in this game, but it sometimes felt like this game was going out of it's way to keep me away from the best parts of the game. If the characters in Headspace were more developed and given more time to shine then I could find myself really enjoying this, even able to put aside a few other aspects I don't like. One day I'll replay the game, and maybe I'll find myself enjoying it more than now, but currently it sits at a very solid 7/10.