Narrative: 4 - Gameplay: 4 - Visuals: 5 - Soundtrack: 5 - Time: 3
Stars: 4
With both wonderful visual and musical designs, Ori takes us on a fantastic and emotional adventure through a magical forest. The soundtrack can hold its own ground by only being there and the game is beautiful. More than one non-gamer asked me about the game I was playing only due to its astonishing visuals.
There's some cool 2D Platform to be done, and its challenges can be... Well, challenging. I love the mechanic of sacrificing a little bit of energy to make your own checkpoints. Made the game way more accessible for bad/hasty platformers like myself. For all that, it maintains a sweet balance between frustration and success.
With all that praise out of the way, in the fall-short department, our main character is the fight mechanics. The little bursts of damage are visually cool but are somewhat underwhelming when faced with different scenarios. I mean, all you can do is better position yourself and hope for the best. If you have too much trouble, again, you can sacrifice some energy and really do some damage and that's it. When you put the fight mechanics and its arsenal in perspective, it reason Ori is such a short game becomes clear. You couldn't possibly stretch much further without some serious repetition.
As a fan of Metroidvanias, it´s important to me to make a clear distinction: Ori is a great game, just not a great Metroidvania, which takes me to our side character: the exploration. If you genuinely like Metroidvanias, and have decided to thoroughly explore the game before playing, you'll do just that. If not, the motivation to revisit the different areas is shockingly low. You are only required to snoop around a little bit, never being faced with curious or challenging areas. Some power up and you can go home.
Stars: 4
With both wonderful visual and musical designs, Ori takes us on a fantastic and emotional adventure through a magical forest. The soundtrack can hold its own ground by only being there and the game is beautiful. More than one non-gamer asked me about the game I was playing only due to its astonishing visuals.
There's some cool 2D Platform to be done, and its challenges can be... Well, challenging. I love the mechanic of sacrificing a little bit of energy to make your own checkpoints. Made the game way more accessible for bad/hasty platformers like myself. For all that, it maintains a sweet balance between frustration and success.
With all that praise out of the way, in the fall-short department, our main character is the fight mechanics. The little bursts of damage are visually cool but are somewhat underwhelming when faced with different scenarios. I mean, all you can do is better position yourself and hope for the best. If you have too much trouble, again, you can sacrifice some energy and really do some damage and that's it. When you put the fight mechanics and its arsenal in perspective, it reason Ori is such a short game becomes clear. You couldn't possibly stretch much further without some serious repetition.
As a fan of Metroidvanias, it´s important to me to make a clear distinction: Ori is a great game, just not a great Metroidvania, which takes me to our side character: the exploration. If you genuinely like Metroidvanias, and have decided to thoroughly explore the game before playing, you'll do just that. If not, the motivation to revisit the different areas is shockingly low. You are only required to snoop around a little bit, never being faced with curious or challenging areas. Some power up and you can go home.