Ori and the Blind Forest, while now seemingly outmatched by the second game, still manages to be one of the best platformers I've ever personally played through. It had a significant impact on my life for a bit and ended up being my introduction to the speedrunning community as a whole.
It's certainly not perfect. The combat is garbage, inferior to almost every game adjacent in genre to it in that respect. Thankfully it's never a focus but it's still a problem that you have to tolerate. The platforming difficulty curve moves from seemingly casual experience to more hard hitting actual tests of the mechanics and not in a very smooth way. The first half in general has too much downtime and ultimately takes a hit to pacing that can end up breaking people's experience.
Despite this, Bash and Dash is the best platforming movement to date other than now Ori 2, and that's where all of the fun comes from. In fact, Bash conserves your momentum in this game unlike the sequel, which allows for some incredible speedruns that utilize the full extent of the speed you can build up. It's one of the most deep mechanics out there and the game makes great utilization out of it to the ending runtime.
The platforming levels themselves are pretty good in other regards, being excellent one stop challenges and the escape sequences are a wonderful concept done mostly well. The idea is to crystallize Castlevania 1-era level design, "don't just do these individual sections well, do them all CONSISTENTLY" in a way that's compelling although somewhat unpolished. There's certain parts of these level tests that reach the end of bullshit with certain things that, while they might be reactable, blend in with the visual design leading to some trial/error moments.
Another major pillar that brings this game up tremendously though is the aesthetic, which is personally one of my favorites in vidya in general. The excellent soundtrack sells each individual scene, and the heart-pulling emotional story works alongside that. It manages to all turn into a cohesive aesthetic experience with a fantastic speedrun underlining that the game encourages with its achievements and RTA compliant tech.
Despite that it's not the most polished game with very quite visible cracks, I've speedran this game for weeks on end, and I can't deny how fulfilling each run has been for me that practically no other game touches for me. Even other than that, the movement is incredible on its own to be recommendable. I encourage trying out Ori 1 to any extent, and even if you dislike this game, there's Ori 2 to pick up which is better in every single way (except for not conserving bash momentum, a change i still don't get). Still one of my favorite games of all time. (9.5/10)
It's certainly not perfect. The combat is garbage, inferior to almost every game adjacent in genre to it in that respect. Thankfully it's never a focus but it's still a problem that you have to tolerate. The platforming difficulty curve moves from seemingly casual experience to more hard hitting actual tests of the mechanics and not in a very smooth way. The first half in general has too much downtime and ultimately takes a hit to pacing that can end up breaking people's experience.
Despite this, Bash and Dash is the best platforming movement to date other than now Ori 2, and that's where all of the fun comes from. In fact, Bash conserves your momentum in this game unlike the sequel, which allows for some incredible speedruns that utilize the full extent of the speed you can build up. It's one of the most deep mechanics out there and the game makes great utilization out of it to the ending runtime.
The platforming levels themselves are pretty good in other regards, being excellent one stop challenges and the escape sequences are a wonderful concept done mostly well. The idea is to crystallize Castlevania 1-era level design, "don't just do these individual sections well, do them all CONSISTENTLY" in a way that's compelling although somewhat unpolished. There's certain parts of these level tests that reach the end of bullshit with certain things that, while they might be reactable, blend in with the visual design leading to some trial/error moments.
Another major pillar that brings this game up tremendously though is the aesthetic, which is personally one of my favorites in vidya in general. The excellent soundtrack sells each individual scene, and the heart-pulling emotional story works alongside that. It manages to all turn into a cohesive aesthetic experience with a fantastic speedrun underlining that the game encourages with its achievements and RTA compliant tech.
Despite that it's not the most polished game with very quite visible cracks, I've speedran this game for weeks on end, and I can't deny how fulfilling each run has been for me that practically no other game touches for me. Even other than that, the movement is incredible on its own to be recommendable. I encourage trying out Ori 1 to any extent, and even if you dislike this game, there's Ori 2 to pick up which is better in every single way (except for not conserving bash momentum, a change i still don't get). Still one of my favorite games of all time. (9.5/10)