Brilliant locomotion makes for a fun time once you get past the slow beginning.
I really did not enjoy Ori in the first hour or so that I played of it. It was slow and I constantly couldn’t tell if story progress or my own skill were preventing me from reaching certain areas or collectibles. The natural environmental design is beautiful to look at, but does a poor job of communicating what you can or can’t do in contrast to games like Guacamelee or Headlander which use clear visual design language to communicate progress blockers so you don’t waste your time trying to figure out what’s possible or not. It was a frustrating beginning.
However, once I got a bit further into the game and unlocked more skills that opened up locomotion, the game clicked and I fell in love. Moving through an entire area chaining together jumps, dashes, and yeeting off enemies is truly a joyous feeling. Yeah it was annoying that the fast travel spots were so far apart, but when moving is so quick and fun, I guess it’s not that bad. I started the game wanting to beat it as quickly as I could and by the end of it, I wanted to keep playing to find every collectible (which I did).
The “create your own checkpoint” system is interesting and sometimes works well. It doesn’t work well, however, when I forget to make a checkpoint and then die losing 10 minutes of progress. That is decidedly less fun. Even less fun are the escape sequences with zero checkpoints forcing you to replay the entire thing over and over again just to replay the last section because you can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong with a jump. Bad.
Ori also fails with accessibility and difficulty options. Turning the difficulty down to easy helps with the combat (that ends up being easy and inconsequential anyway), but does little to curb the difficulty of platforming.
As much as I loved Ori in the end, I still think there are games that do parts of Ori better. It’s not the best Metroidvania, it’s not the best side-scrolling shooter, and it’s certainly not the best 2D platformer. But it does combine all those elements better than most other games do and ends up being better than the sum of its parts.
+ Fully upgraded locomotion is a blast and better than most other games like it.
+ Beautiful soundtrack
+ Gorgeous visuals
- Slow and sort of just not fun beginning
- Poor accessibility/difficulty options
I really did not enjoy Ori in the first hour or so that I played of it. It was slow and I constantly couldn’t tell if story progress or my own skill were preventing me from reaching certain areas or collectibles. The natural environmental design is beautiful to look at, but does a poor job of communicating what you can or can’t do in contrast to games like Guacamelee or Headlander which use clear visual design language to communicate progress blockers so you don’t waste your time trying to figure out what’s possible or not. It was a frustrating beginning.
However, once I got a bit further into the game and unlocked more skills that opened up locomotion, the game clicked and I fell in love. Moving through an entire area chaining together jumps, dashes, and yeeting off enemies is truly a joyous feeling. Yeah it was annoying that the fast travel spots were so far apart, but when moving is so quick and fun, I guess it’s not that bad. I started the game wanting to beat it as quickly as I could and by the end of it, I wanted to keep playing to find every collectible (which I did).
The “create your own checkpoint” system is interesting and sometimes works well. It doesn’t work well, however, when I forget to make a checkpoint and then die losing 10 minutes of progress. That is decidedly less fun. Even less fun are the escape sequences with zero checkpoints forcing you to replay the entire thing over and over again just to replay the last section because you can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong with a jump. Bad.
Ori also fails with accessibility and difficulty options. Turning the difficulty down to easy helps with the combat (that ends up being easy and inconsequential anyway), but does little to curb the difficulty of platforming.
As much as I loved Ori in the end, I still think there are games that do parts of Ori better. It’s not the best Metroidvania, it’s not the best side-scrolling shooter, and it’s certainly not the best 2D platformer. But it does combine all those elements better than most other games do and ends up being better than the sum of its parts.
+ Fully upgraded locomotion is a blast and better than most other games like it.
+ Beautiful soundtrack
+ Gorgeous visuals
- Slow and sort of just not fun beginning
- Poor accessibility/difficulty options