With a seemingly never-ending flock of “retro” platformers hitting the Steam store these days, Ori and the Blind Foresttakes the opposite route: a story-driven adventure with stunning visuals, a bewitching atmosphere and some pretty mad feels.
The first thing that will captivate you is the sheer beauty of the game. The art, the characters and their animations, the lighting and the splendid instrumental music score will instantaneously create a deep feeling of immersion.
The storytelling, most of which occurs in-game, will also be supported by small doses of narration and beautiful cutscenes, just enough to give you a sense of purpose and accomplishment.
The gameplay is everything you could possibly wish for: tight and responsive, with top-notch level design and an increasing number of mechanisms to master as you progress, in pure Metroidvania fashion. The overall difficulty achieves a fine balance, making Ori both accessible to players who just want to enjoy the story and atmosphere, and challenging enough at times to keep veteran players on their toes.
Exploration is rewarded with power-ups that give you more leeway to fill the simple-yet-efficient skill tree, which nicely complements the other abilities that you unlock as you advance through the game.
A casual playthrough will last you a good 10 hours, and that alone would be well worth themoney. But Ori also nudges the more hardcore players into giving it another go with an online speed run leaderboard and some pretty tight achievements like completing the game without dying. All in all, a very fair amount of content for its price tag with refined quality on top of that.
The story is as flawless as the game. (And the opening is as memorable as the ending. Have ready a bucket for your tears.) Few action platformers have a decent story to accompany it. Ori is different. No, the game doesn’t play itself; it isn’t one of those. Rather, like a player to respawn points (see: this game), gameplay and narrative are intimately connected; character actions are justified, and power ups serve the story and the player. The result is that each accomplishment you make is both rewarding and intensely satisfying.
Verdict: Overall, I have to say that Ori and the Blind Forest is an absolute must-have and a must-play, but if you’re a less-experienced player, you might wait to see if the developer will update the game to add difficulty choices… Lest you end up with a hole in your wall the size of your controller.
