Just moments ago, I completed Ori and the Blind Forest. I'm still in the afterglow of one of the best Metroidvania* style games I've ever played. Ori (as I will henceforth refer to the game, to save my fingers), checks everything you need in this genre. Gorgeous graphics, a fun world to explore, a (mostly) good map that marks where you've been, and spot on controls that make traversing the world a joy.
Ori was originally released in March of 2015, with the Definitive Edition launching a year later. The definitive edition added a few expanded areas, a fast travel system, and multiple difficulty levels. For my play through I stuck to normal.
The story of Ori is beautifully told. Swelling music, wonderful animation, and expressive characters that do not talk, but say a lot in their mannerisms. Unfortunately, I am an extremely literate person. You are supposed to glean much of what's going on through these amazing cutscenes with very little spoken dialogue, but personally I could not give you a great synopsis of what happened.
As Ori, you are a child of the light (I think) who has become lost. A tiny spark of light (Sein) serves as your helper / guide so that you may return the light back to the forest. This light was stolen by a giant Owl, because of... reasons (I actually know why, but this should be left as an exercise to the reader to find out). Ori is tasked to gain abilities and put the forest back in order.
The creativity of abilities that the developers where able to come up with is astonishing. You have your standard double jump, but add to that stomps, ability to ride the wind, explosions, dashes and many other abilities. These abilities are drip fed to you as you play over the course of the 13 hours it took me to beat the game at 91% complete. By the end of the game, you have some many movement verbs available to you, but none of which feels overwhelming.
Ori is by no means an easy game. There were at least 2 set pieces that I was only able to get past by rote memorization. Thankfully, these were few and far between. This game could have easily fallen on it's face with the difficulty curve if Ori wasn't so tight in its control. Every ability feels great to use, and Ori's movement is absolutely spot on. The game asks you to complete some pretty deft maneuvers to reach some of the secrets, but I rarely felt cheated. Just moving through the world was fun in itself.
The map system in Ori is very good with a splash of terrible. The map fills in places you've been, and you can easily see where you haven't explored yet. Abilities can be purchased that fill in exactly what will be marked on the map. Completionist will enjoy that by the end of the game even secret areas will be marked on the map, making 100% the less of a slog. A drawback of the map system is warping is needlessly convoluted (and you can tell it was tacked on after the fact). I'd have to scour the map first, find the area that my warp was in, so that I could then use the warp and hope I picked the right spot. This was not a huge problem, though, as getting around the different areas was easy to do given how great Ori controlled. There were also a few times where I had no idea what to do next. This was generally in the beginning of the game, but it happened once towards the middle as well. Your next goal is circled on the map, but getting there is not always obvious.
Ori and the Blind Forest is not just a fun game to play, but a great game to experience. While I won't be humming any of the tunes from the ambient soundtrack and music during the set pieces were just fantastic. Even with me not following the story at all times, some scenes were still incredibly moving and will stay with me awhile. I'm glad I finally got around to playing this game. If this is the first you've heard of the game, or you've been putting it off, I would heartily recommend you give it a try.
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*Metroidvania is a subgenre of action-adventure video games. The term is a portmanteau of the game series Metroid and Castlevania. Metroidvania games use game design and mechanics that are similar to games from these two series. Generally, this means you earn abilities that allow you to traverse locked areas that were previously unreachable.
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