With the quiet start to 2024 games, I thought it’d be a great opportunity to revisit this indie classic, back in 2017 when I first acquired an Xbox one, Cuphead and Ori and the Blind were main motives on me doing so.
I forgot how brief the intro to Ori is but that doesn’t take away from it conveying heartbreak and sadness within 5 minutes of booting it up.
The story starts after the 5-minute playable introduction post tragedy, Kuro the mother Owl has stolen a special spirit from the tree, and you have to get it back! Ori must set out and fix the 3 Ancestral trees across the far corners of Nibel and most importantly to help save his best friend.
Even though this game is usually categorized as a Metroidvania, it shares more similarities with a platformer than anything, Ori has very tight controls to back up being a tough as nails platformer.
The upgrades for Ori help with traversal, a few of them include a wall jump, slam and dash but the one that stands out is ‘propel’ it lets you shoot yourself in any direction off an enemy projectile, which does allow great acrobatic combat scenarios and is essential for some of the pixel perfect platforming.
Each of the Ancestral trees holds a unique single use mechanic for the self-enclosed ‘dungeons’ , which paired with the upgrades you get along the way makes for some highlight moments in the game, where all the systems work seamlessly together.
To manually save you must find a spirit well, but they are few and far between and with the game having a notoriously hard difficulty, the game does try to help with that shortcoming by adding a unique twist to checkpoints: you set them yourself! by using part of your limited magic meter up. An area where the unique save system is really tested, for better or worse is Misty woods, with the overgrown thorns and countless littered enemies.
Gareth Coker has done a great job with the music, with choir ballads while you’re soaring the skies or gentle piano keys brushing while you navigate snowy depths, it really echoes any mood, he really synced so many scenes in the game with the perfect score.
Combat is fluid and fast, but it does seem like it was an afterthought regarding everything else the game really shines with, there seems to be an overemphasis on semi ranged attacks to deal with foes, which most of the time isn’t great and can lead to some infuriating encounters.
This also makes combat mostly necessary to progress areas and it gives exp from fallen enemies that is needed to level up your skill tree.
One other minor gripe I have with the game is when reaching the apex of the 3 tree’s and each one having an against the clock’ escape that works well the first time but really stales they feel to be endurance tests, but they only seemed to test my patience with the limited checkpoints and harsh timings.
A standout even to this day is the art, with its water brush look, each locale is vastly different from another with lush overgrown fauna in the forest to the decaying ruins in Forlorn, stop at any point in the game and it’s screenshot worthy, It looks fantastic on the switch’s OLED screen.
While this game originated on superior hardware years prior ,the port is utterly superb with great performance all round and it looks sharp for the dated Nintendo hybrid, while also running at a rock solid 60 fps.
Over the years, since I beat this back in 2017, my views have soured slightly, with the sequel ‘Will of the Wisps’ fixing any previous qualms I had. On this replay though, I appreciated its non-bloated length that usually comes with the more modern games of the genre, I forgot how much of a good-looking game this is, with me pressing the screenshot button more times than I’d like to admit… It controls like a dream and not once did I blame one of the countless deaths on anything other than myself.
All in all, it’s worthy of checking out, if you are whatever interested in platformers or Metroidvania, then Ori and the Blind Forest is for you as it’ll scratch both those itches!
HOURS TO BEAT: 6 ½
DEATHS: 314
RATING: 7.5/10
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