2/5 ★ – Elesh's review of Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition.

Ori was a game I'd wanted to play for years. Hearing everyone talk about it and seeing clips and speedruns of the game had made it clear this was a game I wanted to play. An adorable indy metroidvania with a really unique visual style? Definitely up my alley. Which is what made what is to follow such a disappointment... But let's not get ahead of ourselves shall we. Ori is genuinely a beautiful game with a simple yet charming art style full of colour that masterfully sells the environment. Alongside the vibrant visuals is an equally vibrant soundtrack that expertly builds the mood as you explore the various regions. This is important as the game has very minimal dialogue, simply a few scattered cutscenes and some subtitled narrator lines spoken in a gibberish language, so the music does a lot of the work in establishing the tone. Overall, I feel like the tone was conveyed well and the story well told. Sadly, the story contained a few really inconsistent components, and the ending was completely tonally opposed to the rest of the story, creating a jarring and unsatisfying ending, betraying the exceptional music playing surrounding the scene. I won't spoil specifics, but after a story built on the idea of 'kindness leads the way', the ending felt drastically out of place. And a bit anticlimactic. One second, I was thinking to myself 'once I finish this platforming section I'll rest for the night and finish the game another day', the next moment I'm in the final cutscene. On the gameplay side, my opinion is decidedly more mixed. While, at its core, I did enjoy engaging with the game, there was so much standing in the way of just enjoying the game. Most notably the fact that Ori was frustratingly difficult to control. The movement controls were flighty and imprecise, and Ori's momentum was nonsense. And, to make matters worse, far more often than was necessary they'd throw you into a section where you had to carry something which slowed your movement speed, shortened your jumps, and disabled all of your movement abilities effectively destroying your muscle memory and completely shattering any attempt at getting into a state of flow with the game. But beyond that, it really felt like the developers just wanted us to suffer. Nearly every major section of the game went to painful effort to ensure that you never got to really enjoy the game. There were several high-paced escape sequences that felt like they went on forever - full of extremely punishing movement, precision that felt like I was learning to speedrun the game, and no checkpoints or opportunities to take a breather. Additionally, when they weren't giving you high-pressure escape sequences, their normal platforming sections seemed to get progressively longer and longer, with fewer and fewer opportunities to catch your breath or save the game and more and more absurdly precise skill-checks. These sections were also often topped off with what I like to call the 'screw you' moment. You'd reach the end of a section, exhausted after trying it a dozen or more times, finally eager to drop a save and rest your hands for a second... and an enemy you couldn't see pops up at the edge of the screen and launches an attack that will probably kill you if it connects or a block falls from off-screen above you that will crush you if you don't dodge it. This happened at least 10 times in this game, and it was never a fun addition. Not once did I think 'oh clever game that was cool' it always just made me feel like the developers disliked me for having the gall to play their game. Making matters worse, they started this right from the start. You never get the chance to get used to your abilities or the movement, right from the very beginning the sections start extremely punishing and extremely precise, giving you no chance to get used to things before they push you into the ocean, surrounded by sharks. Fortunately, the abilities they give you are interesting and fun to use, so in the segments that aren't overly precise and excessively difficult you can do some really cool things. And it is in those moments I almost forget how frustrating the rest of the game is... but then I get to another major plot point, and I'm reminded. Overall, I feel like this game was a pretty big miss that had some great ideas buried in poor execution. I would recommend anyone who wants to experience it just watch a speedrun. Afterall, you'll still get all the best parts - the beautiful visuals, the soundtrack and audio design, the really cool abilities and platforming - while handily avoiding all of the worst parts and the frustration.