3.5/5 ★ – pinksteady's review of Ori and the Blind Forest.

Beautiful but shallow The subtitle sums this game up. It was a game of style over substance. The good - it was exceptionally polished. The visuals are fantastic, with a vibrant forest and other locations imaginatively brought to life. The sounds and music are excellent, and the character and environment animations are really fluid. You could tell there was some real professionalism / investment behind the development. Unfortunately, the game itself lacked the necessary ingredients to make it a compelling and ultimately fulfilling experience for me. My first modern foray into ‘dungeon crawlers’ (a.k.a. metroidvanias) was Hollow Knight, which unfortunately for Ori has set an extremely high bar for this genre. Where Hollow Knight’s various areas vary hugely and are uniquely recognisable, each creating their own delights and sparking motivation to revisit in future, almost the entire Ori gameplay felt like it was happening in the same place. There was no real variety to speak of as I progressed through the various areas, and as I left each one there was no reason to think I’d make the effort to return. Sure, there are some collectibles, but nothing obvious or compelling. Ori was essentially a linear game taking place in the pretence of an open world - you could revisit areas, but there really was no reason to. Mechanically-speaking, the upgrade paths seemed inconsequential to success; sure you could unlock a more powerful attack or better health recovery, but there were no moments of excitement where a particular sought-after unlockable was achieved. Combat was average, and often frustrating. There were no NPCs, so basically there was no story to unravel other than the primary story that is revealed to you as you progress. This removed any hope and possibility of additional depth that could have been offered. Buttons could not be remapped, so you had the classic error of a thumb doing both jumping and attacking at the same time, but unlike harder games like Hollow Knight, this didn’t prove to be an issue, as the combat was never hard enough to need more dexterity. The game also couldn’t make its mind up about difficulty. Most of the game plays on a ‘my first metroidvania’ difficulty, but then occasionally you’d be presented with timed ‘don’t let the scrolling screen catch up with you’ moments that were frustratingly difficult. These moments felt out of context and led to the impression that the game couldn’t quite work out what sort of game it was trying to be. It’s a shame because as mentioned at the start, this game is gorgeous. It is interesting to me therefore that such visual depth can be irrelevant if the gameplay isn’t up to the task. This game appears well-reviewed so I’m sure there are many out there who will enjoy it, and the recent sequel, but I found it too shallow to really rate the experience highly.