3.5/5 ★ – techno2001's review of Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition.

I'm not a big metroidvania guy, or a big nature guy, and yet it seems I'm an Ori and the Blind Forest kind of guy. Game looks dummy beautiful. The parallax scrolling and the foreground & background elements creates a depth to the environments of the forest that make them feel dense and bountiful. Definitely a lot of screenshot-worthy vistas, but part of the beauty comes from happening across them in the moment with that soothing soundtrack. The gameplay is what really surprised me though. Although I found the combat honestly pretty tedious for the first couple hours, with pretty abysmal range and damage for your standard attack, things got way more interesting after the game's first major progression milestone. Without giving away too much, the Bash ability single-handedly made this game for me. I mean all the abilities and mechanics are pretty cleverly-used through a variety of puzzles and platforming sections, but Bash alone completely changed the way I approached traversal and combat, not to mention it adorns the game's most exciting sequences. Also shoutout to strong game design circumventing the need for tutorials. It's more impressive and more satisfying. My only gripe is the game has sparse save points in favour of the "soul link" system, where you essentially make your own checkpoints if you have the resources to do so. Only problem is, I'm a prideful and a forgetful bitch, which is a costly combination in this game. Even when I do remember to make save points, I just don't really see the benefit of this system over regular, dev-intended checkpoints, although it's certainly unique. Overall, good game, but you probably knew that already.