Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is not a game that pushes the boundaries of the Metroidvania genre much, but while it stays in familiar territory its execution is really hard to fault as the game has such a great pacing to it. While at many moments I had the "I played this before" feeling (and I never played the first Ori!), I can't say that I wasn't having fun going through the typical motions of unlocking new abilities and backtracking in the huge map.

If I were to do a checkbox thing, well Ori would probably tick all the boxes. Good graphics, smooth controls, good flow of things, fun exploration, rewarding collectibles. The game does reward your memory as when you unlock a new move you must remember on where the hell did you see that object so that you can progress further, and sometimes it will be all the way across the map with no many hints given. The challenge of the game is mostly on the puzzle solving and the tricky jump tricks, the boss fights aren't particularly hard and generally are beatable on the first try or after dying once or twice. The "runaway" sequences are pretty fun too, even if they are to be expected near the end of the game they are always a blast to do.

Ori 2 is really overall an amazing experience, it really does everything well that a Metroidvania is supposed to do. It's not going to be decade defining or anything like that, you can get a pretty similar experience with some older games in the genre, but very few do things this smoothly. So yeah great game, worth playing for sure.

Maybe the style has started to get a little repetitive for me over the years, but this game is still easily one of the best metroidvanias I've played. Although Hollow Knight (which reignited my interest in the genre along with video games as a whole) blows this out of the water in terms of combat and side content, Will of the Wisps has far more innovative and dynamic movement options. The combat is way improved from Blind Forest, but it's a little bit too easy to just strap on a bunch of overpowered shards and mash away on your favorite attack - especially since health upgrades are so plentiful. I think that this game, in the moment to moment action, has some of the best feeling controls in a 2D platformer. I really hope people who are into platformers take look at the way that this game chains together jumps, bounces and dashes in such a fluid and empowering way, because there's a lot about it that is very impressive and super fun.

One of my biggest issues with the game is that it could have really done with a few more fleshed out and creative sidequests. Unfortunately, right down to the bog standard trading sequence, there's nothing you haven't seen before in the quest design, almost to the point where it seems like they perhaps had to rush that aspect of development. But it's not exactly fair to compare every game to Hollow Knight in terms of originality and amount of content. This is still one of the most fun games to control ever from my perspective, though it is a relatively short and breezy experience. Shout outs to the visual artists behind this game, because Moon Studio clearly has some of the best in the business (not to snub the music folks - the score is great as well.) Though there are some minor ways in which it could have been a bit more substantial, I would call it a must play in the genre, and frankly, probably one of the most visually appealing games ever made.