Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Ori and the Blind Forest was a great platforming metroidvania. It was hard. It had a cool mechanic. It was absolutely gorgeous. Ori is back for more with all of what it had before and all new stuff! Welcome to Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

Find it on Steam.

For a short point, if you liked the first game, definitely get this one.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps actually feels quite different from Blind Forest. I’ll get to it more a bit later. For now, I want to say what’s the same. The atmosphere and feel of the world is still wonderful, wondrous and gorgeous. The world of Ori is one filled with lush islands filled with different areas such as swamps, deserts and more. Each area is amazingly wonderful and stunning to look at. The world waves and ripples as Ori passes by. It is so fun to look at. The music in the game is still great and fits the mood wonderfully. The style was great when Blind Forest came out, so Will of the Wisps didn’t need to do much to it. There’s just different area types to explore now.

What is different about the game, though, is the combat and tone of it. This game feels a lot more like a hopeful Hollow Knight minus the death mechanic. Now to put that in terms for people that haven’t played Hollow Knight.

Compared to the first game, combat has a much larger focus. In Blind Forest, Ori’s light friend sort of just fires homing missiles to nearby enemies. This time, you have a weapons and can do directional attacks like attacking up or down.

They also no longer try to jam all of the abilities onto your controller. Now you have to assign most of the abilities to one of three buttons, and those are the ones you can use. Don’t worry, changing abilities is easy and you can do it at any time. It just means the game no longer tries to make one button do too many things.

As for the tone of the game, this time, you’ll have NPC’s to talk to! They’ll even move around as you go through areas. There’s also a map seller rather than the mapstone used from the first game. The NPC’s all live in the decaying land and are hoping for you to save it since you are the only one that can hold the light.

There are also side activities this time around like time trials or combat trials. It makes the world feel less lonely.

The platforming of the game is still great and difficult. Ori has new moves, so sometimes it can get really hectic especially during the game’s escape sequences. Those are still great, though maybe I’m used to them since they feel easier compared to the first game.

Bash is still the main mechanic. It is where Ori grabs onto an enemy or enemy projectile and uses that to launch him in a certain direction while launching what he grabbed in the other direction. He also gets new moves while also losing a few moves from the first game.

While the platforming feels great and solid, there is one thing I will say that is bad about it. The indicators. There is a blue circle indicator that is pretty much used for everything except bash. That is a problem when sometimes the blue indicator means you need to use one button while other times you need to use a different button. The different buttons should use different color indicators, like make one of them green or something. There have been way too many times I pressed the wrong button because I saw blue circle, I go to what I first learned.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps still has a great story, full of amazing moments. Be prepared for some heartwarming as well as heart-wrenching.

Find it on Steam!

Also, I am about to share some more pictures. But there are some spoilers for the Ori and the Blind Forest, that is the first game. If you haven’t played the first game and want to experience it fully, don’t go down to the next images! I still wanted to show them off because this game is so gorgeous.

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