Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition

The Good: + Beautiful graphics + Amazing soundtrack + Touching story + Challenging gameplay + Decent length + Generous save system The Bad: - Floaty controls - Too much bloom - A lot of trial and error - Bad wall jump mechanics - Too much backtracking - At times infuriatingly difficult - Especially the rising water level... - Timed events The Ugly: - Can't rebind controls!

There is no other way to say it: This game is stunningly beautiful, as is the music. A 2D-platformer / Metroidvania with tight controls and a cute and occasionally sad story. That are the good parts. The reason why I am only giving it three stars is the steep difficulty curve. The game starts out really pleasant and relatively easy and introduces new things at a good pace. I thought "I this is kept up, this will become one of my favorite games." But THEN, after the third movement upgrade (the double-jump if I recall correctly) you suddenly hit a wall. Suddenly you are supposed to deliver pin-point accuracy and almost timing to dodge all the nasty stuff, the game throws at you. Over and over again. I felt more reminded of games like Super Meat Boy than one that seems to be aimed at kids or an older and more relaxed audience. At this point the game felt too exhausting and I stopped playing. Maybe this is a game for people with higher tolerance for frustration. But not for me.

So the game is a 2D platformer with good controls. Ori will gain some abilities when exploring and others are gained with an ability tree. The abilities gained while exploring, usually allows Ori to get past an obstacle. Other closed doors depends on how many spirit orbs expansion you have collected Good soundtrack Good graphics Difficulty on normal settings is quite hard, with some difficulty spikes. At least the "save anywhere" feature helps a lot. I found it frustrating many times, definitely, a game "not for me". (I reached 20% of the game approx, gave up on a sequence I cannot pass) I'd recommed this to gamers who are familiar with platformers and this level of challenge, but not to everyone.

Gorgeous with wonderful sound track, loveable player character than moves with such grace and flow... But the game doesn't - have flow I mean. What is meant by 'flow?' You would have heard about the difficulty spikes? Well - that breaks the flow. Instead of being a gradual increase of difficulty using peaks unlocked and skills learnt, Ori has spikes that take me right out of the game. If you are into platformers or practicing the same section over and over and etc then congratualtions you masochist, welcome home. However for $5 it is still recommended as you will get a few hours play that is quite nice. Until the Ginso tree.

People have at length talked about the good things (graphics, atmosphere, music ect) so I won't bother repeating what others have already said. Graphics, animations, atmosphere, music ect are all fantastic. The difficulty has also been talked about a lot. The jumping puzzles are basically 1 hit kills if you mess up, but I thought that was fine, I didnt mind. In fact I have only 1 major gripe with the game, one that unfortunately single handedly breaks the game (for me??). The game is too flashy for it's own good. Say you encounter an enemy that shoots projectiles at you (which are the most common enemy), meanwhile you (a bright, rather small creature) attack by using an orb that also shoots projectiles. So when you hit the attack button your orb flashes, shoots projectiles while also getting shot at by projectiles. Add to that some xp floating to you and you have a game that favors fancy graphics and animations over clear visibility on what is actually going on. I'd say about 60% of the time I died (to enemies) I wasn't actually sure what killed me. I legit couldn't see the projectile that was coming at me, because all the things flashing and floating around blocked the view. I simply can't understand how the developers thought that was a good idea. At the same time I don't understand how no one is talking about this problem because it in my opinion completely ruins the game and makes it borderline frustrating. Instead of relying on quick thinking and reflexes, I have to use hit and run tactics and make sure I do not attack while the enemy is attacking, else I can't dodge the projectiles coming at me. A good example on how this is done right is Hollow Knight. The graphics are much simpler and straight forward, but I can actually see what is going on and don't feel cheated when I die. It is so dissapointed because everything else in this game is fantastic.