Review By Joey Carole
Ori and the Blind Forest, by Moon Studios is a fantastic Art-House Platformer on the outside and an old school Metroidvania adventure on the inside. You play as Ori, a glowing sprite of the forest, in a journey to restore hope, love, and light to your once flourishing but now dark and shadowy home. Three elements needed by the forest have been taken and its your job to restore the forest to its once glorious state. Its easy to get lost staring at the iridescent plant life in both the back and foreground of this magical 2D side scroller. But be cautious, because the creatures and environment will hastily send you to your grave. Ori requires good patience, timing, and some clever thinking to to play upon completion; a task that enchants and enthralls.
There's a talent-tree/ability-point progressions system and plenty of skills to be gained throughout the course of your adventure. Skills such as double-jumps, wall-climbs, ground pounds, and a sort of catapult that works using enemy projectiles are all slowly acquired and needed to gain access to new areas of the forest. Ori also has a basic attack ability called spirit flame, but it becomes relatively weak later on if you choose not to upgrade it via ability points. The Blind Forest is split up into different zone's each with their own unique look and theme. The zone's are littered with secret nooks and crannies which will pay off in more life, power, and trophies to those who go searching.
Ori uses Power as resource for a charged spirit flame attack as well as saving the game. This game does not autosave except for particular plot points which can be few and far between! A design choice that I didn't love but came around to. Remember to save often or you will find yourself repeating many segments unnecessarily as I have done. Although sometimes this worked in my favor when I stumbled upon secret areas after a fourth or fifth attempt through a zone. Without a doubt the toughest areas of the game are the escape sequences which usually take place after restoring an element of the forest. These sequences demand perfection as you must make exquisitely timed maneuver's with death at your heels and no opportunities to save. The total playtime of this game will probably vary greatly depending on the player, but I finished with most of the map explored and Ori's abilities maxed in about 10 hours playtime. Not bad for a $20 game.
The creatures are pretty interesting and provide for some quality platforming gameplay. Colored frogs will belch projectiles at you, birds will dive down from above, and dino-rhino looking things will charge you. Once Ori gains his bash ability which has you launching projectiles back at enemies the creatures no longer pose the greatest threat. I had some of the most trouble carefully working my way around walls lined with thorns or other natural obstacles of the forest. The game does a great job in finding creative ways for you to navigate each zone. Between gliding through a wind tunnel, diving under water, and exploring a volcano the Blind Forest shows a lot of versatility in its design, each area more different and better looking than the last.
A giant bird plays the villain with its own motives, showing up at crucial moments it provides for some great stealth platforming as you run and dodge from its attacks. When you reach the second half of the game you can really feel Ori's progression. The abilities you gain constantly change the way you play as they add to your arsenal, and keep the game feeling fresh. Areas of the map you must backtrack through become a breeze when they used to be tough and new areas present a whole new kind of challenge. A couple of the areas becomes closed off forever when you leave them and upon game completion your file becomes locked, with starting a new game as your only option to keep playing. So no post-game exploration. The map isn't very hard to explore %100 but if you move too quickly through a zone the inability to backtrack certain places could make this game a nightmare for completionists.
Moon Studio developers listed anime kings Ghibli and Miyazaki as inspirations to the art design as well as Super Metroid, and Zelda: A Link to the Past for the DNA of Ori and the Blind Forest. The goal was to instill the same sensation in gamers today as the developers felt when they played some of these nintendo 90s classics. A goal I think they nailed, there developer forefathers would be proud.
Final Thoughts
Ori and the Blind Forest achieves what the developers set out to do. It hit's an adored sub-genre of gaming that's not visited nearly enough, paying great homage to Metroidvania style games and achieving a unique new-gen look of its own. Great sound design and touching story. At only $20 this is a must have for anyone with an xbox one.
Pro's
+Incredible Art style, (It's inspirations shine through while maintaining it's own look)
+Nails the rare Metroidvania sub-genre of gaming
+Simple, Quality Narrative
Con's
-Odd choice of game saving mechanics
-Some tedious segments
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