Ori and the Will of the Wisps
You ever play a sequel and it’s a complete and total let down? Where they screwed up everything good about the first game, and they didn’t improve on anything? Yea, me too. Well good news! Ori and the Will of the Wisps is not that kind of sequel. This is one of the few successors that is better on every single aspect over the original.
Jumping right into it immediately after finishing Blind Forest I had a slight adjustment period. Feeling weak after losing all my cool power-ups. It doesn’t take long until you’re back to full speed. Instead of your main attack being a floating ball that spits beams of light at enemies, your first attack skill is a sword of light! It’s like you’re a freaking Jedi. Ori Wan Kenobi is here to save the day.
This game picks up right where the last one left off. After the traumatic events in Blind Forest you’re left with an owl egg. Out hatches a baby owl, daughter of the main villain in the last game. The central theme here is the same, not everything is black and white, good and evil. Every character is a matter of their own fortunate, or misfortunate, circumstances. During a joyride on Ku, the little owl, a thunderstorm strikes. Ori and Ku get stranded in a nearby forest island, that is akin to where Blind Forest took place. There is one main difference, this forest is inhabited by other creatures, spanning a multitude of species! It’s a nice contrast compared to Blind Forest where the only living things left were Ori and a couple others. The goal is the same, you have to revive the once prosperous tree that supports the life of the forest. Lots of ups and downs, with a very emotional story that will thaw even the coldest of hearts.
Gameplay mechanics got a huge upgrade here. Instead of having a limited and static set of techniques, Will of the Wisps takes some hints from the RPG genre. You have an attack palette that allows you to fill it with three attack or support skills of your choice. You’ll swap through most of them to work your way through the forest. There were only a couple that I really never touched. You also find shards that you can equip, like an accessory in an RPG, that give you different support attributes. By the end of the game you can equip many of these. I found a combo that made me an invincible melee attacker and it carried me through the endgame.
Once again the visual appearance is beautiful. I tried to capture it in the screenshots I took and posted to the right. Music was also fantastic again.
Difficulty was on-par as the first, however it was more balanced. The escape portions at the end of each dungeon were a little easier, but the platforming and enemies were a tad tougher. The game autosaved this time, which also helped balance out the difficulty.
Kudos to Moon Studio for improving on everything, even things I didn’t realize I wanted improved upon, such as the customizable attack palette.
Definitely check this out, but be prepared for some challenging platforming.
