Walkthrough Ori and the Blind Forest happened in those distant times when I had not yet touched Hollow Knight, when you haven’t done it yet Sekiro: Shadows die twice, although on the other hand I already completed it on normal difficulty Supermeatboy And They Bleed Pixels. But the first part of Ori, which had no difficulty levels at the time of release, sometimes made me sweat. Her difficulties were enough to keep me in one place for a dozen or two or three deaths. Therefore, including Will of the Wisps, I paid special attention to the words of the authors that the norm is the same difficulty with which the game was intended, and it’s better to leave harddoor for a second playthrough.
Imagine my disappointment when the game completely refused to offer me at least some kind of challenge! And I can’t say now whether the game has really become easier, or whether my skills have simply increased. But if the game allows me to attack both simple mobs and bosses head-on, waving my saber, sucking up damage from every oncoming attack, and in a direct collision the enemy dies before me – this is some kind of unhealthy difficulty. I walked a little further than the mill normally, and death overtook me only with excessive arrogance and carelessness.
The authors claim that this is precisely the complexity they intended. Difficulty where I miss half the attacks, absorb every blow from the boss, but his life bar runs out faster than mine. Seriously?
Therefore, I recommend that everyone whose hands are at least slightly adapted to difficulties go straight to the difficult difficulty.
The second disappointment from the new game was the excessive bias of the sequel towards another game I loved. I adore Hollow Knight, I love it for completely different things than Ori. I never wanted to see these two games together, and at first Will of the Wisps just tormented me with how much she learned from the hollow knight. No, no, I understand that the knight is not as original as I would like to believe, but I haven’t played all the games. Therefore, the main comparison was made precisely Hollow Knight. Let’s cross our fingers:
Characters, of which there are many, who speak their own language, and a text translator broadcasts all their speech to the viewer in a special window. Moreover, some characters are blatantly repeated. Especially the cartographer, who similarly hides in the hidden corners of locations and offers to buy a map of the area from him for a couple of hundred Geo. Well, or spiritual light. Doesn’t matter. And yes, just like there, there is also one location that the cartographer doesn’t want to go to because it’s too scary for him. Moreover, Hollow Knight regarding the characters went much further Ori. Her characters do not stand still, but travel on their own. They can meet at a source, at a rain-filled window, they can sit tiredly on a bench, or they can find themselves in trouble from which only the player can rescue them (if he wants). They can also tensely glance sideways at someone nearby, and if you come up to talk, the character will tell you about his suspicions and fears. U Ori animals always stand in one place. At best, a monkey and a toad got out somewhere a couple of times, and some characters from the found zones moved to the hub location. And the cartographer, of course, travels. Moreover, he is able to get even into a locked secret location and find himself in front of the main character, even if the eternally locked gate literally just opened. All other characters are static. Yes, everyone has their own voice, their own story, but they are stuck in one place and don’t even interact with each other. Plus, not everyone reacts to events in the forest and not always.
By the way, yes, Ori now there is a hub location. Local equivalent "Durtmouth" also initially does not breathe life, but as the main character accomplishes it is filled with various creatures. Experience disappeared as an element of the game, and regular currency took its place. At the same time, the number and variety of merchants was reduced to three in one place, while in Hollow Knight numerous merchants were scattered throughout Hallownest. One trader will teach Ori techniques, the second will sell him cards, and the third will sell modifiers – another element taken from Hollow Knight.
Now, in addition to trees that https://kingpalacecasino.co.uk/bonus/ provide permanent improvements, the player is offered a table with modifiers that allow him to assemble, like a constructor, his own Ori. The freedom and number of variations is significantly inferior to the Hollow Knight, but there is still variety. I mean, the modifiers from the Knight offered auras, allies, the ability to dive down, removed or increased recoil, increased maneuverability, gave damage when diving, plus some modifiers are fragile, plus you can attach one modifier to yourself more than the maximum! And in Ori basically they just offer an increase in numbers for damage, defense, health and mana, and from something that really affects the gameplay only sticking to walls, lassoing enemies and, one might say… damage on damage, damage on bounce, damage on sneeze and my favorite shard – increase the danger of enemies to get more money.
Another detail that both of these games have is the ability to jump up from an enemy by performing a downward attack. An extremely useful ability that allows you to stay in the air longer than usual, but the Hollow Knight can jump on heads until their health expires, and Ori able to bounce exactly once. Ori, seriously? You can hang in the air and swing a sword without going down at all, and when you swing a hammer, you rise even higher than before. You can do dives up if there is sand there. You can use a lasso to jump to an enemy much higher than you. You can even bounce from the air many, many times (triple jump, dash, triple jump). Not to mention the fact that you can stick to enemies and bounce off them – the main original mechanic of the entire series. You have so many options to stay in the air or rise even higher, but when you hit the enemy below you jump exactly once? What the hell, Ori?
I can jump around the enemy as much as I want without touching the ground. But I can stay in the air longer with forward attacks than with downward attacks. It’s not fatal, but it’s very annoying.
But, of course, the game has its own charm. She is stunningly beautiful, she plays very nicely, and over time she dispels all snobbery about her secondary nature. If you step away from comparisons with other games and look at Ori in a vacuum, it captures the player’s attention and constantly fuels curiosity about what lies around the next corner. It presents abilities very beautifully and conveniently. With a full package of skills, rushing through locations, jumping out of the water, cutting through thick sand, pushing off flowers suspended on vines is pure pleasure. And during meetings with bosses, tension permeates every cell of the body. The soundtrack perfectly emphasizes the already rich atmosphere.
No, the second part of Ori’s adventures is not trying to present something new. And she’s not perfect. It has undeveloped characters, weak modifiers, many mobs migrated straight from the first part. But Ori and Will of the Wisps takes the best from the best to polish it to a shine. If not the character, then the gameplay. If not modifiers, then basic abilities. If not small mobs, then bosses. Boss battles are truly amazing in their design. They always manage to surprise, offer a new difficult challenge, and every meeting with the boss will remain in my memory for a long time in the most positive colors. Even the worm I was stuck on for half of all my game deaths.
Returning to the plot – the authors, trying to do much the same as in the first part, only bigger and better, decided to repeat the events, giving the player a new forest with new problems and a new pilgrimage to the most important places of this forest: go down into the bowels of the earth, climb to the top of a mountain, bury yourself in the sands of the desert, and so on. And since home Ori has already been saved, then the animal is simply taken by the ears and thrown into the neighboring forest, with which the hero is not connected at all. He was just flying by, but suddenly found himself in the middle of other people’s problems, forgot everything he was taught in the first part, and began to save the world again, oppressed by the local Kuro, only now it’s no longer an owl, but an unknown animal named Scream and another sad prophecy waiting for its hero in the face of a small luminous animal.
Scream has a very controversial design, forcing her to walk not on her paws, but on her wings… why does she need paws then?? They dangle awkwardly and… they just annoy me or anyone else?
True, now the plot is extensively flavored with side effects – another element referring to Hollow Knight. All sorts of characters who don’t want to do anything but sit still, wait and believe that the hero will go to their house for a seed, dig up mines for ore, and then sell someone food, water, thread and cable TV on sale. No matter how free it is, the shops after the mill eliminate the need to spend money if you shop wisely and are not lazy to search for secrets. A couple of the most effective weapons, several modifier improvements, and you can forget about treasure maps – that’s the main build with which you run through the rest of the game. The rest on the shelves is empty fluff that you can buy stupidly for fun, to have it, and not because you need it. And you will change the build not out of a thirst for efficiency, but simply for the sake of variety, if you want. At best, determine two or three builds for yourself: this is for the boss, this is for farming, and this is for acrobatics.
Saves with not the most adequate responsiveness deserve special mention. Now you can’t put them wherever you want. Savings occur using some kind of internal number generator. They are not tied to locations, not tied to time, not tied to collecting items, or tied to both, because I haven’t defined the system yet. You can immediately jump off the platform after saving, sneeze in the air, go back and immediately see the autosave icon. Or you can skip halfway through the forest, drown in a quagmire and find yourself at the entrance to the location. Or you can dance around the location with a tambourine for several minutes, trying to squeeze a save out of the game, so that you can exit the game with satisfaction and not be afraid of lost progress. You can go through an obstacle course, take a mana sphere and die on the way back, after which you find yourself in the place of the collected sphere, or you can return to the beginning of the path, jump through the traps again, die again on the way back and only the second time come to life with the sphere in your hands.
Even worse, you can take an object beyond the obstacle course, then go about your business, die after a while and discover that you haven’t taken anything yet. Probably the main problem of the local save system is that after death you have to check whether you took the right item, or whether autosave has not yet secured the desired progress? But there are several guaranteed ways to ensure data recording – these are wells and fast travel, as well as various events such as completed quests and tests.
By the way, yes, there are challenges in the game and they come in several types. This can be either an absolutely typical race with statistics on friends and the world, or an equally typical survival for several waves of enemies. The race is rewarded with regular currency, but the altars of survival grant a slot for modifiers for victory.
It’s better not to look at world statistics, otherwise your self-esteem will drop. Whether it’s the statistics on friends – solid, honestly deserved first place
The game does its best to encourage exploration, while being lenient on the player’s inattention. It draws labels even for those objects that you yourself did not see, but simply passed by. At the same time, they offer for sale information about the placement of certain things. There is also a quest for an ultimate map of all, all items, so that any perfectionist can clean every piece of the forest until it shines… And somewhere here there is another pitfall. I don’t know what the problem is, but I have two or three locations stuck at 99% progress, although I bought all possible treasure maps, climbed into every corner of the world and collected every item that the map showed me. What in a location can take up one single meager percentage of progress? I can’t sleep, I toss and turn at night, agonizing over this problem!
There are also some sound problems in the game. Sometimes the speakers are cut by a strange glitch. And it always seemed to me that this was a problem purely on my computer, but no – if you turn on someone else’s Let’s Play, these problems persist there.
Of course, the game deserves all the praise that comes to it from all corners of the Internet. It’s impossible not to enjoy the game, and the disadvantages are lost in the abundance of advantages. In no way am I trying to detract from her amazingness. It’s just that for some reason many stubbornly ignore quite obvious shortcomings. I decided to get to the bottom of the diamond shining with a rainbow and look for scratches on it, of which there are many, but they are small. They are so small that they do not attract the attention of the vast majority of reviews. And this, whatever one may say, is a very significant result.