GAME REVIEW: Ori And The Will Of The Wisps (Switch)

 (Shadows Of Mouldwood - Gareth Coker)

When Moon Studios released the Ori And The Blind Forest back in 2015, it was universally hailed as a nearly perfect game.  The graphics were breathtaking, the gameplay felt sharp and innovative, the music and sound design were all incredibly well crafted, et cetera. As a game, it was almost completely without flaw.  As if that weren't enough, Moon Studios followed by with additional content for the game in their excellent Definitive Edition of the game.

As has been said many times, the sophomore effort after a monster freshman entry is incredibly difficult.  When Moon Studios announced that they'd be making a sequel, gamers were equal parts eager and worried.  The bar that was set with OATBF was incredibly high.

Ori And The Will Of The Wisps launched in March 2020 on XBox and PC, and in September on Nintendo Switch.  Moon Studios touted a larger game with somehow even more enhanced graphics, another incredible story, and more of the same goodness.

Did they manage to pull it off?

THE SHORT VERSION: 

Yes.  Like the first game, Ori And The Will Of The Wisps is nearly perfect.

THE LONG VERSION:

In my review of Ori And The Blind Forest, I talked about how one of my barometers for the quality of a game is my wife's desire to play it.  

Let's open this up by saying that Ori And The Will Of The Wisps is another one of those titles.

When I suggest that a game is nearly perfect, I'm evaluating it on a number of criteria:

- Story: I don't need a complex story, though that certainly doesn't hurt when done properly.  What I DO need is a story that doesn't get in its own way.  Stories can be simple and yet still good.  Look at the original Super Mario Bros.  That story boils down to, "Someone came and took your girl.  Time to go get her back!"  It didn't feel the need to explain just how much acid Mario had taken to believe he was in a mushroom kingdom.

- Gameplay: What constitutes 'good' gameplay depends on the genre of the game.  In the case of Ori And The Will Of the Wisps, it's a platforming Metroidvania.  Controls need to be razor sharp, the environment needs to clearly suggest how to navigate through it, and the game itself needs to make backtracking and exploring new areas with new abilities easy to understand.

- Audio/Video: We experience games first with our eyes and ears.  Like the story, a game does not need to have complex audio and video in order to be good,  but the A/V shouldn't ever get in the way of enjoying a game.  The challenge for game designers here is to make sure that if they're falling back on retro graphics and sound, they put extra effort into making them either compelling or non-impactful. 

Two textbook examples of how to do this properly are Fez and Axiom Verge.  Both were created using the same palette, pixel style, and chip-tune audio commonly found in 16-bit games.  Both were master-classes in making 'dated' visuals and audio work well.  Not only did the A/V in these games not distract from the game itself, they contributed to its overall ambiance heavily.

In contract, we have Undertale.  Undertale is a game stuffed with a robust story and really incredible gameplay mechanics. It's also chained to comparatively lackluster audio and video.  I say 'comparatively' because when you hold up Undertale's game mechanics and the tightness of its controls up against the graphics and audio, they aren't on the same playing field at all when held up against the state of the art currently in the industry.  This doesn't necessarily mean that the game is bad, simply that the elements don't mesh as firmly as they should.

I bring up these examples so that you fully understand what I mean when I suggest yet again that OATWOTW is a nearly perfect game.  Let's get into some specifics.

STORY

OATWOTW's story picks up almost immediately after Ori And The Blind Forest leaves off.  It's difficult to give details about how 'Wisps' starts without spoiling either it or its predecessor.  Suffice it to say, if you played the first game, you'll slip into second game without any issue at all.  One of the biggest story elements from the first game is clear and present, and it serves as a driver for the entirety of 'Wisps' gameplay.

'The Blind Forest' wasted no time in putting your emotions into a vice grip and then cranking on them in an alarmingly effective fashion in a shockingly short amount of time.  'Wisps' somehow refines this both directly through storytelling and indirectly through the environments you play through. I'll touch on this again in a bit.

GAMEPLAY

'Wisps' plays pretty much exactly like 'Forest' did with regard to character navigation and environment interaction.  This is a very good thing, as 'Forest' put on a clinic for both of those things.  'Wisps' differs from 'Forest' in a few key areas:

- Saving: 'Forest' leveraged a very forgiving save mechanic that pretty much let you save the game anywhere you wanted.  As a result, the risk of frustration from having to replay a lot of the game upon death was low.  'Wisps' leverages a mostly uncontrollable save system that triggers at major game events and when you move into different areas of the game.  This can absolutely lead to some frustration, but you'll quickly learn how to 'game' this function and save more or less whenever you need to.

- Ability assignment: In 'Forest', you earned XP.  Earn enough XP and you get an ability point that you could put into one of three different ability paths.  'Wisps' does away with this mechanic entirely.  Instead, the XP is treated as currency that you can use to buy new abilities in the game's hub area.  This adds flexibility to how you play through the game.

- Pathing: In 'Forest', the game was pretty much on rails as far as primary objectives.  You hit the Ginso tree, you hit the Forlorn Hideout, and you hit Mount Horu.  While you can freely explore the game between each major objective, you couldn't do them out of order.  In 'Wisps', you play on rails for about the first 25 percent of the game, and then it opens up completely and you're allowed to pursue the remainder of the game in whatever order you choose.

This and a number of other elements add up to a game that clocked in at over twice the size of the original.  

A/V

The sound design and music for Ori And The Will Of The Wisps is perfect.  Period.  Gareth Coker, the game's score composer, clearly made a deal with the devil.  Ori And The Blind Forest had a bonkers good score.  If anything though, 'Wisps' is better.  A lot better.  Coker's work here is rich, varied, and sonically complex.

Not to be outdone, the sound design for 'Wisps' is also out of this world.  All of the sounds you grew to love from Ori And The Blind Forest are back, along with plenty of new ones.  Like the music, they've taken it a step farther.  I don't want to spoil it except to say that the game excels at using sound and music to play with your emotions.  One of the late game areas in particular is...very creepy.  VERY.  That all comes down to the sound design.

As a video game, Ori And The Will Of The Wisps is as close as you're going to get to a perfect title while people still have their own opinions about things.  Every element of this game lines up the way it should, resulting in an experience that's an absolute pleasure from beginning to end.  If you haven't played this game yet but you have played its predecessor, stop what you're doing and go buy it.  It's worth every penny.

If you haven't played said predecessor...buy them both.  Play them both.  Thank me later.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!!!!

So...I know I spent a lot of time talking about how 'Wisps' was basically a perfect game, but it does have one problem.  It's worse because it's the EXACT SAME problem that Ori And The Blind Forest had, and that's late-game incentives for collecting XP.  In 'Forest', it's very, very easy to get super OP before you even beat the Ginso tree.  Once you get Bash within Ginso, you can then easily waddle into Black Root Burrows, grab Dash, and the in-world map is your oyster at that point.  You can have most of the worthwhile abilities purchased before you beat Ginso.  Worse, right after you beat Ginso, you'll gain access to Stomp, which unlocks Light Bomb.  And now you CAN get everything before you ever head into the game's second major act.

Ori And The Will Of The Wisps has this problem as well.  You end up with a ton of currency and nothing even remotely worthwhile to spend it on.  As a result, you have no reason whatsoever to chase down currency orbs as collectables.  You'll learn very quickly that most of the things you can spend your money on are utterly worthless.  If there's no pull to explore, the game just becomes about hammering through the main quest as quickly as possible.  That's a shame.  

A few tips from my play-through:

- Get Spirit Smash as soon as possible. You'll be leaning on this -a lot- in combat.  Learn it.  Learn its timing.  It is grossly overpowered.
- Other than Spirit Smash, the only shards worth buying are Triple Jump and, eventually, Water Breathing.  And on that note...
- Wait on buying Water Breathing until you're ready to do the Luma Pool.
- If you disliked the escape from the Ginso tree, you're not going to have much fun with 'Wisps'.  There are six such sequences in 'Wisps' that are all at least as hard as the Ginso escape was.
- During the final dungeon, you'll gain your last ability, Launch.  YOU CAN DO THIS IN MID-AIR ONCE.  Cling to a wall or land on the ground and it resets.  Light Bomb + Bash + Launch = INSANE jumping distances.
- After you find Burrow, you'll have the chance to run into Lupo in his home within the Wellspring Glade.  There, he'll offer to sell you outrageously expensive maps that show you where things like Life Cells, Energy Cells, and Shards are. The Shard map is the only one that's worth a damn at an eye-watering 4,000 soul. Unless you are sitting on 8,000+ soul though, don't bother with any of it.  Late in the game, you unlock a feature that shows you where every secret item in the entire game is, making Lupo's maps worthless.  You'll want that extra soul when you find the shards that the soul currency you currently have into a damage bonus.  It stacks up to a whopping 6,000 soul.  Believe me, when the time comes, you're going to want that extra damage.  A lot.

- Do not play Mouldwood at night.  That is all.
- If you find a Spirit Shrine, prioritize beating it.  That's where you'll get Shard Slots from.
- The Spirit Challenges are in-game races whose only reward is soul currency.  You'll be forced to do one of them.  Never, ever bother with them again.  By the time it's all said and done, you'll have more money than you know what to do with.
- Use your first Gorlek Ore to enable Fast Travel.  Use your next set of ore on fixing the fountain within the Wellspring Glade.  After that, do the remaining upgrades in whatever order you wish.  The rewards for each completion are negligible.
- Most of the seed quests only result in additions to the Wellspring Glade that enable you to more easily reach its heights.  Thing is, by the time you get the seeds that unlock those navigation aides, you should already have double jump, triple jump, dash, and bash.  Put all of that together with the Sticky shard and you'll be able to get everywhere in the Glade you need to go.  The only seed you need to worry about is the very first one that you find as a result of speaking with the mourning Kii in the Silent Woods.  Take his branch to Tuley, who will send you right back to the Kii, who will give you a seed to plant.  This will result in the growth of a Spirit Tree that will increase your offense and defense.  The other seeds aren't worth prioritizing in any way.
- Once you have Bash, prioritize the Midnight Burrows area.  The reward for solving its puzzle is a valuable damage and defense buff.
- Water Dash does damage.  You can find that ability in the Luma Pools.  It's a mostly worthless upgrade, but it makes dealing with aquatic enemies easier once you have it.