Ori and the Will of the Wisps has some very enjoyable combat and movement mechanics but sits in a weird spot between something like Hollow Knight and Celeste that leaves it unable to capitalise in the best way possible on those two systems.
First of all, I’d like to make it clear from the outset that Will of the Wisps is a fantastic experience. It takes almost everything from the first game and ramps it up another notch. The combat is the most obvious improvement, since it’s gone from effectively not existing to a very fluid and enjoyable combat model. Platforming has a wealth of new options that make the first game look positively quaint and slow in comparison (though I think the amount of extra options are a problem, which I’ll discuss later). Visually the first game was stunning and the sequel increases the scope of variety and plain volume of detail through extra clutter and dynamic lighting. Music felt like it lacked the best of the original ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwN1MEjUeGk nothing in WotW even comes close to this track ) but was still overall solid, and I enjoyed the new motif and wish it was explored more rather than an excessive reliance on “that” motif (you know the one) from the first game. Story-wise the game failed thematically for me, but I won’t really discuss that here too much because I want to focus on gameplay and not too much on spoiler-y stuff but it left me with a very hollow feeling with the conclusion of the antagonists story especially.
With that out of the way, I’d like to discuss my feelings on those important gameplay systems. Celeste is clearly a vastly different game to Ori, but they are both nonetheless platformers with a focus on precise movement and as an excellent and popular contemporary, Celeste makes for a good comparison for my points. In Celeste, each room is a very carefully constructed challenge that the player must execute perfectly (at least beyond the A sides) to complete. No matter who you are, how many times you enter the room, the challenge remains static. It is extremely fair to the player and this static nature allows the rooms to be precisely designed with satisfying solutions in mind. Ori’s health system which plays into its combat causes issues here. While the game has platforming challenges to overcome in a clearly intended way, it is very possible to brute force your way through many of the challenges that involve any kind of damage source. This is especially apparent in the last section of the game with the toughest challenges, which with a lot of health you can damage boost through chunks of. I feel the game would have been served better by making more of the threats posed to the player in these sections instant deaths or resets, especially considering the game is fine with spawning you back basically immediately on a safe bit of ground.
The other problem here is straight up the amount of options the player has. Movement feels absolutely amazing and fluid in Ori, but considering by the end of the game you have about 5 different ways of keeping yourself in the air with abilities, plus an (optional) triple jump, the game never feels like it truly keeps up with Ori’s agility in its challenges. The end of the game comes close but that’s just 8 mini challenges. To compare it to a contemporary again, Hollow Knight doesn’t focus all that hard on platforming, but when it does it really makes the player use their smaller suite of abilities to get through places like the Path of Pain. I don’t really know what the best solution here is, whether it be better puzzles that make more use of the agility options or more restrictions on air based movement but I know for sure I didn’t feel like the game could keep up with me.
For the combat side of things we have to inevitably compare it to Hollow Knight and I think this comparison is even more unfavorable than putting the platforming against Celeste. Hollow Knight doesn’t have a huge amount of combat options a lot of the time, but those limited options are put to excellent use by enemy design that makes those simple options fun and satisfying. I think it exemplifies the issue that the most well designed and enjoyable combat in Ori for me was the Beetle near the start of the game. At that point Ori just has double jump and dash, and the moveset of the Beetle is designed to reflect that. It has a wave of fire to jump over with double jump and the key way the player is able to attack it is by dashing under it with the dash and attacking it from behind. This boss feels straight out of something like Hollow Knight, and for the better. Things start to fall apart on later bosses where you have things like triple jump, the ability to launch out of water, air floating with attacks and bash. Later bosses turn fighting into just flinging yourself up near their head and spamming attacks. There is minimal learning of attack patterns required, and a lot of their attacks feel unfair because that’s how they were designed to combat this huge amount of agility.
It’s frustrating to me because these systems on their own are fantastic but I don’t think the game knows how to best make use of them. The spirit trials are a nice way to test the player’s platforming skills and the combat challenges are a nice idea too, but neither go even remotely far enough. Again to compare to Hollow Knight, that game has the white palace (which is kind of optional) and path of pain (totally optional) to really test the player’s platforming skills and the combat arena (again, optional) to throw the player into really difficult combat scenarios. Maybe this will be addressed in DLC as I feel like some more optional things would go a long way into making the game more enjoyable. Even if there was more arena-like combat though, the lack of interesting enemy variety might not make this all that enjoyable anyway. This optional nature should also be further extended to the collectibles in game. This is a key area where something like Celeste has dynamic difficulty. The player doesn’t need to go and get all the strawberries, but they’re there for players who want more challenge and that should be something Ori leaned into more with its own collectibles. You can still have some that are easier for less skilled players to get, but for example, the fetch quest could have been a series of escalating platforming challenges to get the items required and have a totally non gameplay altering reward for those players looking for a little more challenge.
Perhaps a lot of these problems are actually caused by Ori’s outstanding presentation. I remember Team Cherry having talked about how trivial implementing enemies is for them. In a matter of a day or two they can go from an idea to an ingame usable prototype thanks to the game’s simple visuals and mechanics. Ori’s flashy presentation perhaps leaves us with at most 10 different types of enemies with limited move sets and variety.
I do hope we get another game, or at least a spiritual successor which continues the improvements this game makes
