Buy Ori and the Blind Forest

TL;DR --> vmdflgnsdjgnvk lkdfj gvbjk 11/10

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From time to time a game appears that gives a lesson to every developer and company about how to make games properly. Well, Ori is one of those games.

Even though perfection will never exist in videogames IMO, I find it really hard to search for cons into this game. Just notice that I was very hyped about Hotline Miami 2 for almost a year and I honestly admit that this hype banished once I purchased Ori.

Ori and the Blind Forest brings something new, something fresh, something NEEDED. I can't imagine the amount of work required to build a game like this but trust me people, devs can be hugely proud of it.

Visuals are the closest to perfection I've ever seen in a videogame. Just see it for yourselves and get stunned about what a 2D platformer can give you. Seriously, you don't need to go to an art museum anymore. This game is well enough. From beginning to end it'll be impossible for you not to stare at every single detail, every singe hand-made background.

The tag "Great Soundtrack" is not one of the most voted without a reason. Such a great visuals strongly need a great soundtrack too, and that's what you'll find. Tracks add so much feeling and emotion into this game that together with the visuals it becomes one of the greatest combinations of the WHOLE industry.

Controls are tight and super fair. Mind this words: the game is challenging and every single death will be of your fault. This is the regular metroidvania where you get more movement skills as soon as you progress into the story. I found quite some similarities to the experience I got with Guacamelee (in terms of gameplay).

The story... OMG. Just when I thought I saw everything a 2D platformer could give (mostly soft and simple plots), this game appears. 20 minutes were enough for me to start clapping in front of the screen. This game has one of the strongest prologues I've ever played. AND IT'S IN 2D. SO MANY LIMITATIONS, YET SUCH AN INCREDIBLE EXECUTION.

The length is also good enough. Not too long, but not too short either. Map is extremely well planned, together with collectibles and secrets. Getting everything can perfectly give you 8-10h, which is more than the average platformer can offer.

Finally, achievements are very well written too. This sounds stupid but it's sad to see some nice games where the achievements are completely senseless or wrongly directed. This game has every kind of achievement I like: storyline achievements, collectible achievements, movement achievements, and hardcore achievements.

I think that the only con I can find to this game is that sometimes there are so many glowing things together that you can't really distinguish the friendly ones against the enemy bullets. But this mainly applies to one particular enemy and I'm partially colorblind so I can't say it's a con at all.

Overall, just stop buying mediocre bundles nor triple A games. Do yourself a favor and pay 20€ for this game. We're in front of one of the best games of the year, and we're still on March. But seriously, this game is something I've never seen before (and I've played more games than I can count) and probably no one will dislike this game (aside from fake haters and people pretending to be funny).

Final Mark: 9.75/10 this is one of the best 2D platformers you'll play in a very long time.

Saw Ori for the first time and squealed like a little girl.
First 10 minutes into the game I cried like a little girl.
Every time I die I rage like a little girl.
Every time I succeed I cheer like a little girl.
Background made me appreciate art like a little girl.
Im a grown a** man and this game turned me into a little girl.

11/10 would play Lilo and Stitch/Studio Ghibli/Dark Souls mash up like a little girl again...

Absolutely loved this game -- parts of it were incredibly difficult, and I died more times than I care to remember, but the story and the gameplay were great. There were a few glitches, like the game crashing (maybe 5 times in 25 hours of gameplay, my hours played is inflated due to some idling), but in general very smooth. The controls were very good and generally intuitive.

Pros: Great gameplay, great story, difficult but not impossible challenges, incredible graphics

Cons: Occassional crashes, some areas are closed once you beat them making it impossible to go back and get all of the collectibles.

Thought about crying. Had to retain manliness. Didn't. 10/10

The music started playing. I cried.
The story began, I cried.
Played the game, I cried.

Game is too pretty and too good to be played, without crying out of sadness and joy.

Buy it or delete your steam account please.

Best Game 2015 already.

Alright, after 12 hours of gameplay and over 500 deaths later, I would love to review this platforming masterpiece.
You play as Ori, a light creature created from the spirit tree on one night and you are discovered and cared for by Naru who basically raises him, after a while of watching the story not all goes well as Kuro (antagonist) reigns terror upon the land causing havoc to the elements, and with everything in ruin it is up to Ori the recover the elements and bring the forest back to life.

First the graphics are amazing with beautiful 2D hand-drawn animations. It captures everything from the light to dark as you traverse the world.
Music and sound effects are as well beautiful to hear, amazing soundtrack.

Gameplay wise you go around the forests multiple areas from glades and swamps to the windy hill tops and mountain areas fighting foes and collecting orbs for your upgrades. Of course, blue is mana for your abilities, green is health, and yellow is to learn more moves and tricks to help you last longer in the game, wide selection of attacks like the flame attack, stomp attack, and many other abilities to help you traverse around the obstacles.
And as I said, this game may look cute and pretty on the outside but once when you get further into the game, its not like Dark Souls or Battletoads hard, but the game still does not hold your hand and provides a fair challenge.

Controls are where it is keen in the game, because there are some parts where after each element you save, there is a chase scene and you have to be precise with the timing cause wrong move and you do it all over again. Controls can be a little hard to learn at first because there is so many abilities on the list to learn that your left hand will cramp. But it is all worth while when you beat the game.

Also little add to the story, this game will make you cry because of the twists in the story, and im not going to lie, I did shed a tear at a few points in the game.

All in all..do I recommend this game?...Hell Yes I do, this is wonderful game from start to finish that provides alot of replayability, many secrets to collect that all in all will take you 10-13 hours depending on how you go through the game. Its beautiful, fun, with a deep story that powerfully told through text and the emotion of the animals.
Definatly a game to buy!

score: 9.5/10 - must play
similar games: Rayman Origins/ Legends, Guacamelee, Super Metroid
target audience: fans of metroidvania, platformer, challenging games, disney-esque narrative and atmossphere

Short summary: Wow. Ori and the blind forest is a small game, it costs only friggin 20€, is 8-10 hours long (which is long for an indie game) and those 8 hours I played it were so much fun, but also so inspiring for me, someone who is very interested for game design, because Ori is a game so well designed, no compromises (which means smaller target audience) which is really rare these days. But thats the way to make a game as good as possible and these guys managed to do that. There are some very minor things which were bad like sometimes visibility was a problem, but the core design of the game is perfect.

I just want to give the devs huge credit for making no compromises. Every decision they made for this game feels like they made it because they want it to be the best game they can make, and not a game which the most people possible will play to make the most money. That means this game is really hard sometimes, but never unfair, and the difficulty curve is really good and also they teach the player really well except one thing I´ll explain later. This also means the game can be frustrating for some people, because they made a save system which can make you replay long sections of the game, but this save system is really smart. Its like a manual save system with quick-save only, but you cant abuse it, you cant make 100 saves and for a metroidvania/open-world game that would be fatal, so they made this save system which makes so much sense for this type of game. I just want to make clear how important this is in my opinion, because many games ♥♥♥♥ up stuff like this and make checkpoints all over the place which takes out the challenge. It can be annoying, because at first you will maybe forget to save sometimes, but youll get used to it. Also saving is not just a feature tagged onto the game, it is a mechanic which complements the rest of the game (you can even upgrade it and stuff) and its also a real thing in the lore of the game.
What I also love about this game is how everything is focused on one thing, the platforming. I hate when developers make a game and tag on tons of features which dont bring depth, they only do it to have more content and variety because their main gameplay has not enough depth to keep you motivated. To explain this we can compare Ori to Guacamelee (which was a good game). In Guacamelee you had settled combat sections, platforming sections and boss fight sections. Sometimes you had platforming and combat combined and all of your combat moves were also platforming moves, but you still had this split. In Ori everything is a platforming section, every enemy you encounter is platforming and not combat (at the start of the game its combat to teach you its combat mechanics). The way enemys are designed and placed throughout the world are only that way because the devs knew this is a platformer.
I also want to give them credit for their smart progression system which not simply fulfills the role to make your character stronger, it focuses more on giving the player more tools to play with, which bring more depth to the game, so the game actually gets harder without getting unfair. So enemys dont have simply more health and damage and the traps are not simply faster than before, you just have to combine more "tools" at your disposal, make more decisions as a player.
I could talk hours about this game´s design, so let me quickly summarize the rest of the gameplay:

- really good controls, perfect with mouse and keyboard
- extremely smooth movement
- lots of variety in enemy and level design
- optional areas
- rewarding exploration
- tons of MEANINGFUL collectibles
- big variety keeps you motivated throughout the whole game

There was one thing in this game however which was a little annoying. Sometimes (like 2-3 times only) it was hard to see where I am supposed to go, this was mostly in sections where you had to move fast. In these sections you have to be quick, dodge obstacles and at the same time look where you have to go and suddenly they want you to use a mechanic you rarely you used in the game. This also happenend at the last "boss"fight. The thing was you can use your bash on enemys and enemy projectiles, but you can also use it on boulders, but only on small ones, the game never tells you this. I tried using it on a normal boulder and it didnt work, so I thought you cant do that. But this is just a small thing.

Some people might say the narrative is barebones, and they would be correct, but the developers did the right thing. There is some text and some cutscenes but all of that is really short and spread throughout the game. You never get interrupted by annoying story-sections. However the narrative that was there was a little bit too cliche for my taste, but thats not a big deal. They created some really interesting and cool characters, and those characters never even talk.
The most important thing (as always for me) is that the narrative keeps you motivated and complements the gameplay, its not a seperate thing. Also the ending was very satisfying and well made.

This game is beatiful. I think thats obvious. Not much to say really. You can compare the graphics to Rayman Legends, its almost the exact same style. The animations are not as smooth as in Rayman Legends, but they are still really well made. But I have to say Rayman Legends is a little cleaner, I always could see enemys and obstacles. In Ori it was sometimes hard to tell if something is solid or not (sometimes something is solid, you can stand on it, but you can also jump on it from below, sometimes you cant), but its not a big deal. Unlike Rayman Legends though, where every level is a seperated from the rest of the world (loading screens), in Ori you have a full open world, everything is connected, you have no loading screens and you never get lost because of a really well made map. I say that because there are still games these days where they even ♥♥♥♥ up the map.

The soundtrack is really good, but its stuff you already heard a lot in other games and movies, especially the main theme sounds very familiar. But its still really good, fits the game and there some tracks which I really love. Overall though its not THAT memorable.

I very, very rarely review games, so I'm doing this out of sheer respect and thankfulness for the developer, Moon Studios.

Ori is easily one of the best games I have bought on a whim (in 8 years of Steam), and had I had any idea of that... well, it wouldn't have been on a whim. The art is probably what stands out the most, but that's only because the controls are so well implemented, they never really took me out of this immersive - and touching - story. Not for a second, honestly.

It was sufficiently challenging for me as a seasoned gamer, but I'm more than sure it shouldn't be frustrating for any casual gamer who doesn't possess a really, really short temper. In fact, I cannot think of another game that made me care so little about dying and having to repeat the same difficult scenes. To the opposite: I was so excited by them (in no small part thanks to the amazing soundtrack and artwork that surely accompanied), that I sometimes died on purpose at the end of a tough part to try to play it again more perfectly. I feel like this is a really big deal and I hope you believe me.

I can honestly think of only one con: you cannot (as of yet at least) continue playing your save after you finish the game. I wish I had known this before, because I truly wanted to go back and finish it 100% - something I'm not at all used to - but I'm sure I'll play through it again. By the way, I makes me happy that the Ori has TEN different slots for you and your family/friends to start a game on. I don't understand why so many games lack that.

In short, I HIGHLY recommend playing Ori, and I can see no contraindications to warn buyers of. Gameplay, art and soundtrack are truly remarkable, and the story is surprising and nothing short of beautiful. This is a game that stands out, and one to remember for a long, long time. Thank you and congratulations to the developers for making such a brilliant game, and selling it for such fair price.

Things Ori reminded me of, while playing: Studio Ghibli, Rayman, Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, Guacamelee, Disney, The Lion King...

I'll finish by quoting another reviewer: "Oh how I wish there were more games like this one, especially when they come out of nowhere like this one did."

One of the best things I've played.

Art. Music. Gameplay. Difficult but not frustrating. Right to the feels.

Want to watch a grown man cry. Here you go - http://youtu.be/TagyCB0oqn0


Otherwise, this game is beautful and with just enough atmosphere that it allows you to really enter into the character. Here is a story that makes you want to fight for all that is good, and art that is so mysterious and enticing you can't stop searching for more. Ori and the Blind Forest puts heart into a platformer that has been missing since Dust: An Elysian Tale.

I've owned this game for a few weeks already, and I still haven't come to terms with its abject, unadulterated beauty. I could talk about the controls or the level design, which are normally the most important points for me for any platformer... If I did that, I would be comparing it favorably to the best platformers I've ever played. But in spite of the game's excellence in those areas, it is its visual and musical supremacy that sticks in my mind.

Friends of mine, even friends who don't normally like platformers, beg me to stream this game for them, equating it to "audiovisual crack". Occasionally—even after my third full playthrough—I find myself stopping, overwhelmed for a few moments by what I'm seeing. It has set a new visual standard for me, one which every other game I've played to date falls well short of achieving.

As for the music... In-game, it is sublime and nearly seamless. It isn't that it sets the mood of the game, nor vice versa; the soundtrack and the rest of the game simply... complete each other. Perfectly. To the note. And, listening to bits of the soundtrack outside the focusing influence of the game itself, I find myself moved in ways I have never been moved by music before.

I am normally loquacious and pride myself on my vocabulary, but words completely fail me when I try to describe how this game looks and sounds and feels. Very few games have had this kind of impact on me. This is the sort of release that comes once per decade, or less.

BUY IT.

Ori and the Blind Forest taught me three things

1. Owls are scary
2. Boss battles are cliche
3. Games can give you the feels

10/10 would feel again

After almost 20 hours i just completed the game for the first time and there are 3 things that make me actually want to write the first steam review i have ever written, although there are games I have over 1000h playtime in.

Above all, Ori is just breathtakingly beautiful. It is so beautiful that it will make the most hard-boiled redneck cry before he even made the first jump. Beside the graphics that also counts for the story - it may lack depth, but it delivers very straight points on innocence in a really beautiful way. No thats not childish.

The gameplay is easily one of the best that has ever been made for a platformer. It is elaborate enough to recommend Ori for people of all ages. It makes it literally fun to fail & try again, which is a rare quality in games these days.

Beside that, Ori is insanly difficult at times (yes thats a good thing). Whenever you feel like you start to master all your movement skills, a new one is discovered, and there are 3 key sequences in the story that are just ridiculously hard. I died exactly 785 times in those 20 hours of my first playthrough and there are achievements for completing this game in less than 3 hours and without dying. Thats just dark humour at its best. Anyway, I shall go now and succeed in that or die trying. TO THE FOREST.

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technical performance: for me the game was running very smooth & without any problems whatsoever on maximum settings (on Win8 bootcamped on an iMac, which caused trouble in the past for other games). However, some achievements seem to be bugged. I personally dont care about that, but if someone is into achievement hunting, then probably better wait with buying until this has been fixed.

When a game's only flaw is that its too short, then you've got yourself a masterpiece of a good game. I think it goes without saying how I feel about this game. :p

If you want more details...

Pros:
- Beautifully drawn enviroments with a unique, beautiful artstyle.
- Smooth controls that feel natural to keyboard and mouse.
- Character Progression + Combat keeps things interesting from step one.
- Difficult, yet not impossible.
Cons:
- Too short! GIMMIE MORE
- Can be a bit choppy during some sequences depending on computer strength.
- Sometimes ORI MOVES WAYYY TOO FAST AASDHS
- Most of the actual threatening things in the game are instakills. Not that bad, but, ya know...

• beautiful (!) visuals
  
• epic soundtrack
  
• great (challenging) difficulty
  
• smooth gameplay
  
• Price

• (for those achievement-hunters out there) you can't select your savegame after completion anymore
  
• the journey ends too fast :( but hey! it's a 20 bucks-indie-game and DEFINITELY worth every penny!

..and i usually don't even like those "metroidvania" platformers

I enjoyed every minute.

Where to begin with Ori and the Blind Forest?

A score for those that just want a basic rating etc, 10/10, great soundtrack, beautiful art and a touching story.

Personally I would have to say the closest thing I could compare it to would be Dust an Elysian Tale and that is still not even a close comparison. The art is nothing short of stunning for a 2D platformer, I watched the trailer and went "Pfft, graphics are probably cranked up and ones we won't get at all." Pleasently surprised on that one when I loaded it up and it was exactly the same as the trailer, the same beautiful backgrounds and the soundtrack that pulls it all together.

One of the few games that actually had a decent story in the recent years (a 2D platformer no less), games seem to have been lacking engaging story, story that actually makes you care, that makes you want the character to succeed not simply so you can reach the end. One of the few that have actually caused a tear to come to my eye.

Onto the negatives (few as they are), there are some sections that left me puzzles for a while I got stuck on one area, wondering how to proceed for about 20 minutes, I got it eventually and really enjoyed it. That being said some areas require trial and error, can I survive this? Whats down this hole that I cant see the bottom of etc. There were some difficulty spikes (you'll know them when you see them) but that being said they were welcome. I don't want the game to hand me the victory like so many new release games, the victories you make by beating these spikes feel amazing. I truely felt a sense of accomplishment after going through these challenges and surviving.

There's so much more I want to write and yet I can't because it would ruin the beautiful experience that Ori and The Blind Forest can give you. If you have a 20 spare, think about putting it into Ori, best money I've spent this year so far.

Happy Gaming
Cinderpalm

10/10 Amazing game

Great graphics / Art style
Challenging gameplay
Beautiful soundtrack
Wonderful story

Buy it!

This game is as beautiful-looking as it plays good. If you are looking for a game with:

-Great, gripping narrative
-Great Gameplay
-Great Soundtrack
-Great visual/art style.
-Great game all around

Then this is YOUR game. If you are into platformers, this is a great game for you. This is not an EASY platformer either. In fact, once you beat the game and want to challenge yourself some more, there are some hard as hell achievements to go after which will no doubt keep you wanting to come back.

Though Ori and the Blind Forest does not tell a story with a huge amount of dialect, it does not need to. The characters themselves are quick to identify with which I must give the developers an A+ for because within the first five minutes of the game at the end of the Prologue (which I recommend you do before playing the main story), I was crying. This game will pull at your heartstrings. This is a story that tells one of tragedy. The way the story is portrayed is beautiful. The soundtrack really sets the tone of it too. You will not just feel sad for Ori, you will feel sad for the other characters too, even the villainess.

I cannot recommend this game enough, this is by far, one of the BEST games I have ever played on Steam by far. My only, ONLY gripe with this game is that there are some areas which, once you complete you cannot return to if you wish to hunt for collectibles which means you cannot get 100% completion if you miss those collectibles. I hope the devs can somehow fix this. Asides from that though, this game deserves all the praise and recognition it has been receiving from the public. This is, A GREAT GAME.

My rating:
9.5/10

The only reason it lost the 0.5 was due to the issue of some areas become closed off permanately so if you miss the collectibles, you miss out for good unless you replay the game from the beginning. But don't let that stop you from playing this game. It is great, a worthy addition to anyone's Steam Library or on any other platform this is available.

Amazing Gaming. Graphics, Music, Gameplay are more than good. Try it.

To cut straight to the point; Ori and the Blind Forest is one of the best games I've played this year so far, if not one of the best in recent years.

I've played plenty of platform games that have such a great start, but eventually become tedious and lose that initial charm. This game is not one of them. From start to finish I never experienced a dull moment. If not for the challenging enemies or puzzles, it's due to your own eagerness to discover new abilities to be learned, uncover the mystery behind the story or just to sit and gaze at the magnificent changes of scenery backed by a wonderfully composed music.

Ori and the Blind Forest is as beautiful in its emotional storytelling as it is in its gorgeous art and its gripping soundtrack. With no level load screens and smooth animated visuals, you'll find it hard to tear your eyes away from the adventure of this cute, little critter.