I had a post about how impressed I was with this game some time ago. I believe it was a month. Then something happened in my life or I started playing something else and I didn't play it at all for a long time.
One thing that I tend to be worried about with all games is that if you stay away for too long you end up returning and having no idea what is going on, how the controls work, how to do anything really, and then you get frustrated and quit forever.
I never finished the first Ori game because I got to a difficult part of the game and then stopped of the day, then was reluctant to even try the next day, and then I just stopped playing it forever.
I didn't want to do that with this game as well so late last night in my bedroom I decided to fire this game up on the Nintendo Switch.
When I first logged in I was kind of lost, and wandered around for a while trying to figure out where I am supposed to go. The game does a decent job of letting you know which way to go but often the destination markers are off of your already revealed map so you don't really know how you are supposed to get there.
But this game does something that the last one did not and they kind of incentivize revisiting old areas and fighting things because if you do kill something, even if it is for the 10th time, it will drop a sort of currency that the game has. It had been so long I forgot where you actually do this but I looked it up real quick on my phone after wandering around for a while and was pretty happy when I did get there, because after about 40 minutes of aimlessly wandering around and refreshing my memory as far as the controls are concerned, I found the store and had enough "cash" to buy a bunch of upgrades.
in the previous game as well as almost all Metroidvania games I have played the only way you can upgrade your skills is by finding the upgrade as a one-time thing. This makes wandering around a bit of a chore especially in games where the enemies respawn after you leave the screen. At least in this situation the mobs are going to drop something you can actually use.
Eventually i needed to actually make some progress in the game and ended up fining my way to the Luma Pools, which is a part of the game where you spend a lot of time underwater for the first time. You had been in water a bit before this but mostly that was a bad place to be. One of the upgrades that I recently bought gave me the ability to breathe underwater and let me tell you, that makes a world of difference here. I don't even know if it would be possible to do it without this because there are long stretches where you have to be underwater for a while.
Much of the time when I try to rejoin a game what I am supposed to do and how any of the controls work is something that I don't want to relearn and I also dont want to start the game over.
This game does something that others dont as well. If you are somewhere that a certain skill or button press is necessary, it will remind you of what that button is a few times even though it has been hours since the start of the game. I would have been completely stumped if the game hadn't alerted me of something I had forgotten, which was you have a "glide" ability by holding down the right trigger button.
That's pretty helpful for someone like me that will stay away from playing a game for so long that I actually kind of forget I was ever doing it in the first place.
this would have been considerably more difficult if the game hadn't reminded me about the glide button
How here comes the part that I was initially a bit displeased with and that is the fact that a boss is coming up that is a part of the game that many people online have complained that it was the reason why they unistalled the game. It is a really tough fight
Your big froggy friend has turned bad and he chases you in a way where there is very little room for mistakes. It's honestly a bit too demanding in my opinion because the slightest mis-press of a button results in insta-death.
But here is something I think they did really well in this game which was not an option in the first. If you get frustrated with a particular boss or even entire section of a map, you are not stuck there the way you were in Ori-1. I got to a really tough part and was just not feeling like doing it anymore and this resulted in me just quitting the game. It won't let you simply skip it, eventually you are going to have to figure it out, but you do have the ability of leaving the fight and wandering around and going to other areas. The warp point to come back later and try again is very nearby.
I thought this was a brilliant addition to the gameplay and I just ended up leaving and going to other points on the map that my new skills have enabled me to now access.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps was already a wonderful game, but the thoughtfulness of the devs or QC team to not make anyone ever get stuck was something that I think they just did very well in this. You can walk away from this game for long stretches of time and then learn to walk again in the starting areas (or any area you want by warping to it), get some currency to upgrade various things in the process, and then when you are ready, you can take on the difficult challenges again.
Having said this, I only end up playing this game when I am in my bedroom because that is where my Switch docking station is located. Therefore, it will likely be a little while before I play it again, but it's good to know that this wont be an issue!
