Ori and the Will of the Wisps Play and Review(Description)-KJS
0Oh my. This is a hard review to write. I should at least mention that I had very high hopes for the title and put of starting it for a long time to make sure I'd have a solid block of time to play properly (father with toddlers)
I suspect that almost everyone will enjoy this, but for me it was a rather boring slog with constant immersion-breaking and annoyance. Then came the end and finally put it over the edge from decent/Ok into "glad I played it all so that I atleast actually know I don't like it"
There are two primary reasons that this did not work for me. New mechanics have been added, almost all of them combat oriented and "make your own build" features that seem more or less inspired from Hollow Knight. This detracts so heavily from the platforming/puzzle aspect of the game that was my primary source of enjoyment from the mechanical side of things. Having to manually swap to/from abilities to allow me to traverse the map instead of having them available made for a bad experience. Even worse it felt to me that it actively decreased the complexity of the puzzles since new "keys" featured heavily in a zone and then never appeared again. Giving almost no room to have a "easy to learn hard to master" approach to things since there was a constant new thing to get decent at, then it didn't appear again.
Easiest to point out (and this was a criminal exclusion from the primary game) is a short sequence in the very beginning when Orin uses a torch, and needs to navigate a waterfall. It felt like a brilliant easy feature that could become rather complex as the game progressed, That specific problem/solution is never used again. Ever. There are quite a few other problem-solving methods that occur rather heavily early on that then never return as new skills are added on.
Secondly. The Story, and actually the telling of the story. It felt good in the beginning. Although it suffers a bit from implying that you gotta go fast early on while the game itself tries to make you look for all the secrets and side-quests. Then it Forces you down a path that is neither new nor inspiring, more or less a "do this or die" situation. Add to that a villain that is evil for the sake of being evil and an ending that just made me angry (and also missed a good opportunity to add extra slides based on degree of completion)
That said. Obviously most people find this good and/or better than the first one, and most likely, so will you. For me, never again (Might even have ruined the soundtrack for me).