Should You Play OMORI? A Video Game Review!
110Over the years game developers have pushed the idea of how we as players feel and interact with characters and stories.
The Last of Us, Life is Strange, Oxenfree, (to name a few) have shared with us these deep and long lasting stories that shake us to the very core with dark and sometimes even questionable ideas. At times even forcing us to make decisions where the concept of right and wrong becomes blurred between the lines in what would otherwise be an emotionally scarring and traumatic experience.
I believe OMORI is a story that also attempts to do this and ultimately does, but doesn’t quite live up to the same strength that some of these other titles have managed.
But at the same time, I don’t know if it's fair to compare it with many of the emotionally driven story games that came before. Because while these games yes have strong powerful moments that internally affect us as we play them, they deal largely with the outward effects of how a characters actions have clear consequences on themselves and others in the world around them. Where as with OMORI, these actions and events have already occurred far before you begin playing and while you do spend time learning about the events that came to be, this story's focus is on the internalization of past events and how our character learns to cope with and overcome them.
You see OMORI is a story about a young boy who after a traumatic event, has locked himself off from the outside world. For 4 years he has lived in isolation and this isolation is now only broken because of a chance encounter of an old friend reaching out to say goodbye before he inevitably moves away at the end of the week.
During the day you spend your time in the real world, (where you as the player) learn about the traumatic event from the past and how it's affected your friends over the years while you’ve kept yourself in isolation. And during the night while you sleep, you retreat back into this dreamy whimsical world within your mind where everyone is still young, carefree, and unchanged, like how they were back before the traumatic experience took place.. just like how you want to remember everything. That is except for the dark sinister undertones that slowly begin to seep their way into this magical whimsical paradise.
Its hard to say much more about the story as the writing is well done and almost everything that occurs feels like a potential spoiler. The gameplay introduces a lot of interesting ideas that work well together to create an exciting rpg with levels, experience and abilities, but we can’t talk much about the abilities either because again it goes into spoiler territory. Each character as they grow in levels, learn new abilities that correspond with their own personalities. So each ability gives you more of a look into the personality and inner workings of each character which is a really fun way to do it.
On top of that, a status effect system is implemented into the game in the form of emotions. Angry, sad, happy, and neutral are the main status effects (referred to as emotions) with each type being more effective against one emotions and less affective against another. Every emotion has its own effects that are applied to the characters experiencing them and certain abilities even becoming more powerful based on the emotion the character is currently experiencing.
But the greatest mechanic of all is its teamwork system and how the characters interact with each other through it. When activating teamwork, one character will perform a teamwork action with another character. Every character has their own unique teamwork ability and it interacts with the other characters in different ways. So part of the joy of the game is going through and trying out all the different teamwork combinations to see what they all do. Plus, as you progress through the game, your teamwork can level up and the moves can adapt and change as the characters become closer to each other. So your teamwork moves continue to improve as you go and never become stale over the course of the game. Many times even being a deciding factor that gets you through seemingly impossible odds.
There is a disclaimer when picking up the game about certain themes within it involving the topics of suicide, depression and anxiety. And it’s important that you know these are in there. But while the game does hint at darker themes within its overarching story, it doesnt play into them as much as I would have liked it too. There were a lot of opportunities where it could have pushed some of its darker themes but it doesn't really go into them too much until the end of the game. But when they hit, they come in fast and swinging.
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Omori Statistics For Spentaneous
At present, Spentaneous has 51,318 views spread across 8 videos for Omori, with the game making up over 1 day of published video on his channel. This makes up 3.90% of Omori content that Spentaneous has uploaded to YouTube.