If something has been blamed on Xbox in recent years is the lack of exclusives, especially those games oriented to the experience for a player and with a powerful story mode. Gears 5, as the first game of Xbox Game Studios began to give an important turn to that dynamic with a story mode that expanded everything seen in the saga, an important plot and a much more worked experience than in previous deliveries. The second game of this new stage of Xbox's first party titles is Ori and the Will of the Wisps, a sequel to the award-winning Ori and the Blind Forest and that Xbox Game Pass will launch.
Moon Studios surprised the world with a beautiful game, with a challenging proposal and a very careful gameplay which imitated the most beloved metroidvania. Ori earned a proper name in a genre that seemed forgotten or destined for smaller projects. With Microsoft giving them all the attention and financing the title from the first year of development, Moon Studios was able to launch a title that would generate school and that has seen in Ori and the Will of the Wisps a continuation that improves everything seen. Do you want to know what we found? Don't miss our analysis of Ori and the Will of the Wisps for Xbox One.
Ori, our great friend
Ori and the Will of the Wisps puts us in the shoes of Ori, a guardian spirit who, after the emotional events of the first installment, advances in his relationship with Naru, Gumo and a little owl that surely you will already know more or less who can be . Let appearances not fool you, those who have already played their first installment will know, but Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a game with a strong narrative load. The lore of the world that Moon Studios has created is present in every corner of its scenarios created by hand, in each character, in each conversation, voiceover …
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a game that the less the player knows, the better, since It is based solely and exclusively on what happens to Ori, in the relationship with his friends and in the role that other creatures of the forest have in a story worthy of the best fairy tales.
Yes, prepare scarves and chocolate ice cream, since Ori and the Will of the Wisps will reach your soul, demonstrating that you don't need a spectacular performance of an actor scanned completely to reach the player. Simply to create a connection with the player thanks to the way of being of his characters, his design or his acts is enough.
The animals of the forest
We can think that Ori and the Will of the Wisps has a childish aspect, the fact is that in turn it hides violence and desolation, although sometimes we see hope and happiness. Game design is its biggest asset, with some environments created by hand that are the most spectacular, making us think that we are playing a work of art in motion.
As I said, the story could consist of any fairy tale that we are told as children, where a forest is threatened by the presence of darkness, which rots everything in its path, separating the light that protected the forest and all its creatures. Ori, as Guardian, must recover those lights, although he also has his own motives.
The main story is true that sometimes it can remind us of the first installment, since they keep certain parallels, but we are faced with an evolved proposal, as if the original vision of the team in addition to the feedback obtained from the first delivery had served to launch a definitive experience of what they had in mind that Ori could contribute.
Throughout the game we will find a multitude of NPCs and each of them will serve for something. Either they provide us with side missions that will look for us to investigate in any recess of the immense map or sell us skills improvements, maps … Ori and the Will of the Wisps delves a bit into the typical RPG components of the progression, causing us to have different skills and improvements at our disposal and that we can even increase its effectiveness as if it were the rise of a level, all this using the "coins" that we get by defeating enemies. The latter can tell us more or less where the titles of the new RPG that Moon Studios is going to go.
One of my favorite tasks and that is more a fetish that I have with games is that of have something to call "home". In Ori and the Will of the Wisps we will find a town where several of the friends we meet throughout the adventure meet and acts as the typical base of operations of other games. There we can talk to their leader to spend one of the many collectibles of the game to improve the place and accommodate new members or simply improve their lives.
An endless maze
The map of Ori and the Will of the Wisps is immense or at least that is the feeling it gives when you play it. As a good metroidvania we will see from the beginning how there are areas that we cannot access with our skills at that time, or how there are objects on the stage that we don't know how to use. Each skill that we find along the way is located in an intelligent way, so that the sense of progression is most satisfactory.
When you get a new skill that allows you to do things that you couldn't see before the game "pushes" you back where you came from, but now there, it will make sense to go a new way, to be able to make use of your ability. In the end, you will have before you a handful of skills that combine with your agility with your fingers to advance through truly challenging areas.
And although Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a difficult game, its 3 levels of difficulty allow us to choose what we are looking for. The easy mode puts us at ease in clashes with enemies, making the platforms become the great puzzle. The normal mode proposes a more balanced experience with a certain challenge in the confrontations, while the most difficult mode is a true nightmare.
The gameplay of Ori and the Will of the Wisps is similar to that of its first part, only now with a greater number of skills and the feeling that level design has matured Like good wine. Each part of the map has its mission and apart from having a spectacular graphic design, it is also designed to fit both the narrative and the gameplay.
In the game we will find improvements introduced in the Definitive Edition of Ori and the Blind Forest, such as sanctuaries that allow us to travel quickly between different points of the map. Have also been added news such as checkpoints, something very necessary in a game as challenging as this in the sections of platforms.
A technical puzzle
I have played Ori and the Will of the Wisps on Xbox One X, console in which we recommend you try this game, which is available for launch in the great Xbox Game Pass service. The reason for this recommendation is very simple, fluency. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a game that rewards player agility and responsiveness in combinations of jumps, movements and other adventures with Ori. The game on Xbox One X moves at 60 fps although with certain drops which from Microsoft have assured us that they will be fixed in the Day One patch.
Also – and I suppose that by artistic decision – there is a motion blur Too gross, which makes the image look too blurry to the minimum that we move. Luckily, going to the options menu we can deactivate that blur and believe me when I tell you that the game earns much more if we enjoy it like this.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps also features 4K resolution and HDR technology, something that is appreciated to enjoy as never before the beautiful scenery created by Moon Studios. Unfortunately, if its creators stand out in the design section, we cannot speak the same about the technical, since the falls of commented frames are added momentary crashes, excessive loading screens at the beginning of the game and I have even suffered a bug a couple of times that made me lose an hour of departure because the game did not save the game. All these problems seem to be solved by the Day One patch from Ori and the Will of the Wisps, but the feeling is that a new delay (even if it was a couple of weeks) would have been good for the game.
Don't get me wrong, Ori and the Will of the Wisps is not an unplayable game, but in a game where the reaction and fluidity of things are so important, having performance failures even in their most powerful version is a worrying thing. Hopefully, the patch will solve these problems.
On the other hand, the soundtrack as well as its entire sound section is again outstanding. The ambient sound of each place we visited, the emotional soundtrack that accompanies every moment of the story, representing from the notes the feelings of Ori himself and ours … In general, little can be criticized of Ori and the Will of the Wisps in both graphic and sound, being one of the most beautiful and careful games in that aspect that I have been able to play in my life. Too bad he limps in the technical section, although I guess you can't ask for everything in this life.
The first 2020 GOTY candidate
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a unique game and gives the feeling that only Moon Studios are capable of launching a game with these characteristics. In the playable, Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a challenging game, but developed in a very intelligent way, where each step counts, where in each corner we get something that rewards us for the mere fact of having arrived there, where each new skill is introduced naturally to make us reach places we pass by high.
Playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps, you understand why Moon Studios have taken so long to launch to the market, the game has tremendous attention to detail in everything. Each animation of each character is so fluid that it scares, the graphic design of each level will captivate us with the play of colors and lights and the soundtrack will serve to capture the emotions of what we see on the screen.
In general, playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps is like being part of a 3D work of art, where it is we who paint on a canvas the fate of a Forest Guardian whose goal is to take care of his friends and safeguard the light responsible for life.
Analysis performed with a copy of Ori and the Will of the Wisps provided by Microsoft
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