Ori and the Will of the Wisps - Review

It was always hard to find anything bad to say about 2015’s Ori and the Blind Forest. Moon Studios’ blend of an entrancing, tragic fairy tale world and white-knuckle platforming challenge left a mark that hasn’t faded with time. And yet the new followup, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, successfully builds on that distinctive gameplay in a way that doesn’t just retread the same ground. There’s more breadth, detail, choice, and diversity than ever, and it’s all done with engrossing color and light and an excellent, inspiring soundtrack.

It may be two-dimensional, but this is a great, big, open world that’s backed by a great, big, beautiful score that shifts to echo your successes and grows frantic and immediate in moments of tension. That music is your constant companion as you journey through diverse locations that sprawl out in all directions. Will of the Wisps paints with a full pallet of distinct biomes, transitioning seamlessly from the archetypical fairytale forests pierced with soft, golden streaks of light through the emerald canopy to the gloomy, ink-blotted muddy floor of the soggy marshlands. Each region bursts with fine detail that’s easy to overlook because Moon Studios’ aesthetic moods for each location are so consistent. All of them feel distinct and alive.

For example, the frigid mountainous peaks Ori must breeze past on gusts of wind are littered with crisscrossing splintered alpine timber and pointed icicles that reach out to jab and poke from frozen overhangs. The claustrophobic, pitch-black tunnels of the Mouldwood Depths writhe with the bodies of thousands of insects whose chittering wings radiate a constant chorus of uncomfortable buzzing, and their sharps barbs sting if touched while Ori fumbles in the darkness.

There’s an incredible beauty and attention to these unique flourishes that serve the overarching theme of every region, from the closest foreground objects all the way back through the half-dozen layers of background art that slowly shift in parallax scrolling as you move. Whether you’re burrowing through the sand in the blazing red light of the desert or nimbly swimming through chomping clams and bouncing between air bubbles, there’s always something surprising in store.

Crawling With Life

Ori and the Will of the Wisps reinforces that theme of a wider, living world with a menagerie of creatures to fight, big and small: dive-bombing mosquitos, slugs that spit caustic goo, dangling spiders, piranhas, spiky slimes, leaping elemental mantis-things, and hulking decay-touched bruisers with massive clubs kept me on my toes in every new place I visited. There’s a healthy bestiary to test your mettle.

But alongside these many enemies, friendly woodland critters and massive animal guardians hide and thrive in each area, ready to make your acquaintance. These non-player characters pop up frequently, telling you about their home lives, their current predicaments, the changes happening to the world at large, and tidbits of information concerning Ori’s grand adventure. Often, these short conversations come with requests which serve as simple side quests to keep you invested in the here and now. You might be asked to find a lost acorn in a cave, or check on some family members in a faraway region, or hear a useful rumor about a shrine that’s then marked on your map to investigate later.

There's usually something worthwhile on the other side of these small side quests.

No matter how seemingly insignificant they are in the grand scheme of things, it’s another layer of investment that Moon Studios has baked into the experience, which is so appreciated given so much of Ori involves simply getting from one point to the next as fast and fluidly as possible. Now you’ve got an incentive to stop and really poke around or revisit the more secluded crannies of the world. And there’s usually something worthwhile on the other side of these small errands: a bit of currency, a collectible item, a hearty thank you, and sometimes it’s just the devastating realization that you can’t save everyone.

In that same vein of grounding us in a living place, Ori and the Will of the Wisps introduces a kind of central hub village where many of your new critter friends end up once you’ve completed a task for them. Here, you’ll speak with merchants to purchase or upgrade abilities and turn in collectibles to community leaders who will, in turn, make improvements throughout the village that unlock new options.

For example, turning in enough ore will let you either construct residential huts for more characters to call home, or remove the pesky thorn bushes that block your passage to hidden sections of the village. Finding seeds from each of the regions gives you the opportunity to grow new plants, vines, and trees in the village. Again, this isn’t just cosmetic or fun story fluff; each new improvement adds ways to move through the village, opening up previously unreachable portions of it to explore, new NPCs to speak to, and hovels to repeatedly loot for currency. Building up this simple village gave me a sense of purpose and connection to the world – something to improve and care for, rather than just a series of places to leap and fight my way through until I reached the end.

Free Spirit

In the wilder places the monstrous creatures call home, there’s as much or more to explore. Each region is lousy with secret nooks, hidden just out of view or behind a clever bit of foreground. It’s completely possible to rip through them en route to the ultimate goal at the end of the tunnel – and credit to Moon Studios for making huge sections of each environment completely optional – but the rewards for taking a peek in every crevice are vast.

And in pure Metroid-like fashion, Ori’s arsenal of abilities allows you to interact with the world in new ways as you uncover them through story progression or buy them as you go. Many of these are mandatory – you’ll find a feather that lets you stoke fires to create updrafts in every playthrough of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, for example – but some are also totally voluntary. I’m really impressed by Moon Studios’ restraint here, because you can easily get by without opting into seemingly must-have abilities like the triple-jump and the barrier-crushing Spirit Smash. That said, if you do you’ll miss quite a few hidden bits of the world. It made me feel like playing again would be worthwhile – likely on the harder difficulty since I opted to go with the default Normal of the three available settings – just to see how the experience would change.

Overcoming and avoiding the deadly obstacles is the meat on the Will of the Wisps’ bones, and it all feels better than ever. As I was nearing the end of my 12-hour playthrough, the speed and possibilities for creative movement put me in an almost Zen-like state: triple-jumps, burrowing through sand, dashing through water, launching myself into the air at will, bashing off of enemies to reach new heights and hurl them in the opposite direction, and grappling fixed positions and enemies with a lasso had all become second nature.

Muscle memory compounded until I stopped thinking and just reacted.

It’s a gradual ramp-up from sluggish sprite to free-running-dynamo, but as I unlocked each new ability the muscle memory compounded until I really stopped thinking about what I was doing and just reacted to whatever was being thrown my way. That’s an amazing feeling, especially during the series’ excellent signature chase sequences when the stakes go through the roof and one false move means you’re crushed under a collapsing environment, buried in an avalanche or consumed by the pursuing mandibles of a mammoth spider.

It’s easy to take each carefully constructed segment of the world for granted but these moments really highlight just how damn good Ori and Will the Wisps’ fluid movement and level design can be. Each element is placed precisely to be used in a specific way, yet all the while I felt like a genius for being able to read the environment at a frantic pace and adapt to the next obstacle accordingly. And that feeling is further ratcheted up in the optional Spirit Trials found in every region, where you can race through a carefully constructed course against the ghosts of other players competing for the best time. It’s a fun side activity to hone your platforming skills and break up the story content if you want to.

Between the flips, dashes, and grapples of getting from point A to point B, you’re going to have to fight. That’s when you’ll see that combat in Will of the Wisps has been expanded along the same lines as the other abilities. In Ori and the Blind Forest your offensive options are modest, but in Will of the Wisps an entire wheel of weapon-like abilities can be unlocked for you to mix up combat, and equipped on the fly in the midst of a fight.

Sling Blade

You’ll start with the fast-slashing Spirit Edge sword which functions as a basic attack – until, that is, you’re offered optional alternatives like that hefty, slow-swinging Spirit Smash and explosive ranged elements like the Spirit Spike that hurls a massive lance of energy toward an opponent at the cost of a lot of energy. Or you could take the hefty, slow-swinging Spirit Smash that hammers enemies into the air and lets you perform airborne ground pounds. You’ll find plenty of ranged options as well, like the Spirit Arc bow that fires arrows of light, the Blaze ability that will light nearby enemies on fire, a deployable sentry that constantly peppers opponents with nagging beams of damaging light, and so much more.

The diversity and utility of each ability makes many of them must-haves.

Looking back I regret that, at first, I didn’t venture too far out of my starting abilities because they worked. But the diversity and utility of each ability, both in and out of combat, makes many of them must-haves. For example, not only does that heavy Spirit Smash deliver big damage and knock enemies up, but it’s also used to crush through breakable barriers. And though the Spike ability that allows Ori to hurl a massive spirit lance costs a ton of energy to use, it regularly saved my life in several of the multi-phased boss battles where I used it to stagger the massive monsters mid-attack and buy some breathing room.

And alongside these active abilities, Will of the Wisps tweaks an old formula in the form of Spirit Shards that bestow passive attributes to Ori as you find or buy them and equip them in the few precious slots you get. These abilities run the gamut from combat-focused to pure utility and really allow you to customize your little spirit… squirrel...thing in unique ways to suit your playstyle.

For example, I immediately equipped the shard that let me cling to walls for fairly obvious reasons, alongside the upgradeable shard that reduced incoming damage by 10/20/25-percent. When I could finally afford it, I traded a whole bunch of currency for the shard that let me jump a third time before touching the ground – that one just felt like a no-brainer for reaching unreachable places. But there are many shards with quirky traits that I eagerly tried out to see what kind of fun builds I could put together. There are shards that increase your damage output at the cost of taking more damage, shards that give you more resources from slain enemies, and shards that give you a bit of a hint when you’re near a secret wall or tunnel.

There’s a Spirit Shard for seemingly every occasion, and while you start with a scant three slots to embed, as you uncover and conquer the wave-based Combat Shrines throughout the world your reward is more slots that let you extensively fine-tune your Ori. Eventually, I got to the point where there were some shards I just couldn’t live without, and so the additional options let me experiment with the unique ones liberally as needed, without having to lose my favorite passive abilities.

The Bittersweet Science

I’m hesitant to talk at all about the finer points of Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ story since so much of the journey is propelled by the crests and troughs of its emotional waves. So, without venturing too deeply into spoiler territory, it should be no surprise for those who played Ori and the Blind Forest that Moons Studios’ knack for brewing joy and sorrow in heavy proportions is alive and well in Ori’s new tale.

Moon Studios has delivered an excellent second chapter that plucks the same tragically beautiful heartstrings of hope and loss and redemption. It’s an affecting mixture of sorrow and joy that shines a light on, I think more than anything, the power of empathy; it was hard not to pour care and concern over either side of the good-bad divide, and bounce so consistently between feelings of heartache and elation, even if that’s the intent.

It's hard not to pour care and concern over either side of the good-bad divide.

What I really appreciate about Will of the Wisps is that even though it’s a tale of light versus darkness, it never fully falls into the simplicity of good versus evil. Sometimes bad things happen, or have happened, and there’s just no fixing them regardless of how hard you try or desperately want them righted. It’s a really powerful sentiment to deliver in a gorgeously colorful video game filled with cartoonish anthropomorphic forest folk, but somehow Moon Studios continues to subvert that expectation.

Instead, Ori and the Will of the Wisps is content to show that heroes can be kind of broken and still rise to the occasion, and that sometimes the ostensible bad guys have hearts, families, and their own personal tragedies, regardless of whether they choose to seek redemption. And I really appreciate these stories for that reason – there’s no such thing as a perfect ending for everyone.