Ori and the Will of the Wisps on Xbox One
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is one of the more frustrating games I’ve had to review. Not because the game is inherently bad. In terms of gameplay, Will of the Wisps is bigger, bolder and better than Ori and the Blind Forest, but is hindered by technical issues which, when they rear their heads, detract from the experience.
Just like the Blind Forest, Will of the Wisps is a metroidvania platformer. You’ll explore the world, taking on quests while having free reign to stop and smell the roses down whatever paths you can possibly reach on its sprawling map. The more you progress, the more abilities you’ll unlock, which enable you to traverse the environment in ways you previously hadn’t. It’s all standard stuff.
Will of the Wisps follows on from its predecessor’s story. It kicks off with Ori, Gumo and Naru finding and raising a small owl that’s just hatched from an egg called Ku. Sadly, its wing is damaged and it cannot fly. Ori manages to find a feather, and the others strap it to Ku’s wing, allowing him to fly. With a newfound means of travel, Ori and Ku — now bestest of buds — take flight to search for food, only for Ku’s makeshift wing to come apart in high winds.
The two get separated, and it’s down to the player to help reunite Ori with Ku and find their way home. Of course, not all is how it seems and Ori soon discovers the entirety of Nibel is suffering from a decay that’s killing off the forest. It brings up its own issues that you’ll need to resolve as Ori, such as getting the watermill running again to allow fresh water to flow through the forest so you can pass through it.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ setting and story are just as charming and magical as in their predecessor. Be it the way the game is narrated, or the way that every frame looks like it’s been taken out of a children’s animated fairytale movie, the game hooks you into its world and seldom lets up. I often found myself playing for hours more after I purposefully saved the game to come off.
It’s a testament to just how good the platforming is here. The world of Nibel is enormous, dwarfing the area we were free to explore in the first game. While its general overworld conceals a bounty of collectibles and hidden treasures just waiting to be grabbed once the necessary abilities are unlocked or you finally figure out how to reach them, it’s the separate stages within this overworld that really stand out.
One example was the aforementioned watermill you reach fairly early on in your adventure. To get the water flowing again, Ori must fix the watermill by removing this weird evil goo from the cogs. Scrambling up walls, flinging Ori hurtling through the air off cogs, and traversing its inner mechanics like a magical parkour-running mouse, I began chipping away at the darkness jamming up the cogs.
That’s when things got interesting.
The whole interior of the clock then becomes this ever-moving maze, controlled by various levers that can rotate the entire level, blocking off previously accessible paths while freeing up another formerly-blocked nook full of surprises. Once I’d made my way to the top of this majestic monument to knowledge (it has a library inside it… ’cause why not?) and water, Ori hacked away at the last blotch of darkness on the ‘heart’ of Nibel’s water supplies. This resulted in a massive surge of water chasing me down as I tried to escape the watermill and certain death. Ori nimbly double jumped, grappled, air dashed, and slung his way to safety… albeit not on the first try because I needed to git gud.
It’s exhilarating, and a change of pace I really hadn’t seen coming.
Will of the Wisps does this on a few occasions, quickly switching up the tempo and seeing just how well you’ve mastered the skills and abilities you’ve just been learnt. These make for some of the most exciting moments in the game, and some of the most enjoyable moments in games I’ve had so far this year.
It’s this contrast between calm — the stunning backdrop, the cute characters and the floaty feel of Ori — and chaos that just works. There were moments where I just looked at the screen and sat back, admiring the dynamic backgrounds swaying with the breeze. The light rays shimmering down through the forest canopy high above, illuminating small, shiny particles in the air that add to that sense of wondrous magic. All my worries evaporated.
Then two minutes down the line, I was in a boss fight and wanted to pull my own face off.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ boss battles are fantastic. While the first few aren’t all that challenging, the difficulty seriously ramps up towards the end. These put you through your paces, requiring you to be precise and fast with your movement to avoid taking damage, while also waiting for an opening to get a few hits in before retreating back.
The two final boss battles, in particular (which we’re not going to reveal here for the sake of spoilers), had me stuck for a good chunk of time, but it was never the game’s fault. I was being too greedy trying to get hits in, or I just wasn’t reading a particular attack, leading me to watch Ori’s glowing body fall limp to the floor for the umpteenth time.
All in all, playing on Normal difficulty, Will of the Wisps is a demanding experience that’ll put you through your paces. You can always up the difficulty to Hard if you’re a real glutton for punishment, too. But that’s not all.
As part of Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ evolution from the Blind Forest, it does away with its sequential upgrade system in favor of a ‘Shard’ system. Players are able to purchase and unlock Shards as they progress through the game. Shards can either grant you a buff such as reducing the amount of damage you take, or my personal favorite ‘Sticky’ which makes Ori permanently stick to any wall or surface, or they can ratchet the difficulty up even further.
Want enemies to deal even more damage? Go for it. Want enemies to respawn faster, go ahead and equip the Turmoil Shard. It gives players a means of customizing their loadout and fine-tuning the experience to suit their tastes, as opposed to the more linear affair in the Blind Forest. These can be swapped in and out at any time, too which can come in handy when trying to clear out any remaining secrets from the map.