A sequel that builds upon the foundation of the original without feeling like it's bloated - how rare! The story was again touching and bittersweet, and the addition of NPCs and sidequests add a richness that made the experience feel nothing like a series of fetch quests for reward, but rather a journey for the sake of helping others and just doing the right thing - or, "choosing the Light," as it were. Some of the side bits were as impactful as the main story, even, if you knew where to look. But others were also genuinely funny, and creative. One of my favorites involved some objects you have to bash in the right order (twice). Between the cleverness of the puzzle and the side commentary from the NPC, I giggled and was grinning ear-to-ear. I would have loved more puzzles that included an NPC peanut gallery, but that's ok, there were plenty of other moments where I, "Ooooh, THAT'S what they want me to do!"-ed in appreciation, even without that extra flavor.
I'm not "good" at gaming by any stretch, so I found this one more challenging than [i]Blind Forest[/i]. That's a good thing, I think. I only played [i]Blind Forest[/i] once before this one, so I imagine if I had found these when they first came out, I would have practiced in the runup to [i]Will of the Wisp's[/i] release and maybe I wouldn't have died quite so many times. :P But the challenge also made it very rewarding when I finally got through a room that was literally killing me. Again and again and again.
Also, I'm not great with explaining art, but the visuals, sound design, and music are all absolutely fantastic. All contain a fluidity that complemented the others I find myself unable to describe adequately. Game pretty. Music nice. Me like sound. Shrug?
I very much enjoyed that this one adds different attack abilities. It gives players a chance to fine tune to their preferences. I'm a hack-and-slash girlie, so I was all about the Spirit Edge (basically a sword) and Spirit Smash (giant hammer) attacks, but I could tell the developers took the care to make the enemies variable enough that there would be at least one enemy type particularly susceptible to each attack. I appreciate that a lot. This also allowed greater diversity in upgrades and secondary abilities. The "shards" that allow you to choose different buffs (or debuffs if you're a masochist haha) are a great addition, too - again, they helped to customize the game to suit one's preferred playstyle.
My main qualm with the gameplay is the final ability that makes a few previously unreachable things/spots reachable comes very late-game, so I had to kind of interrupt the story to do the cleanup in a way that felt a little more jarring than in [i]Blind Forest[/i] when you get the last ability there. And I think there was overall a large over-reliance on the Bash mechanic (when you use an enemy projectile to shoot Ori in the direction of your choice, opposite the projectile - a mechanic from the first game) and not enough necessity for the other abilities Ori gains to navigate the maps as I would have liked as a result. By this I mean every area requires Bash to proceed at some point, but not all of them need, for example, glide (or "Kuro's Feather," as it's called in-game) or Dash.
I do also wish the ending had been a little different. I was shocked and dare I say a little wounded that [spoiler] Shriek doesn't get any sort of redemption and just... dies alone. The voiceover says she "chose darkness," but she had never been given a choice to begin with, since she was born in the Decay. At least Kuro got her redemption at the end of [i]Blind Forest[/i], after arguably being a "worse" person, considering she caused all the bad things that happened to begin with. [/spoiler] I'm also sad we didn't get to see [spoiler] Ori and Ku reunite at the end. They didn't get a real goodbye and that stung, a lot. Although I will concede, Ku's damaged wing being repaired by the Light was a gut punch in the best way - you could make an argument that that was Ori's goodbye; I'm just sad Ku didn't get to reciprocate. [/spoiler] So I think those two things caused the ending to be slightly more bitter than sweet, at least when compared to the ending of the original. And keep in mind this is the last... two minutes of the game?
But still, overall, I'm very glad I played [i]Ori and the Will of the Wisps[/i], and despite how it may seem above, my complaints are for outweighed by how much I enjoyed it. I intend to replay it and its predecessor regularly until I can manage 100% in both. :P I'd definitely recommend it to anyone that enjoyed the first game.
