Ori and the Forest That Really Could Have Used More Save Points

Ori and the Blind Forest starts awkwardly, with several minutes of mildly-interactive cutscene -- holding "left" or "right" to walk through a cinematic introduction. While I can appreciate the production value that Ori brings to its story, with awe-inspiring visuals and heartstring-pulling music, it left me wondering for some time when can I start playing the game?

The game proper is a fairly solid Metroidvania action-platformer. Like if Dust: An Elysian Tail had one interconnected map, and if it was less slashy and more jumpy. (And, like Dust, a huge part of Ori's appeal is just in how gorgeous it looks.)

It ticks the important boxes for a game of this type: health and power upgrades littered around the map, traversal abilities that unlock new areas, aesthetically-varied regions, teleport rooms... the usual stuff.

The platforming generally controls quite well, except that Ori feels slippery, in the same way that Super Meat Boy did. I still haven't quite gotten the hang of landing a jump on a narrow platform, and wall-jumping is fraught with slip-sliding inaccuracy. Ori's poor footing really makes me look forward to finding new aerial abilities.

But my biggest problem with the game so far is its ... innovative approach to save points. You expend a unit of energy to create one, i.e. if you've run out of energy, you're out of luck; and there are some places (like wobbly platforms or specific enemy-filled rooms) where the game simply doesn't allow you to save.

My last play session culminated in a minutes-long chase scene, which I had to re-attempt a dozen or two times from the beginning over the span of about half an hour. It's evocative of the kind of Mega Man bullshit that I really can't stand, where after learning and adapting to ten instant-death obstacles, suddenly an eleventh appears, and knocks you all the way back to the start.

I'm still enjoying progressing through Ori's world, but by modern standards, this deliberate exclusion of automatic checkpoints is a dick move and I'm not impressed by it.

Progress: 32%