Ori of the Valley of the Light Wind

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is slow. But not in the same way as Afterparty; Ori can run across screens just fine, and the plot is no mystery. The problem is that I'm not at all interested in that plot -- and Ori's gameplay, developing my abilities and exploring the map, is what moves at a snail's pace.

The first 10 minutes are all barely-interactive character setup, introducing the owl child you're supposed to go rescue. Seriously, ten minutes of running left and running right to portray some formative moments. Could've been a 30-second animation.

Then when the rescue mission starts, your first equipment upgrade is ... a torch, which is wielded so awkwardly (and whose flame is doused so regularly) that it's obviously a temporary placeholder. The next 20 minutes lead to a fight with a giant wolf, who posts up a big fat health bar but abruptly flees after a few hits. It's only afterward that Ori gets the "real" attack move.

And then it's still a good half-hour before the double-jump appears, and another half-hour (time check: 90 minutes of "gameplay") until the dash and mid-air Bash move show up. Why couldn't the game just start, like, here?

Meanwhile, NPC animals are giving you navigation breadcrumbs and sidequests - and the camera will occasionally cut over to that poor lost owlet - in events that feel more like interruptions than storytelling.

And the "dangerous obstacles can blend in with innocuous surfaces ... art in the foreground will cover up the action" frustrations I had in 2017 are, if anything, even more frequent in the sequel. Can this branch be jumped through, or not? Is this glowing thing destructible, or purely decorative? Will my attack interrupt this enemy, or is it gonna hit me anyway?

By the time Will of the Wisps gave me enough tools to feel like a videogame, I became convinced that it was really more interested in being a Miyazaki film. When given the choice between visually-clear platforms or a shiny piece of art, it'll choose eye candy every time. And it just won't stop wasting screentime trying to make me care about that little owl.

I'll at least credit it for learning something good from Blind Forest: it does, as previously noted, replace those insane consumable saves with normal location-based save points. Shit, it even has automatic checkpoints at meaningful map transitions like Batman: Arkham Asylum. How generous!

And I mean, it's not that Will of the Wisp's platforming mechanics are "bad," certainly no worse than Blind Forest's. I was just falling asleep on my way to them.

Progress: 7%, killed a Horn Beetle, talked to Kwolok the giant toad.