So Ori and The Blind Forest was a game that I got for free with my Xbox One when I first picked it up, along with RARE Replay and Gears Ultimate. Having played through every Gears up to that point, I never touched Ultimate and I liked RARE Replay until I realized there was input lag in Battletoads and I forever shunned the game because I am a snotty, snotty purist and if I’m going to make it through the turbo tunnel then dammit, I’m going to do it without latency. So then I didn’t play it again because yes, Battletoads is that important to me.

So that leaves me with the one game out of the bunch I wasn’t that excited about, Ori. But then I played it. And I really liked it. The graphics were great, the action was fun, and the story, while a little depressing in the beginning, was good and gets you right in the feels.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is no different. It’s the same fun gameplay as last time with some tweaks to it, the bosses are menacing, and the story is just as good as last time. You once again play as Ori as he and his adorable owl friend named Ku go for a flight and crash land in forest that’s suffering from an evil force called The Decay. They get separated and Ori’s off on another quest to save the world and help his friend out. You make friends with a giant frog, a big sleeping bear, and a bunch of other characters. As one can expect from the title, you also meet some Wisps. They’re little balls of light that sometimes talk. They’re not very exciting. They are useful though, so I guess if I were to compare them to anything, then I could compare them to…a can-opener? Can openers are not very exciting but are useful.

The graphics are just as good if not better than last time. From the moment you start your adventure to when you explore and travel through all the different themed areas of the world, there’s something for everybody to enjoy. Personally I liked the Luma Pools area the most because as the most tropical looking locale it is gorgeous, but you’re going to see deserts, beautiful forests, a horribly annoying cave where you can’t see anything for most of the time you’re there, and more. All of it is ready and waiting for you to explore and find all sorts of power ups and special items.

The combat is just as fun as last time since a lot of the abilities you use to traverse the world are going to be the same you use to attack enemies.

Speaking of, you’ve got a great assortment of abilities and and ways to get around at your disposal. Everything from double jumps to gliding to projectiles you can rebound off of to boost your jump height, and you can upgrade them all from vendors. Completing challenges gives you more slots to equip upgrades and lets you customize your playstyle more. In addition to the challenges you’ve got side quests to do, and rocks and seeds to collect to further upgrade the town belonging to the little ferret-marsupial characters called Moki.

The combat is just as fun as last time since a lot of the abilities you use to traverse the world are going to be the same you use to attack enemies. It’s mostly beetles, spiders, some weird little yeti looking guys with clubs and shields, things like that. The bosses look great and the fights are pretty epic. They’re usually accompanied with some sort of chase sequence where you’re having to jump around and over collapsing tunnels and pits and such. Personally I think these sections are probably more fun to watch than play as because between the last game and this one, they’ve always felt a little too trial-and-error to me, but maybe I’m just salty because when I encountered these I’d gravitate more to the “error” side of these and die a lot. For the record there’s no punishment for dying, you just go back to your previous checkpoint.

So there’s only one real wart I found on the game and it’s one the developer appears to be aware of, and it’s the frame rate drop and the game freezing up. It felt pretty random but there were some sessions where every few minutes the game would freeze up for as long as 5 seconds or so, and as you can imagine it’d really take the fun out of the game for me. Some of this video footage I captured has those freezes in it because I just could not escape it – it happened that often. I’m sure it’ll get patched out, but in the meantime it was really irritating. Otherwise I really didn’t have any complaints about it.

So if you were on the fence about picking up Ori, then it’s an easy recommendation if you like games that play like Metroid or you enjoyed the last one. It’s an even easier recommendation if you’re subscribed to Game Pass since it’s free to download there. It’s got great graphics, fun exploration and action, and another story about friendship and making the world a better place.