Ori and the Will of the Wisps

1. Summary

The reviews agree on why they like this game. The same four things come up again and again: art that reviewers compare to a living painting, Gareth Coker's orchestral score, movement that feels effortless once Ori's toolkit fills out, and a short, wordless story that hundreds of reviewers say made them cry. Players who compare it with Blind Forest overwhelmingly prefer the sequel. They point to what it adds (melee combat, boss fights, autosaves, fast travel, side quests and a hub village) and say it keeps the platforming they liked in the first game.

Complaints are scattered, and each one turns up in a small fraction of reviews. Players dislike the scripted chase sequences, which kill in one hit and send you back to the start (the sandworm escape in particular). They get lost when a path turns out to need an ability they don't have yet. And on PC, a minority hit crashes at launch, freezes, lost saves, or a PlayStation controller the game won't map properly. Opinion splits on difficulty (too easy on Normal for veterans, too punishing for newcomers, and fixed for the whole save), on the ending, and on how much the sequel borrows from Hollow Knight.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Art that looks like a moving paintingHigh

Praise for the art and visuals runs through the whole corpus, and the comparisons run big. One player wrote "Every frame is a wallpaper", another "Every frame of this game looks like a painting you'd see in a museum". Players single out the lighting, the depth of the layered backgrounds, and how areas like the Luma Pools, Baur's Reach and the Mouldwood Depths each get their own palette and mood. A few mention taking hundreds of screenshots. A cluster of players with HDR screens, often OLED monitors or the Steam Deck OLED, say it is the best HDR they have seen: "HDR is present with this game and it is the best implementation of any game." Nobody calls it ugly. The complaint from the few who raise one is that the same density of effects can hide what is happening in a fight (see the frustrations panel).

A wordless story that makes players cryHigh

The story comes up about as often as the art, and hundreds of reviews say outright that the game made them cry or nearly cry, sometimes for the first time in any game. Reviewers praise how much the cutscenes convey with almost no dialogue, and characters like the Moki villagers and Kwolok. "Impossible not to tear up at the end" is typical of the tone. A few parents mention playing it with their children. A smaller group dislikes the ending itself, covered in the split panel.

A soundtrack people keep listening toHigh

Players describe the score swelling during chases and boss fights and staying quiet during exploration. Some say they bought the soundtrack or still listen to it years later: "Music so good had to buy the audio tracks". A few think the first game's score was more memorable or find that this one repeats its themes.

Movement and platforming that feel effortlessHigh

Players like how quickly the game hands back double jump, dash and Bash, and how later tools (grapple, burrow, launch) chain together until, as one player put it, "your basically flying across the map at mach 5". Bash, which lets Ori launch off enemies and projectiles, gets named as a favorite in several reviews. One player summed it up: "Never felt so in control of a character, movement feels so satisfying". A minority describe the controls as floaty or say Ori grabs the wrong target in tight spots.

A sequel that fixes what Blind Forest got wrongMedium

Hundreds of reviews say this game is better than the first, far more than prefer Blind Forest. They list the specific upgrades: a real melee combat system with a sword, hammer, bow and spear instead of the old auto-targeting spark; proper boss fights; autosave and checkpoints in place of manual Soul Link saves; warping from anywhere; NPCs, side quests and a hub village you rebuild. "They really just took the first game and made it ten times better" captures the mood, and several players who disliked Blind Forest say this one won them over. The group that argues the opposite is covered in the split panel.

Worth every penny, and a steal on saleLow

When price comes up, it is mostly praise. Reviewers who bought it on sale for a few dollars or euros call it absurd value ("3 euro is crazy for this game"), and several who paid full price say it was worth it. A few negative reviewers suggest waiting for a sale, but nobody calls it overpriced.

Runs well on Steam Deck and modest hardwareLow

Steam Deck owners who mention performance say it runs smoothly, and some players on older GPUs say it looks good even on low settings. The technical complaints below come from other machines; reports differ sharply from one PC to the next.

Where players are split

Difficulty: too easy for veterans, too punishing for newcomersMedium

Genre veterans often find Normal easy, especially once health and energy upgrades pile up and the Regenerate skill lets them heal through boss fights. Several recommend starting on Hard, and one notes that the challenge "drops exponentially and irreversibly past the halfway mark". Newcomers and self-described casual players describe precise, repeated platforming that wore them down, sometimes even on Easy: "you shouldnt have to be a genius to play a 3$ game". Because difficulty is locked for the whole save, picking the wrong setting can't be undone, and several players ask for the option the first game had: "A game with difficulty settings should have an option to change the difficulty while playing."

The Hollow Knight influence and the turn toward combatMedium

Comparisons to Hollow Knight and Silksong pull both ways. Many treat them as a compliment: the shard system, map seller and melee combat make it "like if Hollow Knight actually WANTED you to play it", a gentler entry point into the genre. A vocal minority, often fans of Blind Forest, feel the sequel traded the first game's identity for borrowed systems: "it's Ori wearing Hollow Knight's skin". Some in that group say the combat itself is the weak spot: enemy variety is thin, a few weapons do the job, and many abilities go unused. Others call the combat the biggest upgrade over the first game.

The ending and the villainMedium

Most who mention the ending found it beautiful and devastating in a good way. A small group hated it. They object that it repeats the first game's sacrifice beat, that it feels rushed, and especially that Shriek, the antagonist, gets a sympathetic backstory and then no chance at redemption: "Story resolution and the treatment of the main antagonist felt outright wrong and problematic". A few players also wanted far more of Ku, the owl the story is built around: "Ku didn't get much screentime and gameplay."

Boss fights: a welcome addition with uneven designMedium

Boss fights are new to the series, and most players who discuss them welcome them, especially the mix of fighting and chasing within one encounter. Mora the spider and the final fight are often named as highlights. Criticism centers on readability: large bosses with parts in the background, unclear hitboxes, and attacks hidden by effects. The final phase of the last boss gets the harshest words ("low visibility, massive RNG elements, and really poor hitboxes"), and some players note there are only a handful of bosses for a game with this many combat options.

Shards, ability slots and side contentLow

Some players enjoy building the shard loadout and three-button ability set around a playstyle. Others find three slots too few when healing and area-specific tools take two of them, and dislike that basics like the triple jump and wall cling became optional shards. Shared buttons (grapple, bash and burrow on the same input) also draw complaints for triggering the wrong move at the wrong moment. Side quests and the rebuilt village get mixed notes too: they make the world feel alive for many, while others see fetch quests and a grind for Spirit Light to buy every upgrade.

LengthLow

Reviewers who give a time mostly put a full run at 12 to 20 hours and feel it doesn't overstay its welcome. A minority wish it were longer, or note there is little to do once the story and collectibles are finished.

What frustrates players

One-hit chase sequences with no checkpointsMedium

The escape sequences draw angry words even from players who love the game. The complaint is consistent: a mistake means instant death and a restart from the beginning of a long, scripted run, so the challenge becomes memorizing the route rather than reacting. "every time you make a mistake it's instadeath, then back to the start" is a typical line. The sandworm escape in the Windswept Wastes is the one named most often. One player who loved the game still wished for "a checkpoint in between" during the sandworm run, and others say the music makes the retries bearable.

Getting lost and hitting invisible ability gatesMedium

Players describe following a path for minutes before discovering they need an ability they don't have, with little signposting of which area to tackle next: the game "lets you go incredibly far in the wrong direction before you discover you can't progress because you're missing a key ability". Specific examples recur: finding out that the water dash and burrow require the regular dash, not knowing that redirected projectiles break certain walls, and losing track of the chained trading quest. Some players say they had to look things up on YouTube or Reddit. Several single out the Mouldwood Depths, a dark area where Ori dies without light, as frustrating rather than tense.

PC crashes, freezes and lost savesMedium

A small minority of players hit serious technical trouble on PC. Reports include crashes on launch or before the main menu ("crashing at startup unresolved for 6 years"), freezes and grey or blank screens that need a restart, crashes after changing graphics settings, stuttering and long load times even on strong hardware, and deleted or corrupted saves: "Then I tried loading a save and it somehow deleted the save instead." 2 reviewers with Nvidia RTX 50-series cards report visual glitches. Some affected players still recommend the game, and workarounds circulate in the reviews (rolling back to an older patch, unplugging headphones before launch, changing Steam controller settings), but they describe a PC port that was never fully patched.

Controls on PC: no controller remapping, awkward keyboardLow

Xbox pads work well, but players with PlayStation controllers describe wrong default mappings ("By default, Square becomes A, X becomes B, and R2 becomes Start") and on-screen prompts that don't match after remapping through Steam Input. Others dislike the default layout and want to change it in the game: "it is absolutely unacceptable to release a game where you cannot rebind the controller". Keyboard players report that the game switches back to mouse aiming, that bash and burrow aiming are awkward without a stick, and that the sand sections are especially hard on keys. The usual advice in the reviews is to use an Xbox-style controller.

Visual clutter in combatLow

The effects players praise can also obscure fights. Reviewers describe losing sight of a tiny Ori in a zoomed-out camera, enemy projectiles that look like the orbs enemies drop, and hits that land in a blur of light: "it's sometimes just plain hard to see what's going on because of all the overlapping bright, flashing effects." Several ask for options to lower bloom or turn off screen shake, which the game doesn't offer.

Spirit Trials and other small irritantsLow

The optional Spirit Trials (timed races) frustrate some completionists, partly because "quite a few of your abilities are deactivated during these races" and partly because there is no quick restart button. A few players also object to long unskippable story scenes early on and moments where the game takes control away, to buggy collectible and map-completion achievements, and to having to grind currency to buy every upgrade.

3. The player conversation

The tone is warm and often personal. Many reviews are short declarations ("masterpiece", "peak", "made me cry"), and the longer ones read like tributes: players describe replaying it yearly, buying it again after finishing it on Xbox Game Pass or Switch, or playing it with their children. Blind Forest comes up throughout. Among players who compare the two, the sequel wins by a wide margin, while a smaller group of first-game loyalists feels it lost some simplicity and identity.

The criticism comes from distinct groups. Players who stop after a short session mostly report things that blocked them from playing: crashes at launch, missing sound, or a PlayStation controller mapped wrong. Players deep into a run raise design complaints: the chase sequences, the final boss's last phase, the Mouldwood Depths, invisible ability gates, and the ending. Genre veterans coming from Hollow Knight or Silksong are the ones arguing about combat depth and difficulty, sometimes in opposite directions. Newcomers to metroidvanias include some of the game's warmest advocates and also write many of the "too hard" complaints.

Week to week, the recommendation rate has stayed high and steady from March 2023 to October 2026. What changed was volume: the late September 2026 sale brought the busiest week in the slice, full of first-time players who mention paying a few dollars or euros and describe discovering the series.

4. What the developers could do

1. Add mid-sequence checkpoints to the chase and escape sequences. The one-hit, restart-from-the-top escapes, the sandworm above all, draw angry words even from players who love the game.
2. Fix the outstanding PC stability problems. Launch crashes, freezes, grey screens, crashes on settings changes, deleted saves and the RTX 50-series glitches turn some players who liked what they played into negative reviewers.
3. Allow full controller remapping and correct PlayStation prompts. PlayStation pad owners and players who dislike the default layout call the lack of in-game rebinding a dealbreaker.
4. Let players change difficulty mid-save. Both sides of the difficulty split would use it: newcomers stuck on Normal, and veterans who found Normal too easy and want Hard without restarting.
5. Signpost ability requirements and the next objective more clearly. Players lost for long stretches ask for hints when a path needs an ability they lack, tooltips noting dependencies like water dash requiring dash, and a better quest tracker.
6. Add accessibility options for visual clarity. Toggles for screen shake and bloom intensity, plus clearer boss hitboxes and telegraphs in the final fight, would answer the specific combat complaints.
7. Fix keyboard-only play and loosen the Spirit Trial rules. Keyboard players want the game to stop switching back to mouse aiming, and trial runners want their earned abilities and a one-button restart.