Where there’s a will…
Ori and the Blind Forest was a challenging and stunningly gorgeous Metroidvania platformer, using a vast array of different abilities to traverse puzzle-like environments, with light combat to its threatening locals. Even despite its minimalistic narrative, the game evoked a ton of emotional weight to its cast of memorable characters and became one of the best games available on the platform, eventually releasing to the Nintendo Switch some years later. With this direct sequel, Ori and his friends are back for one more adventure, complete with a newly implemented combat system and a greater amount of traversal options at your disposal. Will of the Wisps is a truly fantastic sequel, even despite the technical issues that hold this game back from being an absolute masterpiece.
Also available on Xbox Game Pass, Will of the Wisps takes place directly following the events of the first game, with Ori and his newly hatched friend, an owl named Ku, enjoying their peaceful life alongside their almost surrogate parents, Naru and Gumo. During a mishap with Ku wanting to learn how to fly, the inseparable pair find themselves in the mysterious lands of Niwen. After a hellish storm separates them both, Ori must attempt to track down Ku, while also learning about the infection that has long been plaguing this one flourishing paradise. Ori and the Blind Forest offered up a deeply emotional story, and Will of the Wisps doesn’t disappoint in that regard either, with some effective heartstring-pulling that is sure to well your eyes up for its stunning finale. I can honestly say with no hesitation, that Will of the Wisps has one of the most beautiful endings to a game I’ve experienced in several years.
Since the passing of the Spirit Hollow, Niwen has been ruled by Shriek, a slightly deformed and decaying owl that is towering in size. There is an extremely heartfelt origin story as to why she is so destructive that really makes you feel for her, despite the evil that she has brought into this world. Ori won’t be alone on his adventure as a decent collection of interesting characters will look to assist him on his journey to cleanse the sickness infecting Niwen. You’ll also look to rebuild a small village, gathering ore to make the dreams come true of its residents. There is also Kwolok, a giant toad that is the protector of these lands, as well as a massive bear that you’ll look to awake from his deep slumber.
Will of the Wisps does a lot to improve upon nearly every gameplay mechanic present in the first game. Blind Forst had you earning skills points to place into a progressive skill tree to learn set abilities as well as a limited variety of core moves, such as wall climbing, and double jumping. This system felt fairly limiting in how you gained abilities as well as when, making some aspects of exploration and combat to be fairly linear in nature. Will of the Wisps changes everything about your upgrades by having only a set amount of them unlocked by progression and instead allows you to use in-game spirit currency to purchase and upgrade a massive variety of passive skills and essential abilities at your leisure.
As you collect the glowing orange spirit light that is found everywhere, you’ll encounter NPC’s that can sell you special attacks and passive skills such as taking less damage, dealing more damage to flying enemies, or deflecting projectiles with your melee attack. These are called Spirit Shards and you’ll have access to a few dozen of these that look to complement a variety of different playstyles. At first, you’ll only have the ability to use three at a time, but completing a series of shrine encounters will allow you to equip up to eight at once, making Ori a force to be reckoned with. Spirit Shards really open up the game in ways that benefit your builds based on the difficulty you’ve chosen, or by making certain encounters easier to manage by making your core abilities stronger or act in ways that increase their effectiveness.
Ori’s key abilities are split up into those that you earn as you progress and those that can be purchased by select NPC’s. Will of the Wisps is a more offensive game in that combat feels far more fleshed out as Ori swings a pointy spirit blade, or can unleash a flurry of spirit arrows towards his far-reaching targets. Combat never felt really that enjoyable in the previous game but Will of Wisps not only crafts a solid combat system around the exploration, but it feels like something the series had always had due to how perfect it flows in and out of each encounter. Ori will also gain special traversal abilities such as being able to burrow quickly through sand, or flash a bright light to keep the darkness at bay. There is a solid amount of skills here that open up a vast array of builds that you can play around with, finding the best ways to tackle certain enemies or the gauntlets that Ori is forced to run.
One of Will of the Wisps’ more engaging aspects is through its collective use of swapping back and forth between traversal abilities to keep Ori moving at a brisk pace. Once you’ve come to grips with grappling and dashing through the air and slingshotting yourself higher and faster, much of the game opens up to you in significant ways. Several areas have extravagant chase sequences that may start easy enough but turn into tense gauntlets where a single slip up will seal your doom. There is one in particular that bordered on being a tad too difficult and felt like I lucked out on completing it than really benefitting from being skilled at it. That said, these moments are incredibly well-paced and offer up some heart-pounding action, coated with the use of some stunning music that punctuates the sequences to new heights.
A series of new traversal abilities allow the platforming to feel better fleshed out than its predecessor, making the game vastly more enjoyable but still very familiar. In fact, I had only played a portion of the original game, but after revisiting it, even over halfway into the adventure, you can easily feel the difference in not just the level design, but the flow in which you move through each environment. Will of the Wisps simply improves every single aspect of what the original had and is simply more fun to play because these improvements and additions enhance the game at every turn.
As you move around the map, you’ll encounter a few NPC’s that will have requests of you. These vary from finding certain items like a compass, a rope, some gems, or even a healer from another location. Several side quests will also prompt up when you are rebuilding the Wellspring Glades, which requires you to track down ore to have the town builder use to complete these tasks. The side quests are enjoyable and should you be exploring every nook and cranny, then you’ll easily encounter the items or people, you seek.
The land of Niwen has you navigating spider-infested tunnels, rotting deserts, underground ruins, to a snow-covered forest that sees you balancing fire blasts to heat a furnace-like contraption. There are several interesting areas present here that offer up a great deal of variety in not just its visuals, but the threats you’ll encounter and puzzles you’ll solve. You’ll still track down similar items and tools to solve puzzles or open doors in the same ways you did previously. Each and every area present in Will of the Wisps is packed with incredible detail with very clear visual language of what you’re able to climb on, swing up to, or use as a method of traversal.
While you can purchase maps from a local NPC, you’ll still need to look out for certain visual tells in each environment for hidden areas that hold secrets, such as additional health or energy tokens to enhance your current limit, or more spirit light to purchase additional skills. Being a Metroidvania game, you’ll often have to return to certain areas once you earn certain abilities like bashing through walls, gaining more height, or burrowing through sand. While I never felt I needed to backtrack through entire sections, thanks to a fairly spaced out fast travel system, the normal rules for Metroidvania’s apply here in spades, blocking off certain locations until you have the proper tools unlocked.
One key difference between Blind Forest and Will of the Wisps is down to the save system found in the previous entry. In this sequel, Ori can only save progress at special stone relics, which are found pretty close together in most locations. Blind Forest had these saving stones, but also had the ability to save anywhere you were, provided you had the energy currency to do so. While I do miss the ability to save on the spot, I never really felt like I had to redo massive gaps as Will of the Wisps has placed their save locations fairly close together, again, in most locations. Now that said, I wouldn’t have had an issue had the ‘on-the-spot’ save system been present here, but didn’t feel its exclusion to really feel noticeable in any significant way.
While Blind Forest was still a visually striking game, Will of Wisps manages to pack in even more subtle details into its background, and greater detail and color to its foreground elements, making this not just a stunning game to see in motion, but one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever experienced. Every branch you bounce from, every platform you dash across gives way and reacts to Ori’s presence in very subtle yet apparent ways. This beauty does come with a cost on the Xbox One, even the X, as the game can often stutter or drop to extremely low frames. I’m hoping that Moon Studios issues out a patch to address this as while the Series X version is rumored to run the game at a locked 120fps, I don’t want to have to wait that long to experience this game running like it should have been in the first place. That said, despite the mild frequency the game chugged along, this is one breathtaking masterpiece of visual game design.
With a stunning orchestrated soundtrack, filled with powerful and emotionally charged music, Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a force to be reckoned with. Its emotional narrative of Ori and his desire to heal these poisoned lands gives him a purpose to fulfill his destiny. While the game does have some significant performance issues, they only rarely had an impact on gameplay when the game would drop dramatically in frames. That said, I can’t deny that it’s a huge disappointment to see these issues exist in the first place. Had those issues not been present and if the game ran at a constant framerate, then I would have easily scored this game a 10, but since these issues do have an impact on the flow and speed of the game, I can’t rightfully give the game top marks. Ori and the Blind Forest was a truly fantastic adventure to enjoy, but Will of the Wisps is just a vast improvement on key systems and exploration in a way deserving of a sequel and is just shy of being one of Microsoft’s most memorable titles to date.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps was downloaded via Game Pass by the reviewer and played on an Xbox One X.
All screenshots were taken on an Xbox One X.