We shall always remember the nightWhen I lost Ori to the Great StormWhen Naru embraced my lightAs a child of her own.~The Spirit TreeEvery once in a while, a title comes along that really captures the imagination of the gaming world, garnering top ratings from critics and the community alike. Such was the case with March’s TA Playlist game. The theme was Metroidvania Madness and four of the genre’s best were up for nomination, but the game that triple-jumped out to an early lead and brought home the easy victory was Ori and the Blind Forest.“Metroidvania” games have been around since the late 1980s, but the recognition of the core concepts of these games as a distinct genre has come more recently, as the term — a portmanteau of “Metroid” and “Castlevania” — gradually gained traction in the mid-2000s. According to TA’s genre definition:Metroidvania is a sub-genre of Action-Adventure that focuses on exploration of a, typically, single interconnected world. The player will gain new skills/abilities that allow them to explore once inaccessible areas as well as grow in power via an advancement system. These games feature prominent platforming elements, such as precision jumping, but need not be platformers. Instead, the player is mainly antagonized by enemies which can be defeated through combat.In recent years, the genre’s popularity, especially among indie developers, has exploded, but a few examples stand out as the best of the best, and no game typifies the challenging but rewarding genre better than the March Playlist winner.Lexo6868 said:The Ori series and Hollow Knight are the high-water marks for the resurgence of Metroidvanias in recent years. I’m glad people are experiencing this one with the TA Playlist this month!Moon Studios formed in 2010 when Thomas Mahler left Blizzard to start his own indie development team. Operating as a “virtual studio,” with team members working remotely from around the world, Moon Studios created several prototype games and started pitching them to publishers. Xbox Game Studios agreed to fund a project called Sein, which after four years of development, was released in 2015 for Xbox and PC as Ori and the Blind Forest.In a visually stunning opening sequence, we are introduced to Ori, a “Guardian Spirit” who was blown away as a leaf from the Spirit Tree in the forest of Nibel during a storm. Essentially an orphan, Ori is adopted by a bear-like creature named Naru, who raises Ori as her own. After years of living happily together in Naru’s cave, a cataclysm strikes the forest, and the trees which provide sustenance for Naru and Ori start to wither and die. Naru sacrifices her own food supply to keep Ori nourished, but eventually, there’s just not enough to keep going, and Ori’s adoptive mother dies of starvation.GeekWithThat said:The opening gets me every time.Alone for the first time, Ori wanders into the forest, not sure what to do next. Luckily, he happens across a glowing ball of light named Sein, who explains that the forest is dying because the core has been stolen from the Spirit Tree, and the three elements that maintain life in the forest – water, wind, and warmth – are no longer in balance. To save the forest, Ori and Sein must return the light of each element and restore the Spirit Tree to full strength.Ori begins to explore the maze of the forest, but you quickly realize that there are many places that are blocked off, either by physical walls or by other obstacles that Ori just can’t get past. With some exploration, however, you locate ancestor trees, where the spirits of past guardians now reside, and by absorbing their light, Ori gains new abilities (wall climb, double jump, dash, etc.) that allow you to explore new areas of the map and uncover new secrets. In addition to the various areas of the main forest map, Ori will have to travel through three main “dungeons” – The Ginso Tree, source of the Element of Waters; the Forlorn Ruins, home of the Wind Element; and the volcanic Mount Horu, where the Element of Warmth resides. Each area introduces new dangers and new challenges for Ori and Sein to overcome, combining challenging platforming, intelligent puzzle-solving, and fast-paced combat.HawkeyeBarry20 said:I really enjoyed playing this game, so much that I’ve been thinking about going back to do the standard edition. I can remember my first playthrough being challenging at certain points, like escaping up through the tree, parts of the ice cave and parts of the final area, but mostly it was just fun to move through the game. Achievement wise I wasn’t a fan of how many end-game things there were. Beat the game, hard mode, no death mode, no abilities, under three hours, it’s a Metroidvania, so I know these tend to go hand in hand, but I wish some would have been cut out. The game was good, so I can forgive it. By the time I was doing my no-death run, I was surprised at how quickly I was burning through the game.While there is very little dialogue apart from the occasional narration by the Spirit Tree or some exposition from Sein, Ori and the Blind Forest still manages to weave an interesting story with themes of light vs. darkness, hope vs. fear, and companionship vs. isolation – themes that fit well with the game’s aesthetic. Ori, a gleaming white fairy creature, and Sein, a literal ball of light, represent a ray of hope in the darkened forest, while the giant black owl Kuro represents hatred and darkness, having literally “blinded” the forest by stealing the light of the Spirit Tree.A third creature of the forest, Gumo, is somewhere in between. Gumo’s fear comes from his isolation, being the last living member of his clan. Initially, he’s afraid of Ori and tries to hide the Water Element away, but when Gumo becomes trapped under a rock, and Ori sets him free, Gumo starts to realize that he doesn’t need to be scared and alone anymore. Ori’s kindness brings Gumo hope and turns him into an ally.Gumo’s heel-face turn gives us a foreshadowing of Kuro’s own story. You eventually learn that Kuro’s hatred springs not from evil but from her own grief and fear. Kuro’s newly-hatched offspring were killed by a blast of light from the Spirit Tree, and in her sadness and rage, she stole the Tree’s core to prevent the light from threatening her final unhatched egg — she’s willing to see the entire forest destroyed rather than let the light return. However, when her nest is threatened by a fire, Kuro’s maternal instincts kick in, and she’s able to lay aside her personal hatred in order to save her last remaining child. Kuro sacrifices herself to return the core to the Spirit Tree, extinguishing the fire. Hope and love overcome fear and hatred, and balance and life return to the forest of Nibel.KinectKid333 said:This may be the most beautiful game I have ever played. The art, the music, the story. It is all 12/10. Gosh, if I somehow ever get a Switch, this will be one of the first games I play on it. I still need to get around to playing the sequel one of these days.Ori and the Blind Forest was an immediate hit, receiving near-universal acclaim from critics and bringing home over 30 awards in 2015, including a Golden Joystick for Best Xbox game, a SXSW Gaming Award for Excellence in Musical Score, and a Bafta Choice Award for Artistic Achievement. Several of the awards were specifically in relation to the art and sound design, both of which received praise in the forums: Xynvincible said:Love Ori. Just gorgeous visuals and a solid game underneath. Will of the Wisps is the better game IMO, but Blind Forest is a fantastic game that everyone should play.l BlackBrian7 l said: I Finished the definitive edition a few years ago. The soundtrack was so incredible that I still listen to it all the time.The game’s success led to Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition being released a year later, in March 2016, followed by a Nintendo Switch version (with Xbox achievements) in September 2019. The Definitive Edition versions of the game provided updated content, gameplay improvements, and several new achievements – including one for completing the game without dying, which wasn’t nearly as popular with our commenters.Osmo76 said:Solario32 said:Awesome game. I don’t miss One Life mode at all :)Agreed x 2! In addition to the stress of making it all the way through without dying, there were other criticisms of the game in our forums as well, especially with the Definitive Edition’s occasionally buggy achievements, the sometimes rather bland single-button combat, and the prevalence of traps that punish any platforming mistakes with instant death.Cylon 118 said:I played through this once and enjoyed the story and artwork from soundtrack to visuals but found the gameplay itself just a little bit tedious as if you die and forgot or straight up couldn’t afford the soul link then you ended up losing a lot of progress. Plus, mashing x over and over to kill things not the best way, me thinks. Also, the amount of glitchy achievements is a little annoying as well as ones that require a rather precise jumping game to be done quickly or without deaths are just not my idea of a fun time.Spa1h said:I enjoyed it, but not too much, due to the demanding achievement list and the unforgiving gameplay. I especially dislike the backtracking (gaining energy/health) and the super fast respawning of enemies. The core gameplay and art design are very smooth, but overall I liked Celeste and Child of Light more.ChiflaGoodluck said:I did do a One Life run in January this year, so thankfully, my thoughts are still relatively fresh in my mind. The platforming’s still as superb as it was when I first played it all those years ago: precise, elegant, and it gives a wonderous sense of flow. Combat’s actually a fair bit better than what I remember, but that’s probably because I engaged with all of the combat options; before you get Stomp the combat is still trash and is one of the main reasons I think the sequel is drastically better, and even after you get Stomp and Charge Dash “WotW’s” combat still beats it like how the hare would beat the tortoise if he actually tried for the whole race. Achievements are mostly fine, except One Life which can die in a fire due to the extremely artificial difficulty, which is to say 90% of it is from the insta-kills. I cannot stress enough how ridiculous the amount of insta-kills in this game is, it feels like Moon couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t be a threat to players without just killing them outright so they took the easy way out.Elyoh said:Visuals were fantastic, as was the music. The platforming was mostly great, having stomp be down with the left stick caused me occasional issues that could have easily been avoided by having that be a different button. I wasn’t a fan of the insta-death they constantly threw at you […] Overall, I would just say I found it to be a ‘very good’ game, but I wouldn’t personally rate it as a ‘great’ game or one of my favourites.Moon Studios would get an opportunity to address some of these criticisms in the follow-up, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which released in March of 2020, so if you enjoyed your time in the forest of Nibel, don’t forget to check out the sequel. Will there be a third Ori game in the future? The jury’s still out at this point. While the door hasn’t officially been closed, Moon Studios just recently stated that their next project would be an Action-RPG that would be a “make or break” title, so for now at least, any possible Ori 3 appears to be on the back burner.A total of 1,924 tracked gamers joined us in the forest of Nibel during March, with 1,044 players starting one of the versions of the game for the first time. The TA Community unlocked 18,835 achievements across all three tracked versions, for a grand total of 363,665 Gamerscore, or 663,547 TrueAchievement Score. Of those, the vast majority (17,022 achievements) were from the Definitive Edition, while the Switch version had the second most unlocks, at 1,178 achievements. The original version had only 635 achievements unlocked during the month, which isn’t too much of a surprise, since it can’t be bought separately any more (though it is still available as a free download when you purchase the Definitive Edition).Given the discussion above, you can probably guess the rarest achievement unlock for the month – Unhinged, awarded for completing the game successfully in One Life mode. Sitting at a whopping 13.19 TA Ratio, this achievement was only unlocked 18 times in the Definitive Edition during March, with three additional unlocks from the Switch version. Other achievements that required a special play style, such as the speedrun achievement Supersonic, the no-death achievement Immortal, and the no-ability-point-upgrade achievement Elite also saw only a handful of unlocks during the month.Despite the difficulty of these achievements, we did have a few intrepid individuals who managed to unlock all the achievements in the game during March, so a big Shout-Out to these seven individuals. The fastest completion for the month went to Modesto93, at 65 hours and 13 minutes, but they were playing the original version, which is a little easier path to 100%, since it doesn’t have the difficulty or One Life achievements. The fastest completion for the Definitive Edition was UpliftGecko at 94 hours and eight minutes from the first achievement to the last. Congrats!For the April TA Playlist game, we went with a Retro Revenge theme, featuring several old-school games that have been re-released, reimagined, or remastered for modern consoles. The winner was the N64 classic first-person shooter, GoldenEye 007, and there’s still some time left for you to put on your tux and grab your Golden Gun for this nostalgic spy thriller. Don’t forget to leave a comment in the Spoiler-Free and Spoiler Discussion Threads to tell us how it’s going, or just to reminisce about playing the game back before the Xbox was even born!Finally, the voting is still open for the May 2023 TA Playlist poll, featuring a second-chance month for four popular games that didn’t get chosen in previous months. Head on over and cast a vote for your favourite!
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