![]() There’s definitely a healthy mix of zipping through sections, avoiding enemies that are either inconsequential or frustrating to fight, and clearing out bad guys. ![]() A musical change will clue you in to the fact that while you’ve danced past the last few groups of enemies, you’re at a point where you may need to heal or equip yourself for a fight. Walls that you can walk through to find caches up the upgrade currency, spirit light, or other upgrades, each look different, but have a familiarity that draws the player to find them. This has felt like a lot of focus on the window dressing of a game that has such strong core mechanics, but the visual and audio design ends up being quite complementary to the mechanics. Large, open spaces are almost jarring in their emptiness compared to an average location in the game that feels loathe to reuse assets and has an amazing vibrancy, particularly for Xbox One X and PC players. Stopping isn’t just for listening though, as when you gain movement skills and become increasingly adept at moving through areas you can forget to appreciate the amount of background and foreground detail that’s gone into making each environment feel alive. It’s rare that a game will get you to pause what you’re doing to just stop and listen, but Ori is able to do that. ![]() The music in Will of the Wisps can hold its own against an animated feature film and is likely to be some of the best of the entire year. Composer Gareth Coker has said he wants the game’s music to evoke emotion in the way it does for a Pixar movie and he succeeds masterfully. A good deal of the emotional investment I felt in the story, and the game as a whole comes from the music, which I can’t praise enough. The story is somber, yet hopeful, and I found myself slightly more invested in it than expected, particularly since I don’t look to platformers for their narratives. Ori needs to purify various parts of the world, helping the other animal inhabitants along the way before collecting the titular Wisps, which grant access to the endgame. In the sequel, we follow Ori and a young owl friend named Ku, an adorable pair that grow up together and who must be reunited after tragedy befalls Ku. The premise of the Ori games usually relates to some sort of return to nature. Between the gorgeous visuals, captivating score, and pinpoint controls, Will of the Wisps is a hard game to put down. Part of the reason I found myself making excuses and overlooking the technical hiccups has been that the game is just so damned fun to play. While I was able to overlook these issues, they need to be addressed, and I fully expect another patch down the line given the increasing popularity of this first-party title that looks to be a staple of Microsoft’s lineup for the foreseeable future. The game only crashed entirely on me once and I didn’t lose any progress. The day one patch addressed issues of some invisible objects and the title screen hanging, but as I progressed toward the end of my 15-hour playthrough, I noticed a number of times where Ori would hang in the air for several seconds before the game would resume. Not one to do what I’m told, I played through the entirety of the game on my launch Xbox One and my recommendation still stands. During the review period, it was clear that there were some issues with performance, and while Microsoft assured us these would be addressed with a day one patch, they still recommended that the game be played on an Xbox One X or Windows 10. ![]() Ori and the Will of the Wisps, available as a part of Game Pass or $30 to own, is a fantastic game that’s worth whichever price of entry you choose.
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