I played Ori 2 for +24 hours and completed 100% of the game. Here are my topline thoughts:

1. It is a game about exploration, combat and a bit of logic.

2. You will run back and forth during the entire gameplay to complete quests and collect things.

3. The game story is charming and the graphics look amazing.

4. It's a must-play sequel and you can also check-out Ori and the Blind Forest.

5. The price tag is fair to offered game content.

Happy to chat about it, the game is also available for Xbox Game Pass members.

I loved the Ori and the Blind Forest. I’ve only played a few hours of Ori and the Will if the Wisps, but I already love the combat a lot.

I liked Ori 1 quite a bit but I found the combat very frustrating. I kept on dying trying to do basic traversal and I felt like I didn't have much control over my attacks. Looks like they're taking a more traditional combat style here. They might be taking a few cues from Hollow Knight, and if so, I applaud them. Sounds great.

I sat down on Tuesday night, ready to go. But then Xbox told me I'd have to wait til 311 day. Now I may not get to play til the weekend. What's another two days after such a long wait?

Played about an hour and it’s really great. It’s not a cakewalk but I think the platforming is more enjoyable and challenging compared to some of those later Hollow Knight levels that were torturous in difficulty - then again I am just at the beginning. That said the game does just kind of flow in a nice way.

I had a gnarly sound bug occur pretty frequently in my playthrough and had to restore a backup save once because skipping ahead got me softlocked, but aside from the general bugginess, this is an amazing game.

The visuals, level design and gameplay are all improved from the last game and the combat flows well and can be pretty amazing when mixed with the traversal skills.

I'm loving it so far. No issues (playing the gamepass version). Love all the little skips you can do with some clever jumping.

Considering that you can get it on both PC and Xbone through Game Pass, which at it's cheapest (if you haven't used it before) can cost you $1/1€, I'd say yeah, that is pretty fair. Around 30 on Steam and retail isn't all that bad either for this gem.

I have played around five-ish hours by now, I think. Unless you just don't like the combat for some reason, this is pretty much an improvement over The Blind Forest in every way. I love the traversing, the graphics and the music and even though the difficulty has kicked my behind a few times, it has never been as frustrating as Hollow Knight.

@glots I made a comment about the game pass at the Game Link section of my review. But I considered 29.99 as a price tag to classify as Neutral/fair as you said, there is the variable that can cost 1 buck, in that case, is a big PROS.

So I think the game looks and sounds amazing, and plays really well, everything is really well designed. I think, however, I’m kind of burnt out on Metroidvanias at this point. As good as it all is I feel like I’m doing the same things all over again.

I just finished it. 100 percent on Normal difficulty. It took me 21 hours. I liked it, but I think I liked the first a little more. The soundtrack was good this time around like the last, but I think the first game had consistently fantastic tracks while in this one I felt there were some that, while still good, wasn't on the same level. I played on the Xbox One X and the performance was pretty poor, but it was okay enough to get through of course.

I wasn't a fan of the 'figure out how to get past this yourself' stuff because it (albeit rarely) made me attempt to do things that I couldn't yet do or made me waste time on things that I shouldn't be doing as I just didn't have the abilities to do those things. You're better off just leaving all the side, collectible stuff to the very end when you have everything because by then you won't get stuck on anything. I wished the game would spell out to me that I didn't have the right abilities.

One section, as an example, is in the mountainous, ice area where you have to use the feather ability to hit a cauldron so you can use the bash ability to make a fireball go into a furnace. I did that, but as you progress further to the right of the map, there's a candle dangling. I thought 'wow, I have to bash the fireball over here? Are you kidding me!?' I tried to do that for 10 to 20 minutes and I got frustrated, so I moved on and realized that that's not at all what I was supposed to be doing. Maybe that's just me, but again, I wish the game would have been clearer that the player is doing something wrong/stupid. Some people don't want that kind of thing though. I just hate wasting time.

Those frustrations aside, the game was kind of easy. I didn't have much of a problem with it, and any of the actual, on path tasks, or actual paths to the collectibles didn't lead to any frustration.

There's a hideous hardware buzzing noise present if the game isn't installed on SSD, at least for me.

I loved it, but it was kind of a technical mess on the Xbox One X. From legit freezing in time at moments (but the music still playing normally), bizarre graphical hitches, to some wonky graphics in some of the very well done and heartfelt cut scenes, it is actually kind of amazing that the game is as good as it is despite all of these things. I'd love to play it again someday on Hard, but think that I will wait until maybe some of that stuff is ironed out.

Pretty unfortunate to hear that the console versions are acting up a lot. I've had a couple of bugs on PC too (ending up inside the environment), but nothing that would've ruined the experience for me.

@sethmode: I also had that weird slowdown effect that Jeff was talking about on the beastcast on XB1X, I also had the console straight up shut off one time when I was loading the game. Although I haven’t had any performance issues after that shut off, including the weird slowdown effect.

@glots: I'm on XB1X and the game hasn't really been acting up at all. No major or minor bugs really except that the performance could be better. I mean it's not terrible or anything but I would kind of expect a solid 60 for this type of game and it's a weird 30-ish..

I haven't run into any further issues on PC game pass version aside from needing to install it on an SSD to avoid a terrible sound bug.

The combat has launchers which is basically all i need to call it an improvement. Love the story and characters too, some of those designs are great.

The game looks and runs worse than the first game (base Xbox One) due to it not all being hand painted and animated this time around. That change is good for the developer’s sanity i imagine but the blurriness of the cutscenes and frame rate hitches when anything regarding any kind of particle effects happens is pretty frustrating. I tried rebooting the console and it ended up helping a little.

@haneybd87: I haven't listened to the Beastcast yet, but your story of a shutdown is wild. The worst I've had is it do its weird freeze up when the screen is busy and having to shut it down myself because it never moved again. That only happened one time in 20 some hours.

I want to reiterate that it is a really wonderful game that plays great 90% of the time. I really loved it and everyone that is a fan of the genre should play it, technical issues and all.

14 hours, 100%. It was a lot of fun. I was functionally immortal due to a few abilities interacting but that's fine with me I don't particularly enjoy overly hard challenges. The escape sequences have more than enough one hit kills to make up for it.

I crashed two or three times, had very occasional stuttering, and that weird audio static thing, but the majority of the time it performed well.

Easily easily easily worth $5 for gamepass to try it out.

I guess I'm about a quarter of the way through. Definitely a lot of fun and very pretty. The sound is great too.

Playing the gamepass version on PC. Obviously well worth the price of admission. Most of the time it is solid but I do get dips here and there (they still happen when I turn the resolution down too). It seems like a loading thing to me; I am playing off SSD. The first-time load of the game was surprisingly long but that was thankfully just the one time.

The combat seems a little easy at the point I'm at (got *much* easier once I got "bash"). I did some minor sequence breaking (using the hammer to get extra height) and did some of the combat challenges a bit earlier than intended...those were fun to take on that way but are cakewalks if you wait to do them. I am playing on normal as recommended though, so I don't think this is necessarily a problem.

I think it *might* have been better to hard lock off more of the areas based on progression because so far I didn't notice any significant payoff to reaching things early (of course I may have missed some intentional easter egg skips). It also seems like discovering one of the shrines too early led to that "rumor" marker being forever unresolved on my map (just a little annoying).

It was ok. I played on PC and had recurring sound bugs, multiple softlocks due to controller issues (buttons occasionally remapping without any apparent reason with no way to change it), and one hard lock that forced me to restart my whole computer.

Technical issues aside, the game was very easy even on Hard, with ridiculous checkpoints that ensure you rarely respawn more than a few seconds from where you died, and with combat starting out relatively challenging but quickly becoming trivial once you've unlocked a few abilities (even the supposed "challenge" shrines were a joke). The mobility you get as you progress through the game is impressive and it does feel nice to almost fly through the environments in such a quick and fluid way, but when there's so little resistance it's hard to feel engaged.

The environments are pretty and impressively animated, but relatively monotonous for most of the game (forest, caves, more forest with minor differences, more caves with minor differences), although a few areas in the second half of the game stand out as more interesting, both visually and in terms of level design (specifically Luma Pools, Mouldwood Depths and Baur's Reach). Character and creature designs are generally incredibly boring, including the player character (the most important one!). Overall, while the game looks pretty with tons of detail and animation, and clearly a lot of work went into it, I would say that most of it is very lacking in style. There are other side-scrollers with visuals that, despite technically being much less detailed and animated, are far more visually captivating thanks to better use of colour, more striking character designs and animations, better visual "flow" between environments and scenarios etc. The team clearly employs competent and hard-working artists and animators but is in desperate need of better art direction. The music is also well-made, but not too interesting.

It's by no means a bad game, but whether you're looking for a metroidvania or just a great audiovisual experience, I'd say there's much better stuff out there.

I just completed it and had a good time, the performance was very uneven (XB1X) but not enough to ruin the game. I think the problem I had is a lot of the stuff they added (vs the first game) felt like padding rather than interesting things to flesh out the world. I was often reminded of Hollow Knight for obvious reasons but that game did world building much more successfully in my opinion. That comparison might be a bit unfair since Ori was never really about that.

It's a better looking and playing game than the original (when it isnt hitching or slowing down) but I wasnt never surprised by it. Which is hard to do to be fair.

Finished at 17 hours, easily my favorite Metroidvania since Steamworld Dig 2. Some of the 'make one mistake and repeat' chase scenes were still kinda "This was cool, but now I'm doing it for the 11th time..." like in The Blind Forest, but they weren't annoying enough to ruin the rest for me, when the gameplay in general was just so satisfying. Gorgeous graphics and great soundtrack definitely were also big parts of why I enjoyed my time.

I thought it was fine. A little disappointed how many upgrades had to do with using "RB" or "LB" to do a dash in the air, and how finicky they could feel once you got them. Absolutely gorgeous, though, which almost made up for it.

I like it enough, in that it's a well made game, but nothing about it is that memorable. Well except the graphics.

I cannot agree with Brad and Ben on the combat, it's not especially terrible, it's just completely useless. I've been mashing my way through without ever needing to change my tactic (so what's the point of having so many abilities?). Sure, if you do a regular combo against most enemies, they'll hit you back, but you have so much health after two hours so that it's basically a non-issue. Also I think that the minute movement feels terrible. Ori feels great when you're flying at high speed through level, but you're way too floaty to position yourself accurately between multiple enemies you're trying to dodge. The first game's combat was basically nothing, so it was easier to ignore in my mind, and I preferred that to this one's combat.

The world itself is beautiful but there's no significant world building, and the story itself I've found to be pretty bad. It's a Miyazaki in its simplest form, without any moral nuances or interesting characters. As a video game story I guess it's fine in that it doesn't get in the way too much (except at the beginning). Every secrets feel pretty boring too, it's all health or magic upgrades, no surprises there.

The platforming is still great though, and that's worth commending. I'm very particular about my very hard platformer and Ori is definitely up there, ignoring the framerate issues on console, I had a lot of fun with that part of the game, so I'd still recommend it on this alone.

I'm surprised how long it is - maybe at this point to it's detriment? I have to echo the above sentiment that I for one am not all that pleased with the increased emphasis on combat. Last night I had just gotten through a lengthy boss fight where half of it took place underwater and even when I finally got which weapon worked best in that fight and breezed through it, the whole thing wasn't all that much fun. I think a classic formula of hitting a specific sequence three times would have worked much better than bosses with real health bars. When I played the first game I never thought "man this could use more nuanced combat."

The platforming continues to be a ton of fun and the levels are really beautiful. Hopefully I'm nearing the end because as much fun as I am having, I am also getting to that point where I just want to be done with it. This newest area that I'm in which is "dark" is beginning to be taxing. I'm also a little let-down that the best abilities are basically the ones from the first game and everything else seems somewhat superfluous and tacked on.

A really fun game all in all despite these nitpicks but for such a long development time it sure does feel a lot more like Ori 1.5 than a true sequel. That has been a running theme now that we are at the end of the generation. A lot of my favorite games have gotten sequels that basically are more of the same without any revolutionary moves forward.

Finished last night, really, really enjoyed it, though I'm not sure I'd place it above Ori 1.

I gotta say though that I barely used any of the "weapons" other than the starting arrow and hammer for 95% of the game except where specific abilities were needed to progress. Maybe that's just my own lack of imagination, but I always find pulling up a wheel select and switching out abilities mid-combat to be cumbersome, hence I tend to stick with what works.

I was very happy with the difficultly, except for one chase sequence that probably took me 20 tries (the worm one). I was worried when people were comparing it to Hollow Knight. Not every game coming out needs to be a damn "git gud" game!

Anyone tried the Switch port? Seems like a tough sell when it's part of gamepass, but the portability could be worth it, in case we ever get to travel again. (From the US)

The first game was very satisfying, except for the scripted escape sequences, which never seemed to flow, in my opinion.