thomasmahler it's great to have you in this thread so we can share our thoughts directly with the team and hear your feedback too. I've previously worked in the games industry from tester all the way up to UI/UX artist on some of the biggest brands out there so i know the struggles that go on working in any game, as well as dealing with the feedback after launch. So i hope my feedback is taken constructively and not as a complaint as you guys have done a great job here and i know a lot of love and attention was poured into it.
To start im a huge fan of the original game, it has a couple of issues (Trial and error chase sequences, hit boxes being a bit too large on spikes etc) but is generally a fantastic and wonderful game and i was really looking forward to this follow up.
For the first half of the game i thought most things were an improvement. The combat was much better, the level design was fun and till the half way point it had mostly been a positive improvement all round. But that half way point has some serious issues. Firstly, as the world opens up and you are given your own choices it made the game frustrating to play and navigate. Where as the original like all metroidvania types of games had certain areas locked away until you had the right item, this game allowed you to go too far into an area only to be road blocked by that required item and not knowing where to go next. It should have been tantalising, knowing theres somewhere you can go later on where as here you were already half way down the path before you hit the dead end. Basically there is an order you need to do things but because the game allows you to do it how you want it creates huge player frustration and with little guidance.
The added weapons are great at first but by the end i found they were just a gimmick for a certain area of the game. The first game had perfect controls where as here the new stuff was just bloat and made the controllers more fiddly as a result. The level layouts also lacked that free flowing movement. In the original i could go all around the map like superman by the end of the game, bashing off objects, lanterns, enemies and barely touching the ground where as here often i am just forced to run along the ground or stop and wait to time my jump. I never felt super powered and amazing at the end here as i did in the original which is a shame.
But the biggest issue is the chase sequences. It's like you learnt all the wrong lessons from the original game. The original games chase sequences were hair pulling frustration at times and were basically memory tests. If you didn't know the layout by heart you would fail, again and again as enemies, objects and set pieces happened with no warning. Here they are even worse with terrible rubber banding that means unless you need speed runner perfection or you will die over and over again. It's clear to me you have matched your testers abilities and not those of actual players. What should be exhilarating and exciting just become frustrating and make me want to turn off the game. I understand you want to keep pressure on the player but there are ways to do this without frustrating the player. Look at Super Metroid where you have the escape sequence and feel like you won't make it until the end when you realise you had quite a bit of time to spare. Why the chase sequences can't slow down as the player does (until such a point where you have to kill them to show they can't just stop) is beyond me. Why after the 20th death the sequences don't play slower to give the player a chance i don't know either. I would say im a skilled player, fully completing the original twice and completing this (on normal) yet those chase sequences kill all enthusiasm for what should be amazing. Don't let your testers guide you on difficulty, too many developers fall into that trap, go with your instinct or get other game players (not focus testing groups, i bet you know just like i do how unreliable those can be) and make it so they have pressure but in a safer environment. Give the player time and space to mess up without dying. Far to often i'd miss a jump slightly and could never recover from it.
To add to the chase scenes its not always obvious where you are meant to hide. Sometimes it's unclear i was meant to hide behind that bit of cloth as other objects look like i was meant to hide behind them or other objects look like i can clearly be seen but actually i couldn't be. It's never always totally clear where im meant to go next especially as landing in some places kills you instantly where as landing five foot further doesn't. Give the player some time to breath and figure out there steps instead of giving them an instant failure. There's one scene in particular where you are being chased by an avalanche and the path through is blocked by an odd facing twig. Clearly you are meant to go under it but in the split second i have to see it and figure out if its a foreground or background element i end up flying into it and then have to go backwards (thus dying) to get past. Stuff like that is not good UX as it really breaks the flow for a player coming across it for the first time and then having to be sent right back to the beginning to try again making it feel super cheap.
The challenge rooms are a pain too. Combat isn't a strong point of Ori, if Ori could block rather than evade then maybe but as it is sometimes the player, especially early on is overwhelmed by enemies or doesn't even know how many waves there will be to recover. So these become a pain rather than fun even if many of them are optional. Boss battles also suffer from this as you don't know what phase they are in, attacks are sometimes signposted but with no time to evade and Ori clearly shows how Nintendo get this stuff perfect where as Ori is a bit rough around the edges. All it takes is some tweaking to make them great. What im saying is the boss battles are not bad, just a bit more work would have made them enjoyable and a challenge rather than a war of attrition.
Finally, checkpoints in boss fights and chase sequences. I hate having to do stuff over and over again, i've shown i can do it and two later bosses clearly show that you thought check points were required but every one and every chase scene should have had them. Don't make the player redo stuff they've already done, especially if it's difficult.
Some of the platforming needs a tweak too. Again this is where Nintendo gets things perfect and Ori is a bit rough. Theres been many times where i've either been caught on a pixel of an object and unable to move, especially on the ground. Or more often jumps have to be pixel perfect which just leads to player frustration especially in tight situations. Often it can mean you feel you're not meant to get to that area yet when in fact you can, it's just you choose the wrong place to jump from or the wrong height to activate a second move. Either let the player make the jump cleanly or don't rather than me thinking i was lucky i somehow got up there and maybe glitched my way to an area i kinda shouldn't have. Again it's just moving placement of things.
This is me ignoring all the bugs, bugs happen, so i won't discuss those as i know they are as disappointing to you as they are to the player but Ori and the Will of the Wisps is like a rough diamond. Beautiful to look at, fun to enjoy but be careful as you might hurt yourself on it. I don't know how big a studio Moon is (and it's certainly a company i'd love to have on my CV) but these little polishing missteps turn what could be a GOTY to just a pretty great game with some huge frustrations. To me Ori WotW tries the bigger and better sequel approach but doesn't really do things better. Stuff like the hub world is interesting but didn't add too much for me, the weapons and shards again didn't add too much for me either and are a bit overcomplicating the controls. TBH i think im going to go and play the original again, i loved how powered i felt by the end which this game never really matched.
Theres a few other things i could mention, the music whilst great never hit the same highs as that original theme, the story ending isn't what i wanted (but again i did not like the ending to the original Ori either) but honestly on the whole it's a great game, just a let down over the original. I hope we see an Ori 3 or actually i'd love to see a Sonic the Hedgehog game using this engine, Ori is fast and has the platforming skills to do a Sonic game justice any day. In any case i will look forward to what Moon do next as whilst this post has mostly been criticism (which is easy to do than to praise) it's the only complaints i have in what is otherwise a great game, so thanks again to you and the team for the hardwork in making a great game.