Ori and the Will of the Wisps Review: Is It Worth Playing? (8/10)

Most Metroidvanias make you earn the fun. Slow starts, gated abilities, clunky early movement. Ori and the Will of the Wisps doesn’t do that. It hooks you from the first screen and never really lets go.

What Makes It So Fun

The movement is the star of the show. Jumps feel precise, dashes feel snappy, and climbing walls feels like it should in a game like this. You’re not fighting the controls. You’re dancing with them. That kind of fluid traversal is rare, and Moon Studios nailed it.

On top of that, the game is just beautiful to look at. The hand-painted backgrounds and orchestral score aren’t window dressing. They’re doing real work. Every new area feels like a reward in itself.

The escape sequences deserve a special mention. These high-speed platforming gauntlets are genuinely thrilling. Your reflexes sync up with the game’s rhythm, and you hit that flow state pretty quickly. It’s the kind of moment where you finish a run and immediately want to do it again.

Combat got a meaningful upgrade from the first game too. It has more weight to it, more “crunch,” which makes the moment-to-moment gameplay feel more satisfying and less repetitive.

Any Real Downsides?

Honestly, not many. There were some technical rough patches at launch, but the current experience is clean. No major friction points worth flagging.

The Verdict

Ori and the Will of the Wisps earns an 8/10 because movement in a platformer is everything, and this game gets it exactly right. Every jump, dash, and wall climb feels intentional. The visuals and sound are a 10. The slight gap from a perfect score comes down to the game playing it relatively safe genre-wise. It’s a flawlessly executed platformer, but not a genre-redefining one.

If you like platformers at all, play this one.