Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints

What do you think of Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition?

It doesn’t quite live up to all expectations; mostly because it’s hard to make the original map structure as interconnected as I would prefer given the way the world is laid out, but it does do a lot to aid the interconnectivity of the world, and the warp points are a decent compensation.

Basically, the trouble with the original as a metroidvania game is that all the major points of interest function on their own little part of the map and don’t involve movement through any others. There’s no reason to backtrack if you are interested in progressing. Each area is its own self contained obstacle course and you’d only want to return in order to pick up collectibles.

So Definitive Edition still has this problem, but they made the world more interconnected and added warp points, which makes it a bit easier to backtrack for collectibles. Also now that all the areas can be backtracked to, including dungeon areas, there’s no danger of missing collectibles in say the ginso tree.

On the upshot, they added a new dash ability. It lets you move really fast, recharges on contact with the ground. What’s also cool is that the trick where you release the control stick right as you do the move also works with Dash, so you can do a bash style boost anywhere and ride the momentum as you glide and double jump. What’s also cool about this is they had it work in combination with the charge jump, so if you charge then dash, you’ll do a charge dash that goes further and can hurt enemies and break walls.

They also added a new grenade tossing ability. It kind of makes sense given the physics engine, but doesn’t really see much use except for hitting switches that can only be hit by this ability.

These abilities are both hidden in a new area placed close to the start that is designed to avoid using most of the other abilities available to you, so you can clear those areas as soon as you get walljump or maybe double jump. I ended up not visiting this area until late in the game unfortunately (after getting charge jump, right before ascending mount horu).

I think they also placed more collectibles that can only be obtained with late-game powers in earlier sections of the game. I definitely noticed a couple blocked off by the grenade toss power.

Also interestingly, they kept all of the old glitches, and most of the old skips. I was able to perform the cutscene skip save glitch in a few places, and do a number of the old skips. Good work on their part keeping that alive.

There’s a new easy, hard, and hardcore mode. I played Hard mode, and it ramps up the damage significantly. Makes the game about as hard as I’d like. I felt the original was a bit too forgiving.

Overall, it’s definitive. It’s better than the original. It couldn’t completely overcome the original’s flaws because the world structure of the original was a bit too restrictive, but it did a nice job regardless.