Review #11: Omori

 

I bought Omori thinking it would be good. I thought it would be great, in fact! Literally the only reviews of the game were extremely positive. And after playing through it twice, all I have to say is that I have no idea how they like it.

I would tell people that this is just my opinion and they shouldn’t harass me or say I have bad taste, but unfortunately, considering this is the internet, that’s not going to happen. So say I’m a horrible person all you want for disliking a game, I really don’t care.

So anyways, let’s get into this crap. I’m going to explain why Omori is not a great game, so grab a snack or something if you’re hungry I guess and don’t if you’re not and read this if you want to. Which I imagine you do, as you clicked on this. Unless you just did to say it sucks, in which case you probably aren’t reading this part. Anyways enjoy the article I guess.

I’m going to start off this article with the three things I liked about the game, so as to not be completely negative. First, I really like the music. Some of it is better than the rest, but all of it is at least fine, and there’s quite a few great songs in it. I actually recommend the soundtrack, it’s pretty good.

Second is the artwork. I’m honestly not a huge fan of the overworld sprites, I feel like they’re a bit overly simple for the game’s aesthetic, but the battle sprites look fantastic. I absolutely love the way they animate and change dependent on their emotions (which are pretty much status effects). The artwork in the photo albums and stuff isn’t bad either.

Thirdly, uh… I actually forgot what the third thing was in the process of writing this. Well, that’s enough of being positive! Let’s get into the negatives, the (unfortunately) main part of this article.

The first time I played Omori was like a year and a half ago, and I initially loved it. That was because I used to have terrible taste. But I think I got up to the Sweetheart’s Castle section and stopped because of how dreadfully boring it was.

I picked it back up a few months later and played up to the Humphrey section, when I stopped because of how dreadfully boring it was. Then I picked it back up a few months later and beat it. I only got the bad ending though, because I had already seen the good ending and didn’t feel like putting in the effort to get it because of how dreadfully boring it was. Recently, I decided to play through it again and do the Hikikomori route. I have no idea why. I got to almost the end and stopped, because of how dreadfully boring it was.

I think the fact I had to take multi-month breaks in between sessions of this game speaks for itself, but unfortunately, facts can’t speak, so I have to speak for it I’m afraid. Every review and analysis I’ve watched or read of this game has started with the gameplay, so I’ll follow suit. The gameplay in Omori sucks.

Now I’ve played other RPG Maker games with bad combat, such as Off and Space Funeral. But the difference is, those games are great in every other regard, and don’t make you spend much time on the combat. I think you could say Off is a little too combat-reliant, but I don’t feel like it’s too annoying. Meanwhile, Omori makes you spend most of your natural life fighting enemies. And it’s not like the combat is fun, either. Hylics 2, another actually good game, has encounters that last quite a while, but it makes up for that with none of them respawning and just generally having a deeper and more complex combat system. Meanwhile Omori’s combat is incredibly easy and takes like 5 hours per encounter.

I’ve heard some people say that Omori is really tough and I have to wonder how many RPGs they’ve played. And I suck at RPGs. I play pretty much every one on easy mode, and Omori’s still pathetic. And it wouldn’t be a big deal if the combat wasn’t long-winded like in the aforementioned Off and Space Funeral. But unfortunately, it’s winded about as long as the Nyabarongo river. Probably longer.

Seriously, the combat takes so. Long. Just the animations take forever and there’s approximately 9000 enemies in every area. For god’s sake, there’s two separate achievements for killing 100 enemies of a certain kind. I don’t know why you’d ever do that, but it’s your choice I guess. My point is that the combat sucks and it takes up the majority of the game.

The walking gameplay isn’t much better than the combat. Most of it consists of solving boring and easy puzzles that take way too long, or trying to solve a puzzle and getting dragged into an extremely long, boring, and pointlessly slow cutscene that accomplishes nothing and isn’t entertaining, funny, or plot-relevant.

At this point I think I should probably summarize the structure of this game. Basically, you go through 5 or so hours of stuff within the main character’s mind, called the Headspace sections, and then spend like 2 hours in the real world doing side quests and furthering the real plot.

The real world sections are honestly not that bad, other than the crappy annoying side quests, but the creator at least had the fortunate idea to make those optional. The writing is honestly pretty good in the real world and the pacing is alright, but unfortunately, most of the game takes place in Headspace, which is like a mirror version of the real world. By that I mean the writing is terrible and the pacing is abhorrent. Or, in other words, it’s dreadfully boring.

The plot isn’t much better. Well, sorta. The Headspace story is awful. Just awful. The plot surrounds Omori, along with his friends Kel, Hero, and Aubrey, along with his sister Mari who supplies save points as they go on an epic quest to save their friend Basil. But most of it doesn’t surround that and instead surrounds some random boring shenanigans happening. Then after approximately 5 hours of some random crap you fight an easy boss and then you do a real world section. And as I said, the real world sections aren’t that bad, it’s just that you barely get to be in them. And even then, they’re still flawed in many regards. I’m not planning to spoil anything in this review, but there’s a twist near the end no one shuts up about and to be honest, it’s really not that great, so don’t get too hyped if for some godforsaken reason your conclusion after reading this is to buy it.

But anyways, the plot in the real world is decent. Some of it’s overly slowly-paced for what it is, but overall, it’s written fairly well. It’s just the fact two hours of well-written enjoyable gameplay is balanced out with 5 hours of mind-numbingly boring stupid Headspace crap that really bugs me. If this game was just the real-world sections, I think it would honestly be a decent little indie game. But unfortunately, the creator felt the need to add in 20 more hours of gameplay to make it worth people’s while to play. I could probably rant and nitpick for another fifteen hours about random crap like the extremely unfunny dialogue that’s legitimately cringey and extremely hard to sit through for a game apparently made for adults, but I won’t, because I don’t feel like it would add anything else to the conversation. But I will mention the incredibly annoying fandom that deflects every bit of criticism like they’ve just used PSI Shield.

If you mention pretty much any of the countless negatives I’ve just went over, a bunch of fans will immediately defend it by just saying it was intentional. If this article is sufficiently popular, I’m sure you’ll even see it in the comments despite me acknowledging it. This especially comes up when you mention the tedious Headspace sections, as canonically they’re meant to be an escape from something (hah get it) traumatic in the main character’s past. If you say something about those segments being bad, people will immediately say “Oh they’re so tedious and boring and easy and not fun because they’re an escape! You just don’t understand the point of the game.” But something being intentionally bad doesn’t make it not bad. Especially when it’s as frustrating as the Headspace garbage in this game. And that’s true for most other points of contention in Omori, they’re just treated as okay because they’re intentional. If I punch you in the face, but then say it was intentional to show how it feels to be punched in the face, you
wouldn’t be happy with me, would you? I hope not.

Basically, in conclusion, I’m not a big fan of Omori. I think it’s objectively an awful game and it utterly confuses me why so many people love it so much. I strongly do not recommend it, but if you enjoy it, that is fine. If that’s your favorite game of all time, I genuinely don’t give a crap. Like what you like, I just wanted to unload some very strong opinions I had brewing in my cranium for about a year now. I hope you enjoyed this, and if you just commented how wrong I was before reading anything, maybe don’t. Hopefully this article wasn’t too dreadfully boring. Bye.