izigame.me

Coming off the back of Hollow Knight, this didn't do it for me. There's a lack of precision in both platforming and combat that just feels clumsy. Combat boils down to spamming x and jumping to avoid tiny fast-moving multidirectional, sometimes homing, sometimes exploding projectiles. Remember Primal Aspids from HK? Yeah, it's that sort of bullshittery only with most enemies. You unlock the ability to launch from projectiles but even timing that your best bet is button mashing.
Movement is floaty and at odds with how a demanding action platformer should control; I never felt completely in control of Ori, sometimes I even lost track of their tiny blue ass between the backdrop, the glorified reticle of matching colour/size, looking where I was going and dodging projectiles. Most of the game is poorly checkpointed trial and error with limited manual saves that your abilities use the same pool as (which just makes me avoid using abilities altogether so I can ration my saves). Gandhi forbid you forget to save.
I was ready to quit the game until I saw greyed out metroidvania tunnels on the map and giddily got into my Dora boots. But I soon discovered there's no sense of adventure in the exploration, no secret bosses/characters/quests/lore to find, you're just looking for keys, map fragments, XP and additional vitality/power. It's unfulfilling. And personally I felt nothing but a gnawing emptiness in my soul for the Disney art style, storytelling and music (way too loud). I thought it was cheesy.