Warning: Due to the subject matter of this game, this review may mention sensitive subjects such as: Depression, Grief, Childhood Trauma, and Suicide. Massive spoilers also lie ahead, prepare your spleen!...
I did not expect this to be the next game I finished, but I've been trying to get my hands on this game for years, and I'd always promised myself I'd play it as soon as I possibly could. Well turns out I finally got my hands on it.
To summarize the story, you play as Sunny, who is moving out of town in three days. After a traumatic event everyone in his friend group began to grow apart. So Sunny has to get all the friends back together before the move in three days. But here's the catch. When Sunny goes to sleep you also play through his dreams, these sections take up the majority of the game. As your dream self, Omori, goes on quirky adventures with your friends a lot of jokes and fun-filled wholesome moments await. Personally reminding me of EarthBound, a quirky, goofy adventure, not about the destination, but about the journey along the way, but you can never stop those the intrusive thoughts, and Sunny's dream often turn from happy to dark in the blink of an eye. I mentioned before that Omori faced a lot of emotional trauma that drove his friends apart, but for the whole game, you're not entirely sure what happened. You get bits and clues the further you get. First you learn that Sunny's sister Mari passed away. Then you learn that she committed suicide. Then you learn that, that's not what really happened. That's just what Sunny's friends think. She never actually killed herself, she was happy. What really happened, back then, Sunny and Mari got into an argument, in the heat of the moment Sunny pushed her down the stairs. He didn't mean for that to happen. He didn't want to kill her. He loved her so much. He didn't mean to push her down the stairs. He just wanted to push her away. Sunny brought her to her room. Waiting for her to wake up. She never did. After a while, he got scared, and you took the jump rope. And hung her around the tree outside. A big reason for all the trauma, is all the guilt he felt, knowing the responsibility he had in his sister's death, and hiding it his whole life. There's a lot of things I never got around to mentioning a lot of really big details of the story I skipped over, including, a second person, also playing a hand in Maris death. But this review is already going on for very long and I personally recommend playing this game yourself if you can put up with sensitive subject matter, and anything I've mentioned interests you at all. This is a phenomenal game that deserves all the attention it gets.
The gameplay consists of the traditional turn based battle system, with a few twists. There is a follow up system where if you save up enough energy you can do a follow up attack of sorts, in a sort of quick time event. Just push the d-pad in the direction of your follow up before the end of your attack. There's three for each character. While it's required for a character to be alive for you to interact with them one of the follow ups is Sunny's "Release Energy" the closet thing I can compare it to is the all-out attack from the persona franchise, you have to build up a lot of energy for this follow up attack but when you do it's amazing, you get a beautiful flashy cutscene of you and your friends all attacking at the same time followed by your enemy of choice being dealt a massive amount of damage. Release Energy is the most damage you can do in one turn so maybe it'd be best to save up that energy instead of following up at every turn. The battle system also has a very unique spin on the classic rpg rock paper scissors mechanic. Instead of having different types that are weaker or stronger against each other every character in a battle can experience different emotions. Happy is strong against angry but weak against sad. Angry is strong against sad but weak against happy. Sad is strong against happy but weak against angry, and afraid is weak against everything. While neutral nothing changes. While happy your luck and speed goes up but your hit rate goes down. While angry your attack goes up but your defense goes down. While sad your defense goes up, but your speed goes down, and while afraid you can't perform follow ups. The afraid emotion is an outlier from the rest, you unlike every other emotion, it has no redeeming factors and you can't inflict on anyone. Only enemies are able to inflict this emotion on you, though it happens very rarely and if you have this on one of your party members a big goal is to change that party members emotion as quickly as possible. All that being said this is clearly a game about emotions, them being the major theme driving the story. Sunny goes through lots of different emotions over the course of the game, and the game aims to make you go on an emotional rollercoaster aswell. This is the most emotional game I've ever played. I have a lot of difficulty controlling myself in the heat of the emotional moments. I laughed. I cried. I cried so many times. I shuddered. I screamed. But in the end, after all of that work, I smiled again, at the very end.
However, with all that praise said, every game has it's faults and if I had to pick one for Omori, I'd say the game massively suffers a lot from the silent protagonist trope. Now this trope of Computer RPGs has been around since the dawn of the genre, while it works in favor of some games, it can sometimes cripple the best of the best. Now it makes sense to use this trope in games such as Skyrim, Pokemon, or The Legend of Zelda where there is a blank-slate, self-insert character. The protagonist in this game has his own personality, backstory, identity, and background. The protagonist never speaking is very difficult to believe, never makes much sense storywise, and often takes me out of the game, out of the story, and out of my immersion on a regular basis. It would have been nice to get to see Sunny's growth firsthand, and how his dioulouge helped reflect his growth throughout the course of the game. The fact I got to see this happen with every other main character left me feeling very robbed in Sunny's case. A big reason for the creation of the silent protagonist trope was to allow for more time and work to be devoted to developing the other game mechanics, this excuse cannot be used for Omori as the game was given all the time it needed in the development studio, the game eventually took so long to come out it eventually ended up developing a Half Life 3 esque meme status as "the game that will never release" when it finally did, it was surreal to so the game actually finish. If the developers wanted Sunny to talk they could have easily taken all the time they liked to make that happen. Another reason for this was trope is immersion, but it's very difficult to be immersed when I'm completely taken out of my experience due to the disbelief I have in Sunny's taciturn.
This game has an amazing art style, that needs to be seen to be believed. It looks like a coloring book come to life, and used computer wallpapers from this game more times than I can count. The art style, though clearly completely origins and not inspired by other works, reminds me of the art style of Off. I may review Off in the future, but probably not.
The soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal. As any good soundtrack should, the music reflects the game a lot, and just like the game, the music can go from happy, to weird, to angry to sad, to horrifying in the blink of an eye. There is so much variety, there's rock, there's horror, there's synth, there's weirdness, a lot of weirdness. And the choice of featuring the song My Time by Bo En was unbelievably genius. There is no song more perfect of a choice for this game. The song My Time, feels like the entire game personified into a 3 minute song. It was strange energetic happy creepy and everything Omori is all at once. I completely recommend even if you don't check this game out, to check out this song. It's absolutely phenomenal. When the Kickstarter trailer for this game dropped, featuring this song I used to listen to it on a regular basis, however when it plays again later in the credits, it takes on a completely different feeling. That being said it feels a bit jarring that this song is played in a different pitch specifically for this game. When I go to listen to the original version of the song and it sounds deeper it immediately throws me off. There's so much to say about the music I could have an entire entry all on its own just about that single subject, however I think I've gone on long enough already.
In conclusion, this is probably my new favorite game of all time I'll rate it the rarest of the rare, 10/10 for gameplay, 10/10 for story, and 10/10 for atmosphere. I recommend getting this game immediately.
Omori is currently available on Steam for Windows and Mac for $19.99. The demo is available for free on Kickstarter.com It’s also available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PlayStation 4 for $29.99. While it was supposed to release on 3ds and PlayStation Vita according to Kickstarter, these ports never came to fruition and we're likely turned into the Nintendo Switch version It's important to know that unlike most games, if you purchase the game on Nintendo Switch you will still be able to earn Achievements and playing the game on console will give you access to exclusive game borders.