Permanently Deleted
I found the pacing to be pretty abymsal. Comparisons to Undertale come naturally, both being a kind of lo-fi indie RPG that balance between whimsy and cute as well as being more than than meets the eye. But where Undertale is a crisp, tight package of story, humor, incredible music and some fun battles inbetween, Omori drags on and on with its rather bland combat system and long acts that ultimately don't really matter.
There is some cool presentation and art, some good horror stuff and the story is compelling but there is so much utterly pointless running around and fighting.
I could have liked it if it was about half as long, but I think the dev confused """content""" with quality.
The pacing is bad if all you want is for the devs to answer your questions about what is going on in the plot and fuck off. But if you actually enjoy the world and combat, then it's great. The journey is itself enjoyable.
It's getting pretty spoilery now. Also big CW about depression and self-harm in general for OMORI.
spoiler
I just disliked having these whimsical adventures with my friends where we meet goofy, cartoons characters and having fights with cute bunnies for hours, only to be thrown back into white space with a fucking knife where the only out is to stab myself. It was a jarring and surprising contrast after the first act, but then kept repeating that same beat, but without the tension.
I was waiting for any subversion or twist that could resolve the dissonance, but it just came way too late. But you're right, I thought the combat was shallow and did not hook me at all, so I kept hoping for story beats that were just too spread out for my taste.
Pacing aside, that contrast is critical to the messaging and narrative premise of the game.
I want to preface this by saying that I still think Omori is a great game, but because of its presentation, narrative focus and obvious Earthbound inspirations it will always inevitably be compared to Undertale, which is of course an absolute masterpiece in cohesion and narrative tightness.
This was also main criticism of it, that it tries to both do this emotionally very intense narrative but also a full-on JRPG with all the progression and bossfights and what have you. For me, who went in looking for something similar to Undertale, I genuinely felt like there was "too much gameplay". I think the combat system was actually quite good, I just wasn't particularly interested in it because I wanted to see the story. Similarly, a lot of the story almost feels like a distraction, I'm sure there's some underlying connections between the different places you visit but when I played through them they didn't seem particularly relevant at all.
The characters are ok. However, the game's atmosphere is pretty fucking amazing and it touches upon trauma as well grief probably better than most media I encountered. Its definitely one of those games where the best part is the various vibes it emit throughout its run. The gameplay is definitely fun, and the story is pretty good also which helps. I would say it is the best video game I played because of how it presented its themes, like it done a damn incredible job.
FYI the main composer (Slimegirl) was a domestic abuser , like they even admitted to it. That soured my experience with the game. Its a shame because the songs they made really did heighten the atmosphere of certain key scenes.
I am not a fan of the main developer of the game either, more like she gives me off vibes.
It's great, but uneven. The art and music are top notch. The overall story is pretty good, although certain stuff can definetly shatter your suspension of disbelief if you don't resonate with what the game is going for. Like, I enjoyed it a lot on an emotional level, the ending made me do some introspection for a couple of days after so it definetly did a lot right, but I did say "this is some cheap bullshit" a couple of times during my playthrough. Character writing quality can vary quite a bit, but it's not really anime. Same thing with the humor.
I wouldn't say the whole game has pacing issues, but there's a certain part towards the back third that definetly overstays its welcome, it starts really slow too, and it will take close to 20 hours to beat so it will inevitably be boring at times.
W.r.t. combat, I'd say it's the same deal as Persona where a fairly standard gameplay loop is enhanced by good presentation. While the dungeon crawly parts can be enjoyable, the game definetly feels more comfortable as a collection of memorable set pieces than a RPG.
It's good and different from all of those things.
Give it a go if you're in a reasonably good place, mentally. It has a decent amount of content that could be difficult for someone feeling vulnerable.
It's alright! The music is good, the emotion systems in battle are cool and spice things up. The story is pretty cool, and the choices you make change up the story as you go. I'd rate it a solid 7, personally.
It's an excellent game if you like the subgenre of Earthbound-likes that alternate between silly and existentially crushing. I consider it to be probably the best among those games, though that's partly because I don't like Undertale quite as much as some people do.
Same spoilers
I thought the idea was that they basically didn't do an investigation because the parents saw their daughter had "hanged herself" and it was a big scandal that they just wanted to go away
spoilers
I doubt they’re powerful enough to make the police forget about a murder.
They don't really have to be powerful, they just have to know the town's 3 cops and say "it's very tragic, we'd prefer if you didn't poke around her body too much"
spoiler
This would the police ignoring an obvious murder
It's only an obvious murder if you examine the body. If you come to the crime scene and you see a girl hanging from the tree and her mom is like "i cant believe she killed herself" it's entirely conceivable that you could both believe it to be a suicide and respect the parents' wishes to not poke around too much
spoiler
Someone with a few hours training can see that the story is bunk.
Cops don't necessarily have any such training.
If I can identify this
You did not identify this, you speculate that you would identify it if you were put in their shoes. Which is just dumb. You don't have enough information to make that assertion.
