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.
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.
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.