Omori

I played Omori. 

This is an RPGMaker game released in 2020. I played it on Switch.

It took me a while to write this one because I couldn't quite put into words how this game made me feel. ... ...

As an RPG, Omori is definitely very heavily focused on the story and the characters. On the narrative and especially the artistic aspects.

The story it tells is one of a young boy. A stoic boy who doesn't speak a word. 

"Welcome to White Space. You have been living here for as long as you can remember". The young boy finds himself in this place day after day. White Space is somehow both a tiny room, and a vast expanse of nothingness at the same time. From the non-existent ceiling, a pitch-black lightbulb hangs down into the room. The boy has his laptop, his sketchbook, and a box of tissues. His pet cat Mewo is curled up sleeping in the corner. A closed door is suspended within the nothingness.

The boy is Omori. He spends his days in White Space.

While playing as Omori, you can look at the items in the room if you want.

When you check the laptop, you have the option to "stare at the screen".

When you check the door, you have the option "do nothing".

You can look at the lightbulb, but it is pitch-black inside.

When you talk with Mewo, she only says... "Waiting for something to happen?"

...

Some days, Omori does decide to open the door to visit his friends next door. Aubrey, Kel, and Hero. Omori's best friends. Aubrey, the rambunctious girl. Kel the rascally troublemaker boy. Hero, the charismatic older brother to Kel.

In stark contrast to White Space, the Neighbour's Room is full of colour and fun. Gentle pastel hues, and odd knickknacks strewn about. A TV, A blender, card games, a puddle of water with a tentacle poking through the floor... a single bean on a plate on the table. constellations sprawling across the sky. ... ... and of course, the giant yellow cat watching over the room from above. Is this a magical wonderland?

This contrast extends to the characters themselves. Aubrey, Kel, and Hero are all smiles and joy, and they appear in a gentle pastel violet colour scheme. But Omori himself is completely monochrome and always has a deadpan neutral expressionless face. Even among his friends, Omori doesn't seem to fit in. ...

Today the gang are going to the playground to meet up with Mari, Omori's older sister who has set up a picnic, as well as Basil, the gentle boy who tends to the gardens.

Together they play hide n seek, and Basil shows everyone his photo album, full of happy memories of the six friends together, playing, sleeping, making arts and crafts, enjoying a nice day out...

So idyllic, right?

...well, maybe not so much if you dig a little deeper. It may all start to fall apart...

As you explore this world, you will start to uncover what is really going on under the surface.

Omori is haunted by a strange shadowy something that keeps disappearing just out of sight. What could it mean?

The more he explores the strange and ethereal lands.... the more disturbing things he might come across.

The more you play, the more you discover the true nature of this reality Omori finds himself in.

Because despite appearing as a cutesy and surreal RPG on the surface, Omori truly is a horror game. And it makes no effort to hide this fact.

...in fact, it even has an 18+ rating and comes with a content warning before you begin a new game. This game deals with some heavy themes and does not want to misrepresent itself.

...

....Omori's depiction of depression is quite interesting. With White Space in particular... Mewo's single line of dialogue, "Waiting for something to happen?" really resonated with me. When you spend day after day after day in your bedroom, unwilling to go anywhere or do anything...well, Mewo... you've got a point there. What are we waiting for, exactly, anyway? Is anything ever going to change if we aren't doing anything different? Or are we waiting for the change to happen to us first?

Omori, the poor boy, isn't just suffering from depression though. There's a lot of other assorted traumas inside this boy too. And each and every one of his traumas manifests in some way shape or form throughout the game.

And the game does not pull any punches either. Throughout the course of the game, the full brunt of this child's various psychoses are brought up in viscerally unpleasant detail.

It's quite fascinating actually. This game is incredibly artistic in its depictions of mental health. And every small detail in the world has some kind of meaning or association behind it.

I think the underlying story this game tells is.... really really good. It really sticks with you. The way the game makes you care about the characters is wonderfully done. Everyone is very well-written, and the dialogue from the characters feels real and meaningful. And the journey, as a representation and exploration of mental health, is done in a brutal yet tactful manner. And some of the scenes can get...very sentimental and emotional. It makes you yearnful for better days. It gives you a small glimpse of the suffering this boy has gone through.  It makes you wish things could have turned out differently. 

It's a very evocative story.

...

...

...

Well. I think it might be time to talk about some gameplay at some point right

Visually, the game is mostly a pixel-style RPG, but it also combines its pixel art with a very charming pencil-drawn illustration style. Character portraits and important cutscene images have wonderfully whimsical illustrations, and notably, all enemies you battle in the game are also drawn in this illustration style as well. I think it looks really appealing. 

Omori is a turn-based RPG. You run around environments, exploring, finding items, talking to NPCs, completing sidequests, and fighting monsters. 

Generally, you will always have a full team of four - Omori, Aubrey, Kel, Hero. 

As you explore you can find weapons and items. Aubrey fights with plushies and other cute bludgeoning tools, Kel fights with basketballs and other spherical bouncy things, Hero fights with various cooking utensils. and Omori fights with.... a knife.

You can also find various Toys and Snacks in the shops and within watermelons (which are treasure chests) throughout the game. Toys are combat items, and Snacks are healing items.

 

Monsters are fought via overworld encounters, and the battle system is familiar, yet has a unique spin on things.

Battles are turn-based encounters. each character has Heart (HP) and Juice (MP). You can do regular attacks, or use Skills that cost Juice.

So far, fairly typical RPG battle stuff, but with a cutesy childhood playground theming. It's cute.

The game has an "emotion" system that neatly combines the typical RPG concepts of status effects and elemental weaknesses into one.

Both enemies and players can have one of four emotional states: Neutral, Sad, Happy, or Angry. These emotional states can be inflicted using Skills or Toys, and some enemies naturally begin battle as one emotion too. The team also starts off with skills that can change each other's emotions.

Each emotion has a specific effect:

- Happy increases critical hit chance and speed, but reduces hit rate.

- Sad increases defense, but lowers attack and speed, and causes you to lose Juice upon taking damage.

- Angry increases damage dealt, but reduces your own defense.

But in addition to these effects, the emotions have a rock-paper-scissors in terms of super-effective damage: Sad beats Happy, Happy beats Angry, and Angry beats Sad.

So in practice, this is a game where you get to choose your own elemental weaknesses on the fly, by inflicting enemies and your team with the right emotions to deal strong hits. It's quite cool.

Additionally, some Skills have special effects depending on emotions - Aubrey has a Headbutt skill that deals more damage if she's angry, and Omori has a Stab skill that ignores enemy defense if Omori is sad. Stuff like that.

The battle system also has "Follow-up" actions. After you perform a move, you can press a direction on the controller to perform an additional action on that character's turn. Kel can pass his basketball to the others, Aubrey can look at the others, Hero can call out for the others, and Omori...gets the option to attack again by himself. These all do different things depending on which ones you do.

These follow-up actions also have different effects depending on at which point in the story you are. For example, if you do Kel's "pass to Omori" at the beginning of the game, it says: "Omori wasn't looking and gets bopped, taking 1 damage and becoming Sad!". But later on in the game, it's: "Omori catches Kel's ball! Omori throws the ball, dealing damage to a random foe and becoming Happy!". I like this, as it shows how the team changes their dynamic over the course of the story. 

This battle system is cool and unique, and I really like it, however there is one problem with it...

The game is very low-difficulty, to the point where you don't really need to make use of the battle system's intricacies in order to progress at all. For the most part, you'll do fine just spamming regular attacks and healing whenever necessary. 

There are a few tougher optional fights scattered here and there, which are great and make you have to actually think about emotions and skills and stuff, but for the whole of the main story, the battle system feels largely underutilised.

I can understand why they did it this way. Omori is a game about its story first and foremost. It would not be good if a player invested in the story was stuck behind a difficult fight, after all. I imagine they chose the gameplay balance with story-focused players in mind. 

I don't think they made the wrong decision, but I do wish there were just a teensy few more enemies that really needed you to pay attention. 

The structure of the adventure is fairly simple - you explore an area, play through the storyline, and defeat a boss at the end. There are around six or seven main areas in total, separated loosely into chapters. 

Though, interestingly, in addition to each main area, there are these extended sequences in-between areas, where the focus is entirely on character interactions with no proper battles or items. But despite how it may sound, these in-between sections are actually some of the most interesting parts of the game, somehow? Without giving too much away, I'll just mention that, this game can shine both as an RPG with a battle system, as well as an adventure game focused on NPC interaction. 

This game is a fairly hefty RPG - it's around 30 hours in length, which is around the same size as an EarthBound or a Chrono Trigger. There's a decent chunk of optional things to see too, including an entire optional main area, which is fun to discover. The story plays out in a linear fashion, but having these sidequests gives you a bit more freedom in how you approach things, which is something I always appreciate. There are also a lot of secret strangenesses you can come across if you have a bit of curiosity and poke around the environments. Some optional dialogue you might find, or some hidden interactions that require you to do specific things.... Returning to earlier areas to see how they've changed... things like that. This game is good at hiding secrets in plain sight. 

If you want to collect all of the achievements, you'll need to do multiple playthroughs of the game, since some of the achievements require you to make mutually-exclusive choices at certain parts of the game.

I'm not too keen on achievements in games when they don't really add anything, but I do enjoy them when they encourage the player to engage with content that they may otherwise not have found. I decided to get every single achievement in Omori, which took two full playthroughs totalling 80 hours of play time! This isn't necessary by any means, but I was so enamoured with the game, I wanted to see everything it had to offer.

Overall. ... ... wow, Omori is one heck of an artistic experience. One that can only really be achieved via the medium of videogames. And it's a fun videogame on top of that!

A phenomenal game honestly. I recommend all RPG fans to try Omori, ...as long as they are prepared for a heartbreaking emotional story.