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OMORI is an indie JRPG with psychological horror elements, in the line of Mother, Yume Nikki, etc. You play as a hikikomori who spends most of their conscious time in a surreal dream world, and (optionally) leaves the house to explore the real world. It's up to you to overcome your phobias and face the truth which you've been repressing all these years.
Yes, this is exactly my cup of tea. I love the whimsical Headspace world where you're just having fun, meeting wacky characters in surreal environments, always looking forward to what comes next. I also love the dark secrets hidden within the deeper parts of the protagonist's mind, as well as the seriousness of the real world. OMORI relies on this contrast between cute and scary, and pulls it off extremely well. There is an actual story to be told, and it does not feel like a cheap prank, unlike Doki Doki Literature Club.
Gameplay is not perfect, however. Undertale and Deltarune have set a new standard when it comes to these lightweight JRPGs: I expect the fights to be fun and dynamic, but here we see standard turn-based combat. It is not deep, but it is somewhat creative: status effects are based on the characters' emotions, which can be manipulated by your party members or by your enemies.
This one diagram tells you everything you need to know about the "depth" of the combat.
I don't think the combat is an issue, per se. It is very well-balanced, I never felt it was too easy or too difficult. The game is full of style, so I always look forward to hearing boss battle music and seeing the bosses' battle sprites (which can also change depending on their current emotion). To summarize, the gameplay is not amazing but does not take away from the quality of the game.
I suppose my other criticism is a bit more subjective. Some people might dismiss this game as "yet another edgy story where kids get traumatized for no reason whatsoever", and while I think this criticism is unfair, I do think there is some truth to it, just in another way. I think we see a lot of stories that explore depression caused by trauma, because it is easy to build a story around that. I struggle(d) with depression myself, so I find these stories relatable, and yet I've never experienced any dramatic life-changing events.
My mental issues are caused by a very banal combination of 1) having a brain that just happens to function in a slightly unusual way and 2) living in a society which is inherently depressing. I want to see more games which explore these causes, which are less visible and more abstract, but very prevalent. So far, the only games that I've seen which have touched on this were Disco Elysium (a masterpiece) and Cruelty Squad (good game but very problematic). I understand that it is extremely difficult to write a game which systematically criticizes society, as opposed to just exploring one or two characters, but still, I think it's time we stopped pretending that depression is only "in your brain". OMORI's story belongs to the "in your brain" category, and even though /it is probably one of the best games ever made in this category/, that still makes a bit of a disappointment in my opinion. *9/10*
Actually, I've changed my view on this game.
You can read my "update" on Omori here...
I felt a very vague sense of disappointment after completing Omori originally, however my criticism was misplaced: it's certainly possible to make a good game about depression, but Omori is just not it. Still, there are many other reasons to like the game, 7/10.
~~The modern web and its consequences~~ Seriously though, RPG Maker MV is based on HTML5 and JavaScript, and I 100% blame it for being unnecessarily laggy. I thought we figured out how to do graphics for 2D pixel art games decades ago.
I did have to change some settings so that Proton would use WineD3D (based on OpenGL) as opposed to DXVK (based on Vulkan). For some reason, my Linux system just does not play nice with Vulkan, resulting in even more lag than normal. Might try to debug that.
-- gardenapple 2021-11-25
