Recent reviews by Mina

Emerald Lakeside BGM is so very comfy
Also you can headpat the cat girl shopkeep 10/10

Buy on sale for $50/$60 - The modding community will probably come and iron out some of the kinks, but this is effectively Fallout 4 in space with a graphical uplift that runs much more poorly than you'd think. Spaceship combat exists but it's barebones. Don't come expecting the Elite Dangerous style dogfights. Enjoy the loading screens; you'll be seeing them A LOT. The Ship builder is a great idea that is poorly executed.
For every enterable space on planets there's about 3-4 layouts - you'll see repeats very quickly if you bother to actually explore planets.
AI NPC pathfinding is probably the biggest issue at the moment - it's very common for NPCs to get stuck then either vibrate wildly in place or just teleport to their final waypoint. If they do get to their waypoint it mostly works but I had two quests where they got there but didn't mark the next part of the quest to continue, softlocking it. Thankfully the queststage commands are the same as from Skyrim so you can workaround this if required. It might get patched.
The Newgame+ idea is interesting and forshadowed well enough.

There are parts of the writing here that are pretty good honestly, a lot is ripped wholesale with effectively no changes from other SciFI mainstays though.

Castlevania 64 meets SM64. Has excellent schmovement. One of the best metroidvanias in years.

Sonic Team tried a bunch of things with this one and it mostly works. The last third drags quite a bit and 4 open world islands is a bit much.
Also never do drag mode speed pads again. The mix of open world exploration and separate more traditional stages mostly works.
2D setpiece platform sections in the open world is strange but it mostly works - just make it so you can force the camera lock on/off as it sucks jumping into one and getting forced into 2D or jumping into one and the camera doesn't lock and it becomes awkward.
Soundtrack's a banger as always.

TL;DR: Ori and the Blind Forest is brillant and pretty much flawless. If you are after a platformer with metroidvania elements that is (in my opinion) the perfect length, scroll up and hit that Add to Cart button.

What I've Played: Begining to End, about 90% map completion. Took about 6 hours.

Graphics
You might have gone and looked at the screenshots and maybe thought 'oh, they're just picked the best spots to screenshot'. Put that fear to bed; Ori is gorgeous pretty much all the time, and even more so in motion at whatever framerate you feel like running it at. Dead set, this probably has the best animation I've seen in a platformer, or anything else for that matter. Shout outs to the animator(s); I really can't praise the work you've done hard enough.

Gameplay/Technical
A platformer needs to have simple, but fluid and tight contols to be successful, and Ori nails that. I felt that every death was definitely my fault, and not due to slight movement or any 'give' in how Ori moves around. It behaves very similarly to how Rayman Legends does. Also amazing is the lack of an fps lock - I mean it SHOULD be the norm now, but this shows off how it should be done.

I did mention this is a platformer/metroidvania game; while the platforming is certainly the main attraction, along with puzzle elements, you will be gaining new ablities throughout, and some backtracking will be involved to explore the new areas you can now visit, and to hunt out those juicy hidden secrets - however the backtracking is actually quite minimal, and at no point was I lost of where to go next.

Now, this is a 2.5D platformer, which traditionally have had issues distguishing the backgrond (the scenery) from the foreground (what you actually play on). Thankfully Ori pretty much avoids that issue entirely; the background is obviously set much further back the foreground. with only a few places where it may not be obvious what you can and cannot stand on.

Audio
Ori has hands down some of the best original game soundtrack to come out this year. Effects are well done, make sense, and sell the experience. It is said the best music and audio effects are the ones that don't stand out and add to the experience - Ori does that very well.

Story
Honestly, I'm going to let the other reviews talk this point for me - the Opening is truly an amazing and emotional one - told in what I'd like to call an interactive way, where you never really put down the controller to read exposition and dialog, and to great effect.

Conculsion
If this genre in any way appeals to you, buy Ori and the Blind Forest. Heck, even if you've never played a platformer before, you owe it to yourself to at least try it.

I think I've read better eroge on DeviantArt to be honest...

Stick around for the first 3 chapters. Writing quality drops off a cliff after that.