I like a lot of games. Ori and the Blind Forest is one of the very few that I love.

It wasn't love at first sight. I admired it right away, surely; its art was gorgeous, its soundtrack was amazing, its gameplay was fun, and that emotional gut-punch of an opening sequence was impossible to forget. Still, it was just an excellent game with some occasionally frustrating parts.

That's all it was to me, until the latter half of the Ginso Tree.

The game turned everything up to 11. It was too difficult, it was too rushed, it was too much. I failed repeatedly. My pulse raced. My controller developed stress fractures. When I was on the verge of giving up, everything changed.

In the chaos of the surroundings, I found order. I responded to the surges of roiling rage around me with serenity and grace, pulling off sequences of moves that would have seemed impossible ten minutes earlier. It was a moment of adrenaline and peace, of joy and motion, made completely unforgettable by the urgency and heartaching wonder of its soundtrack.

That's when I fell in love. And believe me, this game kept giving me reasons to fall in love with it over and over again.

I like a lot of games. Ori and the Blind Forest is one of the very few that I love. It wasn't love at first sight. I admired it right away, surely; its art was gorgeous, its soundtrack was amazing, its gameplay was fun, and that emotional gut-punch of an opening sequence was impossible to forget. Still, it was just an excellent game with some occasionally frustrating parts. That's all it was to me, until the latter half of the Ginso Tree. The game turned everything up to 11. It was too difficult, it was too rushed, it was too much. I failed repeatedly. My pulse raced. My controller developed stress fractures. When I was on the verge of giving up, everything changed. In the chaos of the surroundings, I found order. I responded to the surges of roiling rage around me with serenity and grace, pulling off sequences of moves that would have seemed impossible ten minutes earlier. It was a moment of adrenaline and peace, of joy and motion, made completely unforgettable by the urgency and heartaching wonder of its soundtrack. That's when I fell in love. And believe me, this game kept giving me reasons to fall in love with it over and over again.