Omori (video game)
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Omori is a 2020 role-playing video game developed and published by indie studio Omocat.
Omori is based on the director's webcomic series with a similar name ("Omoriboy"). After a successful Kickstarter campaign, the game was delayed numerous times and experienced several development difficulties. It was eventually released as a demo on April 9, 2018, on the platform itch.io exclusively for Kickstarter backers, before being officially released for macOS and Windows in December 2020, six years after its initial funding. It would also see a release on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 4 with added content in June 2022.
Plot
The titular main character, Omori, awakens in "White Space", a barren void he has lived in "for as long as [he] can remember". He enters a door to the vibrant world of "Headspace", where he meets his friends, Aubrey, Kel, Hero, Basil, and his older sister Mari. They peruse Basil's photo album, containing pictures of their shared memories, and decide to visit his house. Once they arrive, Kel and Aubrey scuffle, damaging the album. Upon seeing an unfamiliar photo fall from it, Basil panics, and Omori is abruptly teleported back to White Space. He stabs himself with his knife, revealing the previous events to be the dreams of a teenage boy, Sunny, as he wakes up in the middle of the night
The player discovers that Sunny and his mother are moving. He goes downstairs for a midnight snack but is confronted by a nightmarish hallucination. He dispels the illusion by taking deep breaths and returns to bed. Awakening once again in White Space, Omori reunites with Aubrey, Kel, and Hero. They discover that Basil has gone missing and set out to rescue him. The four explore the various regions of Headspace in search of Basil, with Mari assisting along the way. The group is continuously diverted from their search by various situations, leading their memory of Basil to gradually fade away.
Meanwhile, in the real world, it is revealed that Mari committed suicide four years ago, which led to the friend group diverging. Although Kel and Hero managed to recover to varying degrees, Sunny became an estranged shut-in, Aubrey a delinquent, and Basil an anxious recluse. Kel knocks on Sunny's door in an attempt to reconnect one last time. The player can either ignore Kel or answer the door: if they choose the former, Sunny stays inside for the remaining three days, immersing himself in housework and his dreams.
If the latter option is chosen, Sunny and Kel venture outside to find Aubrey and her new friends bullying Basil. The two discover that she has stolen Basil's real-life photo album, ostensibly to stop him from vandalizing it. After confronting Aubrey, they return the album to Basil, though some photos are missing. As he believes Sunny needs it more, Basil lends the album to him. While eating dinner together, Basil becomes mortified as he learns of Sunny's impending departure and runs to the bathroom. Sunny finds him in a hallucinatory panic attack but leaves him alone. The next day, Kel and Sunny encounter Aubrey and her gang surrounding Basil at their old hangout spot. After they confront her, Aubrey angrily pushes Basil into a lake. Sunny dives in to rescue him, but both boys are saved from drowning by the arrival of Hero, and they carry him back to Basil's guardian, Polly.
Kel and Hero offer to have a sleepover in Sunny's house, and while in his sleep, they return to Basil's now-dilapidated house, where Omori is transported to the more disturbing "Black Space". Basil appears in different areas, repeatedly attempting to talk to him about something before dying gruesomely each time. In the final room, Omori kills Basil and places himself atop a throne of massive, red hands. On the last day before Sunny's departure, the others reconcile with Aubrey, discovering she had kept the photos containing Mari from the album. Coming to terms with Mari's death, Sunny's friends decide to spend their final night together at Basil's house, despite him refusing to leave his room.
Eventually, Sunny finally confronts the truth about Mari's death: in an argument before their recital, he accidentally pushes Mari down their staircase, causing her to die. In denial that Sunny did it, Basil helped frame her death as suicide by hanging her corpse. As they finished, they glanced at Mari's body and saw an open eye staring back at them, shaping their subsequent hallucinations. While Basil was consumed by guilt and self-loathing, Sunny's suicidal depression led him to create Headspace and his dream persona Omori to repress his trauma. To hide the truth, Omori reset Headspace every time memories of the incident resurfaced. Sunny then wakes up in the middle of the night, leaving the player with the choice of either confronting Basil or falling back asleep.
Ending
If the player chooses to confront Basil, Sunny enters his room and is cordially greeted. However, Basil quickly loses his temper over Sunny's absence after Mari's death, and the two boys enter a delusional state and start fighting. After Basil stabs Sunny's right eye with his garden shears, both of them pass out. While unconscious, Sunny remembers his childhood memories with his friends and Mari, giving him the strength to face Omori. Refusing to die, Omori defeats Sunny, causing the player to receive a game over screen.
- If the player opts to continue, Sunny gets up and performs the recital with Mari. Omori then disappears and a hospitalized Sunny wakes up in the real world. He encounters his friends inside Basil's room, and it is implied that Sunny confesses the truth about Mari's death. Additionally, if the player watered Basil's garden daily in Headspace, an after-credits scene will depict Basil waking up to the sight of Sunny in the hospital. The two smile at each other and their hallucinations disappear.
- Should the player choose not to continue, Sunny disappears rather than Omori. After Omori wakes up in White Space and goes out to Headspace, the scene instead cuts to Sunny jumping off the hospital's balcony, plummeting to his presumed death.
Alternatively, if the player ignores Basil on the final day, Sunny and his friends will wake up to discover that he has committed suicide. Depending on the player's choice, Sunny can then either kill himself with his knife or move away with his guilt still unabated. This ending also occurs if the player has chosen to remain inside and avoid Kel.
Why It Rocks
- The premise of an RPG with horror themes that talk about a physical problem with real life is an amazing idea and yes, the execution is absolutely good.
- The graphics are amazing, thanks to RPG Maker, with sprite work is great to look at.
- Speaking of which, the animation and character design are absolutely good, and combined with the pencil-drawing style mixed with the anime style is good.
- The characters are likable:
- Sunny is an average teenager; he does not do anything but the emptiness. He loves Mari, but eventually, she's dead due to Sunny pushing Mari and falling from the stairs.
- Mari was Sunny's older sister. She loved piano, and she loved Sunny. But she dies due to Sunny pushing her and she falls from the stairs.
- Aubrey was a good girl and very cheerful at first; when Mari's dying, she becomes hateful and she's going to revenge for what have you done to her.
- Kel is an exciting kid and kind of brat that annoyingly friends over time; however, as he became older, he was now more mature and not childish and not bratty like in the past.
- Hero is a Peacemaker; he works whatever he wants. He was also charismatic, his charisma that giving it request to people whatever they want to.
- Basil is depicted as a relatively shy boy, well seen right after being introduced to the friend group, being rather insecure and fearing the thought of being perceived as a burden.
- The story is great. The story of this game is about Sunny, who is an average teenager who does nothing but emptiness. Mari died because she fell down the stairs and Sunny lost his older sister because of this, so your objective is to recover Sunny's memory.
- There are some sad/dark/awesome moments here and there.
- Epic soundtrack, with great music and combined with a great horror atmosphere for the Black Space area, make things more satisfying and scarier.
- The gameplay is great, with the Earthbound/Dragon Quest style AKA first-person RPG mixing with a horror atmosphere.
- Unlike both game series, this game has an energy bar to raise more damage to their enemies/bosses. The more turns you have, the more energy that has been rising. After that, you're ready to use a special attack to cause huge damage to the enemies/bosses.
- The game utilized the rock paper scissor system for the gameplay, which system is based on emotions in real life with some upgrades.
- Angry was increasing attack but the defenses were decreasing.
- Sad was increasing defenses but the attack was decreasing.
- Happiness was more critical rate but the accuracy rate becoming weaker.
- This also applies to the enemies and bosses. In the same emotional system, as players did, players need to strategize with the enemies/bosses and when there's the enemy has an emotional system, you need to balance between the players and enemies by finding the opposite. For instance: when enemies have sad defence, you choose the angry one to increase your attack.
- There's the tag system, where you can choose and swap the characters who the leader is, each of the characters has different abilities in the overworld.
- Sunny/Omori can use the knife to cut the obstacles.
- Aubrey can use the Baseball Bat to break the obstacles.
- Kel can throw stuff to the switch or trigger mechanisms.
- Hero is smart and can talk to robots to switch stuff like the conveyor belts.
- The enemy designs are great. At first, the headspace world has cute and cool-looking designs, but when in the middle of the game, the designs become downright terrifying.
- The Something is a really great and downright terrifying enemy; these characters are responsible for consuming Basil emotionally becoming feared.
- The boss' design is also great, each boss has a different attack and level. And each boss has different strategies to do it. For instance: Some bosses are hard, like Perfectheart and you need to memorize your strategy to do it by increasing the attack and defenses with each emotion.
- The Something's is the opposite, you can't attack him, but you need the skill to fight them, and yes, these skills can be unlocked by beating three separate forms for each day before the moving day.
- Good pacing.
- The headspace and real-life overworld have so much to explore in terms of area.
- There are so many endings, each of which endings that can you choose depending on your player. The best thing to get the best ending is to use the Sunny route; This sunny route has a secret ending.
- Basil's Something is a great pre-ultimate final boss fight, you need either to kill him or just use the skill immediately without killing Basil and letting the HP deplete.
- The final boss is great, you fight in a one-on-one battle between Omori, the evil side of Sunny, and Sunny himself. The final boss is satisfying, you have to defeat him, and if you do, you get the best ending. These two endings in this route:
- If you manage to defeat him, you get a good ending, where Sunny hugs Omori and absorbs the Omori.
- If you give up on defeating him, you get the bad ending, where Omori hugs Sunny, and instead of Sunny absorbing him, they absorb Sunny into Omori's body.
- The game is long, taking over 16 hours of gameplay, adding another hour if you complete all optional quests and find the best ending.
- The game has mod support, you can play this game with tons of mods to choose from.
Bad Qualities
- The game can be terrifying for some RPG gamers even for casual/anime gamers.
- Basil's gender is questionable. Some claim that he was transgender while others claim that he was a male; however, he is confirmed to be male.
- Sunny pushing Mari can be mean-spirited, but it makes sense because he can't play violin until he can play it in the final boss with Omori.
- The game can be quite hard for some odd reason:
- The Grizzly Bear is considered the strongest enemy in the game, because it has an amount of HP and the attack damage is a spike, making it hard to beat, unless uses the Angry and Sad skill to do it.
- The worst part of this is Sweetheart, she has a lot of health, and the attack is so massive that can hit you in one or two hits. Thankfully, these bosses are optional, so you can skip the bosses if you don't to fight her.
- Development hell: The game took over 10 years to develop, at first, Omocat was making its manga named Omori, but the manga got canceled due to lack of interest and funding until funding on the Kickstarter to making an RPG game with Horror elements.
- The Xbox/Windows Store version is delisted for unknown reasons.
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