Yeah, that sounds brutal, but that's how it is. I didn't think I would write this post at first, but I realized I had to. After all, this game charmed me in so many ways and exceeded my expectations.

Before we begin, here's a little personal story

I found out about this game in 2021 or 2022, I don't remember exactly, and all I learned about it then was that it was similar to EarthBound, a childhood game of Toby Fox's that greatly influenced him and to which he once released his romhack, also that it will drive you to depression and that it took 6 years to make (I want to highlight this point separately, since I myself understand the creator and I'm sorry that many people considered her project a scam because there were no updates for a long time, but this story taught me a lot.)

I myself thought that I should check this game out someday, but I often put it off for later. And you know, this is one of the few cases when I did the right thing, because if I had started playing this game back then, being a 13-year-old boy, I would not have understood many things. Now, I'm glad that I played this game and I will gladly recommend it to you! But I warn you, there will be spoilers ahead, so to avoid spoiling your impressions, go and play it yourself! ... Seriously, this is a story that you MUST experience for yourself, come back after you beat the game, if you remember this post.

Story

When I first started playing Omori, I had the same situation as with Hollow Knight, I decided to play because of the atmosphere, graphics and gameplay, and the story did not interest me at first, but it was the story that made me come back to the game again and again and I really empathized with the characters more and more.

The action takes place in the world of dreams (for the most part) and reality, and our main character is a homebody boy named Omori (also Sunny in reality) and the whole game is dedicated to his adventures with his friends and the search for his lost friend Basil, and at the same time, revealing and accepting the truth about the death of his sister and settling old problems with friends in reality before moving.

That's it in short, and I will not tell it in detail, but I want to run through a few bright moments. Firstly, I really liked the moments of fighting fears, both in the dream world and in reality, which usually first occur in the form of battles with some entity in reality, and then in dreams, coming face to face with heights, spiders and depth.

Secondly, there were a couple of moments that made me laugh (these only happen in the dream world), a couple of times I was scared and there were many moments that, in my opinion, can make even the most indifferent cry.

Thirdly, the very revelation of the truth for the main character through trips to psychedelic locations and rooms in the Black Space simultaneously made me experience fear, misunderstanding of what was happening and almost complete uncertainty in my actions, as well as a complete refusal of some things (which, by the way, the game itself allows you to do in many places (for example, instead of cutting Mewo in the black space, you can stab yourself to get out of the room after receiving the key, as I did (Cats are sacred, whoever just thinks of torturing them is a damn sinner)))

Fourthly, the development of the characters is also very well worked out and you can feel the contrast between their positive attitude in the dream world, where everything is already hypertrophied and cartoonish and uncertainty, worries and rudeness (Aubrey) in reality, where everything is not so rosy and not all of them are such friends as before, and the main character's sister died. But in any case, I was glad to find many of my and my friends' character traits in them. Apart from the main characters, Basil was most memorable to me because I, like him, try to capture the best moments on camera, taking photos and videos, and this also means a lot to me. (And also he's cute)

And of course, the ending made me feel sad along with the characters, but also deep down I was glad that Sunny stopped running away from the truth, admitted it and got rid of the influence of his alter ego from the dream world. And also, after the credits, Sunny comes to Basil's ward and they smile, leaving their traumas in the past.

Gameplay

This game is a JRPG, inspired mostly by EarthBound, as I said at the beginning, in which the gameplay is divided into walking around locations with a top view and battles with enemies using weapons, toys and character skills that open at a certain level. But the game also has an emotion system that increases/decreases your or your enemies' stats depending on your emotions. Overall, the combat is easy to learn. Also, in Overworld, you need to tag other characters from your party from time to time and use their abilities to overcome various obstacles (Omori can cut them with a knife, Aubrey can break heavy objects with a bat, knocking out currency from them, Kel throws balls at unreachable objects, and Hero is simply the most charismatic and talks everyone into their teeth. (He is my favorite of this quartet, btw)) Although, sometimes I had to farm enemies in one location for 10-15 minutes to level up and the battles with the Bosses weren't too difficult, but this is a flaw in many JRPG games, so it doesn't matter that much.

Graphics

I like pixel art as a style and I liked it here as well, but it wasn't so much the style that caught my attention, but the hand-drawn images of characters and enemies in battles, as well as cutscenes. I really liked this album style of pencil and marker drawings, I can compare it a little to Don't Starve Together, but if there the tones were gothic and dark, here they are bright and quite surreal. I also liked these realistic backgrounds in battles, which were stylized as pixel art. I also liked the moments when the pixelated environments were combined with realistic PNG images.

Music

It's amazing, it can easily be put on par with Toby Fox's music in terms of quality, I think, but it also reminded me of old Minecraft music and all sorts of remixes of songs on note blocks. It fits the moments perfectly and is great to listen to when I'm not playing the game, when I'm working. And here are my favorite tracks in the game:

WHITE SPACE, Lost At A Sleepover, By Your Side, 100 Sunny, Push & Shove, Trees..., I Will Catch Up!, Three Bar Logos, Stardust Diving, See You Tomorrow, Pyrefly Forest - Cat's Cradle, Splintered Sweets In The Castle, Stationarty Rose, Lost Library, Thrifted Tchotchkes, Dear Little Brother..., Hanging With The Boys, Room For 4, Jawbreaker, Undertow, Do You Remember, OMORI, DUET, Wake Up.

Atmosphere and overall impression

This is a truly unique manifestation of surrealism in the world of dreams, but with all the oddities needed for the plot, it looks quite natural and does not develop out of nowhere into fierce psychedelia, as, for example, in Yume Nikki. At the same time, even in reality, the main character sometimes sees hallucinations that personify his fears and trauma, which once again reminds him of his suffering and the struggle with them.

When I first started the game, I thought that by the end it would lead me to an existential crisis at worst, and to suicide at best (or vice versa (or both, I didn't know yet.))

In the end, neither happened, but I was imbued with this story and it made me think about many things and feel sad, first of all, about how I myself have become different over the years and how differently I look in the eyes of different people. You don't know a lot about me that my friends and family know, and they don't know a lot of what my Russian-speaking YouTube audience knows, and they don't know my background that my older friends have lived through, and so on.

Anyway, it made me think about how many different mes there are in me, most likely it goes in parallel with Sunny and Omori and their fight with each other, as well as how Aubrey has changed in the 4 years since Mari's death.

I managed to quickly look online that the game has several more endings and I got to the best one, but I also remembered that I didn't go to one pyramid location in the dream world, and I also didn't do some side quests, so maybe I should try it sometime!

And if I were to rate the game on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it 9/10, there are few downsides, and as I described earlier, they mostly concern the entire JRPG genre and are boldly outweighed by the game's advantages in the form of a plot, atmosphere and music.

P.S. Also, should I say that everything I said about suicide is nothing more than a dark joke? It's harsh, I know, but what am I surprised about? Dark humor is like clean water - not everyone gets it.