Disclaimer: Omori deals with heavy themes including trauma, depression, and suicide. If you are currently experiencing mental health issues, it may not be a good time to play this game. This review does not contain any graphic details on this subject matter.
A common theme found across JRPGs is along the lines of ‘the power of friendship.’ Considering JRPGs are often built around accumulating a varied and colorful party of characters and taking on epic (often god-killing) quests together, a focus on companionship and teamwork comes naturally to these games’ narrative arcs. At the same time, there are few JRPGs (or games in general) that follow a group of established friends and actually explore the complex and shifting relationships, impactful events, and the expressed and suppressed emotions that can define and destroy a group of youths as they develop out of childhood innocence into mature independence. Omori aims to do exactly this, succeeding through its intimate storytelling and the evident love poured into its soundtrack, characterizations, and original art.
The word intimate describes a lot of what makes this game interesting. This isn’t really a cozy or romantic kind of intimacy, mind you; it’s a profoundly dark and twisted intimacy. It’s the intimacy of buried secrets, psychological trauma, and coping mechanisms. Omori makes this pretty clear to the player off the bat, but the way it unravels is slow, gripping, methodical, and only sometimes a bit indulgent in its own morbidity.
Memento (O)mori
Omori is a tale of two worlds. The first is Headspace, a fantastical and colorful imaginary world where we play as the young, straight-faced Omori and his friends. We’re introduced to the carefree and athletic Kel, the hardheaded and passionate Aubrey, and the more mature and endlessly talented Hero (also Kel’s older brother), who together make up the game’s main four-member party. The friend group also features Omori’s sister Mari and his best friend Basil, who are central to the plot but are not playable. Headspace is where the bulk of the game takes place, and the time spent here is quite reminiscent of the Mother series with its zone-based structure and first-person, turn-based battles initiated from running into an enemy sprite in the field. NPCs here also spout that same whimsical and nonsensical dialogue one can expect from an indie Mother-like. At their best, these portions approach the charm of their inspirations. At their worst, they can start to drag and feel a bit redundant during a standard 30-ish hour playthrough.
The second world is the ‘real’ one. In these relatively shorter and more experimental segments, we play as Sunny, an adolescent boy that looks unmistakably like an older Omori. Sunny’s family is preparing to move out of the suburban town where he grew up, and these portions involve what he does with his last few days there. The name Omori is a play on the Japanese word hikikomori, a term used to describe individuals who choose to live isolated lives in their homes. It’s clear this is what Sunny has become, and the character Omori seems to be a younger version of himself reveling in the joys of his childhood. There are even two distinct routes the player can set themselves on (à la Undertale—another clear inspiration) based on a specific choice made as Sunny, which can lead to significant variations in the late game and available endings. Without spoiling any specifics, the creativity apparent in the narrative design of these Sunny portions is what turns Omori from a solid RPG to something truly exceptional.
The apparent dynamic between Omori’s imaginary world and Sunny’s real life is where Omori’s real narrative depth lies. As I progressed through the game, the connections between Omori, Sunny, his friends, and their respective worlds began to unfurl in my head. Like any good psychological horror, the game doesn’t spell everything out clearly. Rather, it trusts the player to bring their own interpretations to what they see and experience as the story’s deeper and darker secrets start revealing themselves.
Fighting Your Emotions
Omori is one of the most ambitious and impressive RPG Maker games I’ve seen. Aside from its compelling storytelling structure, there was a great deal of effort and care put into the original art, soundtrack, and battle system. The overall presentation here is striking. While the overworld assets have the general aesthetic of an RPG Maker MV game, the environments themselves have unique color palettes that give each zone a tasty flavor. But the visual standout here is, without doubt, director Omocat’s distinct hand-drawn artwork seen in battles and the animated comic-like cutscenes. These illustrations bring a tremendous deal of personality to every minor monster, boss, and major character. Photography also plays a significant thematic role in the story, and one of the highlights of my playthrough was the ability to sift through a photo album drawn in this art style depicting moments in the main group’s friendship.
Omori packs a punch in the audio department, too. The triple threat of musicians Space Boyfriend, Slime Girls, and Bo En lend plenty of tonal variety to environments, battles, and cutscenes alike. Different tunes were constantly lodging themselves in my noggin as I played—with a few popping in and out during this writing process. From delicate and haunting piano pieces in key story bits to the eclectic genre-spanning medleys of its boss fights, Omori serves treat after treat to your ears. Not only does each zone come with a distinct auditory vibe for moving about, they also get individual battle themes to keep things fresh.
The character art and music constantly serve to enliven the game’s turn-based fights. The battle system itself is conceptually wonderful but doesn’t encourage as much experimentation as it appears to in practice. The key system here is status effects framed as emotional states. Each emotion comes with both positive and negative properties and forms a weakness triangle akin to the Pokémon or Fire Emblem games. An Angry character has increased attack but lowered defense; a Sad character has increased defense but lowered speed; and a Happy character has increased speed and luck (i.e. crit chance) but lowered accuracy. In terms of weakness, Angry beats Sad; Sad beats Happy; and Happy beats Angry (which makes a lot of sense when you think about it). Both enemies and allies have certain skills that alter the emotional states of friend or foe alike, and this also serves to cleverly define characters through their move set.
While there is plenty of room for experimentation with emotional states, there isn’t much of a reason to bother. Party members can only equip four skills at a time; there’d be a powerful synergy to discover with each loadout I tried only to rinse and repeat it across encounters. The game’s standard battles can start to drag at points for this reason, but thanks to the art and music, I never dreaded running into a fight. The boss battles are also usually pleasant exceptions to this tactical monotony. The better-designed ones would throw off my current strategy with attacks that alter everyone’s emotional state and require reactive problem- solving using your move loadout. I just wish there were more opportunities for this improvisational strategizing throughout the game.
It’s worth noting that the above description of battles only applies to those in the Headspace sections of the game. Really, though, it’s the real-world Sunny segments that feature what I’d consider the game’s most memorable and dramatically involving ‘fights.’ These encounters are all scripted, narratively significant events less about challenging the player and more about having us experience the emotional state of our character through the status system and how specific skills interact with it. If this sounds just as interesting to you as maximizing your stats and strategic output, Omori is probably in your wheelhouse.
Generically Superior
Are Omori’s RPG systems all that nuanced or thrilling to engage with? Not really. Yet, it works well enough and some of its battles will stick with me far longer than many finely tuned fights I’ve experienced in turn-based RPGs due to their thoughtful incorporation into specific parts of the story. Ultimately, the reason to play this game is for the dark and twisting narrative and how it permeates into multiple aspects of the experience. The art, OST, and battle system add essential flavoring to the gameplay. Some pacing, balance, and tonal issues that can’t be denied—but those aren’t at all what I’m coming away from this game thinking about. Omori pulled my heart in directions that few videogames ever have. It brims with a disturbing yet genuine intimacy that, like the rest of the best RPG Maker games, proves how much can still be done with the traditional JRPG format.
