This huge and sprawling game has a lot more exploration than "The Blind Forest" and this is becoming quite evident very early on in the gameplay. It isn't always clear where you are supposed to go and this can be good sometimes but even with the map the areas you are meant to travel do will not be clear until you stumble upon them.
Me revealing maps isn't a spoiler really guys, this map is so huge and really isn't terribly useful for the most part anyway but if that bothers you I'm sorry but honestly, I rarely use the map other than to get some sort of sense of a Very general direction to head in because pathways are never as cut and dry as "oh, it's this way!"
Combat remains rather basic at this point and I have only encountered a couple of enemies that had some sort of strategy associated with them such as shields on the front. For the most part you can just whack whack whack your way through almost anything and strategy is kind of optional. The real quests now is the platforming, which remains fun and is rarely a question of getting just a few pixels between you and making it to the next platform. For the most part, if you see a platform above that you cannot get to using normal means, it is almost certainly something that you are not yet meant to be able to get to. So you are better off just moving on and exploring a bit more
We continue to move towards where our little owl friend is trapped and because I already know the tone of the "Ori" games I would be willing to bet that there is going to be some sort of heartbreaking end to our little feathered friend. But we must carry on! Our Moki friends keep giving us hints about how we can get to him but as you might expect, this normally mans heading to the right.
We find another tree, release the light, and as is often the case at these things we get prepared for a new skill which now is the Spirit Arc, which is a bow-like thing that helps us out with being able to pick off enemies from afar.
It also will open pathways that you previously couldn't get to and a few places in the past where you saw something that appeared to be shoot-able may come to mind. If you can think of one I think you should probably just save it because it has been my experience that you are going to be doing a lot of wandering anyway and there is no reason to intentionally backtrack just yet. Chances are you will get lost over there at some point anyway.
Now we open a pathway leading to the East and it's really cool.
But there is one thing that veteran players of the Ori series are probably going to start to notice is taking form. The game is slowly but surely transitioning you to increasingly difficult platforming instead of rather simplistic to the point where you can't really lose, combat.
It doesn't really matter if you have the game on easy, mid, or hard at these points, the platforming is largely the same. This can be frustrating to some people, or a joy to others. For me, I think it is important to only play this for an hour or so at a time and if some mechanic is starting to annoy me, I will warp out of there and go explore for some of those places I couldn't access previously. This isn't going to make the difficult bit any easier, but for me anyway, it takes my mind off of the frustration and therefore I am less likely to quit.
Kwolock's Hollow is next and you will notice right upon entering that the things you have to interact with are very heavily involving the bow you just picked up. What an unbelievable coincidence?
See you next time!
unsourced images are screenshots from my own gameplay