WHITE SPACE
OMORI begins in a small, white room, surrounded by... well, white space. You can walk in any direction you like, though you'll either loop back to the room or be caught by roaming hands and be sent back. You have access to a number of objects and can interact with them however you wish, though aside from some... insights... into your character's state of mind... they're of no tangible benefit at the moment.
Check everything - notebook, laptop, tissue box, and the cat MEWO - to make the room rumble. Walk around and you'll find a SHINY KNIFE in the white space. (Where it appears seems to depend on which item you checked last.) The knife will be equipped on OMORI, the main character, automatically. With the SHINY KNIFE in hand you can open the door that's a short ways north of the boundaries of the room.
NEIGHBOR'S ROOM
You'll wind up in a colored room with three children named AUBREY, KEL, and HERO. They're in the middle of playing cards when OMORI walks in. Once they're all done talking, check the bottom-left corner of the room for a STUFFED TOY, beside the tentacle, and if you wish you can make some toast via the toaster to the north.
Speak to the two boys, if you wish, then speak to AUBREY. She's looking for the STUFFED TOY, and she'll take it if it's in your inventory. With that done, speak to HERO. He'll tell you that two more friends, MARI and BASIL, are waiting for everyone at the playground. Say you want to go see them and AUBREY, KEL, and HERO will join your party.
Head towards the door in the north, up the stairs. A snake on the stairs will give OMORI his allowance, 50 CLAMS. Not bad. You'll use CLAMS to purchase items throughout HEADSPACE. Head up the stairs to the doorway...
... and everyone will pop out of a tree trunk, in the middle of a forest. After some bickering - as well as a quote from an old TV show - you'll regain control of the party. You can go in four different directions from the tree stump:
- To the west is a winding road that leads to a spider web. It'll block your progress.
- To the north is a beach with a dock. Something just off of the dock looks... sketchy... but it's no concern right now. You can, however, build sandcastles with everyone by interacting with the pail and shovel on the left. You'll get different results if you let this scene play out a few times.
- To the east is a road to a tall, tall ladder. Once again, though, OMORI's fears prevent any further progress.
South it is, then. This route will swiftly take you to the FOREST PLAYGROUND, your destination.
FOREST PLAYGROUND
Upon arrival the group will find MARI and BASIL having a picnic. You'll get a chance to look through BASIL's PHOTO ALBUM and read some captions. Once that's done the group will decide to head to BASIL's house, though MARI will opt to remain on her picnic blanket. From this point on you can use picnic baskets to save your game. There's also a heap of candy sitting on the blanket that you can use to restore everyone's health, not that you need to do any restoring just yet.
There are plenty of kids to speak to in the FOREST PLAYGROUND, though there are only three things of particular note right now:
- There are two kids playing tetherball in the north, and the smaller child has an icon over her head. We'll get to her in a moment.
- In the southwest corner are two kids, SHAWN and REN, and they're stargazing. Speaking to SHAWN, on the right, will give you a chance to join them. OMORI will learn OBSERVE if you look at the stars.
- In the south is a MAILBOX. It doesn't do anything yet, but speak to it after the next major event (and your first battle) and you'll discover that it's an item vendor. Buying a few CANDIES isn't a terrible idea when you get the chance.
Your destination is to the south, but there's more to be done here first. Speak to BERLY, the smaller tetherball-playing monster, and she'll insist everyone stay to play hide-and-seek if you try to leave. BERLY will round everyone on the playground up and OMORI will have to hunt them all down. Investigate the tetherball pole to begin the game. Finding everyone is pretty easy:
- KEL is behind the tetherball pole
- AUBREY is in the bush to the south of MARI's picnic blanket
- MIKAL is in the tree to the south of AUBREY
- BROWS is running around a tree near MIKAL
- HERO is exercising with SHAWN and REN in the southwest corner of the playground
- SHARLEEN is behind three trees in the south, near a conspicuous mailbox
- BANGS is sitting in plain sight near the hop scotch board in the southeast
- HAPPY is in a music box near two trees in the middle of the playground, and VAN is failing to hide behind the trees
- BUN and NOSE are trying to hide behind the slide to the right of the tetherball pole
- BERLY is hiding in a heap of sand in front of the tetherball pole, and won't appear until you've caught everyone else - pull out her straw and she'll fly out of the ground
It's almost difficult to not find the kids, but if you're stuck, speak to MARI. She'll tell you how many children still need to be located.
BERLY will do a roll call once you've found her, and it turns out that BASIL is still missing. This doesn't last for long, though, as the hefty BOSS appears, upset that he wasn't invited to play hide-and-seek. Time for your first battle!
BOSS
Unsurprisingly, your first battle is pretty straightforward. BOSS can hit one or more characters, but will never do enough damage to really endanger your party. You can use SKILLs or normal attacks to chip away at his health. If anyone is getting low on hearts you can use HERO's COOK to restore their health.
(A lot of words will get bandied around during this fight that you won't understand. Don't worry about it. You'll learn all the terms in due time.)
Do enough damage and BOSS will use BODY SLAM to knock out everyone but OMORI, who only gets knocked out when reduced to one heart. This is common to OMORI, and he can't be defeated unless an enemy hits him when he's at one HEART.
Another attack from OMORI will put BOSS down and save the day. The whole situation will be resolved amicably enough in the aftermath. (And if you want to speak to BOSS again, check the tree just north of MIKAL. He doesn't have much to say right now.) That's it for hide and seek. The exit of the playground is to the south, near the MAILBOX. Check the picnic blanket for a cooler that you can use to have a picnic, heal up if necessary, and leave the FOREST PLAYGROUND. That was fun.
South of the FOREST PLAYGROUND is a crossroads. You have three options, though BASIL will force you to go south, to his house. Along the way you'll run into two patches of flowers, as well as a battle against a SPROUT MOLE. Here you'll receive a quick battle tutorial.
Combat
Before we get into the mechanics of OMORI, it's important to know what each of your characters can do. Each of the four party members has a set of unique SKILLS - which you can swap out as you learn more - that, along with their stats, allow them to fulfill a specific role in your party:
- OMORI is a fast, hard-hitting character with excellent offensive SKILLS. He's a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, and probably your best overall party member.
- KEL is the fastest character on your team, though he doesn't hit all that hard and is a bit frail. KEL is great for using restorative items at the beginning of a round or setting up your party with EMOTIONS. More on that below.
- AUBREY is the strongest character on your team. She's a bit slow, but makes up for it by hitting harder than just about anyone else, especially early in the game. She's also a good tank.
- HERO is the party's healer, and will spend much of his time - especially during boss battles - restoring everyone's HEART. HERO is very slow and doesn't hit especially hard, so he should typically prioritize keeping the party healthy.
Combat in OMORI is governed by EMOTIONS. Each character, party member or enemy, has an emotional state that dictates how they act and react in battle. You can change an enemy's EMOTION via SKILLS, and some enemies will do the same to your party. The five emotional states are as follows:
- NEUTRAL - No stat or damage change.
- HAPPY - Increased Luck and Speed, lower Hit Rate. HAPPY characters will do more damage to ANGRY characters and less to SAD characters. HAPPY enemies will drop more CLAMS when defeated, and have a greater chance of dropping items.
- SAD - Increased Defense, lower Speed. SAD characters will do more damage to ANGRY characters and less to HAPPY characters. When a character is SAD some of the damage dealt to them will be inflicted on their JUICE (essentially MP) instead. SAD enemies drop fewer CLAMS and reward less EXP when defeated.
- ANGRY - Increased Attack, lower Defense. ANGRY characters will do more damage to SAD characters and less to HAPPY characters. ANGRY enemies reward more EXP when defeated.
- AFRAID - Character can't use SKILLs other than GUARD and CALM. You'll typically only see AFRAID during special story-related battles, and you can't inflict it on enemies.
When using a SKILL you can toggle between targeting your own characters and the enemy. EMOTIONS can be raised to second- and third-tier levels, amplifying their effects, though most of the time only OMORI will get to see the effects of a third-tier emotional boost. You can see how a character is feeling via their profile pictures.
One last thing about combat. You noticed earlier, during the fight against BOSS, that OMORI did not succumb when reduced to zero HEART like the rest of the team. This remains true in every battle. It is nevertheless important to keep OMORI'S HEART count nice and high, as you will immediately receive a Game Over if he is reduced to zero.
Stomp the SPROUT MOLE and HERO will give you the FOE FACTS! journal, which records notes about the enemies you've fought throughout the game. You can look at it - and other things - via your POCKET in the menu. FOE FACTS! is listed under IMPORTANT.
Keep checking out flowers and you'll run into another SPROUT MOLE. This one is HAPPY, though that doesn't make it much tougher to beat. After the fight HERO will give you a handy EMOTION CHART that dictates the weakness flow of the three main emotions.
Continue perusing the flowers and you'll run into one more SPROUT MOLE. This one is SAD. Beat it to a pulp however you see fit. Continue south and you'll run into MARI again, whose picnic blankets just seem to teleport wherever they like. Save at the picnic basket, eat some fruit to restore your health, and check out the cooler to have another picnic with everyone. You'll want to be rejuvenated, as there's another boss waiting for you. (Though not BOSS.)
YE OLD SPROUT
Another simple boss. YE OLD SPROUT only rolls over, which inflicts a small amount of damage to your whole party. During this fight you'll learn how to use FOLLOW-UPs, which expend ENERGY earned by taking damage to perform simple team attacks. You'll have a limited window to hit an arrow during a character's attack and perform a FOLLOW-UP. You can use FOLLOW-UPs more strategically in the future, though for now just feel free to hit directional arrows and see what happens. YE OLD SPROUT won't last long, especially if you make it SAD with OMORI and your party members ANGRY with AUBREY.
After YE OLD SPROUT is defeated HERO will give you the SELF-HELP GUIDE. This handy item explains the various facets of combat in OMORI. Consult it any time you're lost on something related to the technical side of the game. For now, though, you'll want to head into the copse of trees YE OLD SPROUT was guarding...
... as it contains BASIL's house, which appears to be a shoe. Nice. After some squabbling you can follow BASIL into the shoe. Feel free to look around, though to progress you need to speak to BASIL about putting his PHOTO ALBUM back in order. The game will show you where to put each photo with a big, black rectangle that appears whenever you select a photo.
Things seem fine after the PHOTO ALBUM is reassembled... or at least they are until they aren't. After a flash of weirdness OMORI will wind up back in WHITE SPACE.