Child of Light is another one of those games with a fantastic and unique art direction, where you feel that every backdrop deserved to be screenshot, printed and framed. The game looks beautiful and is one of the game's biggest draws. Child of Light is a RPG, a classic 2D sidescrolling RPG to be exact. Don't let the 2D aspect fool you, the game still places an emphasis on exploration. It's really easy to get lost in and always an enjoyment when you discover treasures in hidden areas. Each area is huge, just when you thought you've found a hidden area, there's another path that branches off to another huge area hidden within. The developers had made this work very well. A surprising aspect of the game is that there is no voice acting for any of the characters. There is a narrator but otherwise, everyone else speaks in text bubbles. It's a throwback to the early RPG games of the 1990s but I think I would have preferred some voices here. Child of Light is completely presented in rhymes which is an interesting direction. It doesn't get annoying or feel forced, it feels right at home with the fairytale-like presentation. The crux of any RPG is the battle system, Child of Light presents its take on turn-based combat. The twist here is that there is a bar along the bottom of the screen to show whose turn is coming up.
However, there's more, the icons move along from left to right and you have the ability to slow down the enemy's rate, i.e. fit in more of your character's turn. You can only slow down one enemy at a time and you can interrupt their actions if you time your attacks properly. To prevent abuse, you can only use the slowdown ability for a limited amount of time (determined by a gauge). This adds in a huge strategic element which makes battles so much more fun. It can get fast paced too when you are fighting three to four enemies at the same time, juggling between who to slow down, who to attack and interrupt and what moves to use. As you would expect, you can use a physical attack or magic. Each character has limited amount of magic and you are limited to using two characters at once. This seems like a big limitation considering you end up getting something like seven playable characters. That is, until you realize that you can change characters on the fly during battle. Sustained damage and need to heal? Switch out your attacker for a healer. Need to take the brunt of an attack? Throw out your character with high defense. Combining all these elements makes each battle fun and engaging.
Each character has a specialization such that once you have a few characters, you will often switch out characters multiple times in a battle. The best part? There is no penalty when switching characters, you don't lose a turn or whatnot. It's not a negative as such but since characters are introduced at a fairly quick rate, you will end up not knowing which characters are best for what. This will come with experience after you've used the various new characters a few times. Another good thing is that leveling up is easy, you will never need to grind. The difficulty is perfectly balanced and by the time you near the end of the game, after each battle, at least one character would have leveled up. Even if you didn't use a particular character at all during the battle, they will still gain experience at the same rate. Therefore, you will never be penalized for favoring some characters over the others and encourages the strategic forward thinking of the battle system. Enemies are a breeze at the beginning but once you get into the game, even if you have been fighting various enemies, they become tougher and you need to time your attacks better. Will you attack now and risk being interrupted? Or defend and wait for a more opportune moment? The choice is yours but a wrong move might mean the battle will drag out longer.
These aspects make the combat a lot of fun and much more exciting than what you'd expect of a turn-based affair. Child of Light features some light puzzle solving which actually does add to the experience and not break the immersion at all. It's never too hard to make you spend minutes upon minutes to solve but not easy enough to feel like a breeze and waste of time. The music of Child of Light is fantastic. It creates a nice atmosphere that evokes mystery, tranquility and a child-like feel. It encourages exploration and investigating everything. The same melody perpetuating throughout most of the songs have a powerful impact. From the battle theme to the field music, it is effective and amazing. In terms of treasures you find on your journey, there are heaps and heaps of chests to uncover and get the contents of, to the point where it becomes a little bit dull and not very rewarding (particularly since the game is easy enough such that you don't need all the buff potions). There is also a lot of DLC available, most of them are in-game items which provides stat boosts which you will easily find on your journey, making them a total waste of money. The Golem pack includes a new quest and playable character (meaning that during events, there will be additional dialogue) and probably the only one you might want to consider.
The story follows Princess Aurora who must travel through this other world, recovering the stars, moon and the sun in order to return to the real world and save her father. It's told as a fairytale and it feels like one too. Of course, there is also an evil stepmother and while the overall story arc is predictable (good triumphs over evil), there is a nice twist about two-thirds of the way in. The tale reaches its peak near the end when you are anticipating the final few fights. The emotions that are bursting from the final cutscene, amplified by the music, creates a fantastic atmosphere as Aurora's friends team up to overcome the obstacle. Child of Light does such a great job that you don't want the game to end, you want to keep going on, exploring other areas, discovering treasures and battling more enemies. In that aspect, the ending felt a little bit rushed in terms of the final boss. You expected something lengthier but it was still satisfactory. While the story is somewhat simple overall, it suits the fairytale theme well and has the feeling of innocence and pure heartedness woven in its telling. I can't fault it at all. Post-game content is non-existent, regulated to exploring previous areas in the hopes of finding more secrets and leveling up your characters. Child of Light is a brilliant and beautiful game, something that is definitely worthy of purchasing and playing.
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