I’m going to start this review with something that sounds like a slam, though it isn't: I really wanted to love Child of Light. But I didn’t. The reason that I wanted to love it is that from the very first trailer I saw I was enchanted with the graphical styles of the game. This enchantment lasted well into my first playthrough; well past the point where I tired of some game elements I was still excited just to look at each new part of the world Child of Light laid out for me. Every bit of scenery and every sprite looks hand crafted. Winsome characters and sumptuous backgrounds have the look of ink and watercolor art from some gorgeous, moody storybook.

Woods give way to craggy rocks give way to villages revealing one stunning tableau after another. Broken statues stare poignantly. Light shines through stained glass and down from treetops. Giants are visible in the hazy distance… There is beauty, often mixed with melancholy, everywhere—even the fights are suffused with it. The animation of Aurora, the protagonist, is also arresting. The attention paid to the movement of her long hair alone is worthy of mention, as are the animations of her wielding a sword clearly too heavy for her tiny body.

All this is true, but my reaction to the game as a whole is more measured. As mentioned, you play as Aurora, an Austrian princess snatched into a fantasy land where she must lead a struggle against the Queen of Dark whose aim is to steal all natural light in the kingdom. You must recruit allies to your party and complete quests to defeat the Queen. Gameply is a mix of metroidvania, side-scroller environments with puzzles, and quasi-turn-based RPG battles. The integration of these two is interesting: encounters are not random. Monsters are visible in the over-world, and how you interact with them there determines who has the initiative at the beginning of a fight. Another interesting mechanic is that your cursor is a character, a glowing sprite, which moves independently of Aurora and interacts with the environment aiding her progress. Mousing over objects is often counted as the sprite interacting with them, so to some degree you are controlling two characters at once. In general, the over world elements of play are quite easy, though.

Battles involve two party members squaring off against a squad of monsters. The action is driven by a timeline, with each character receiving actions at intervals. This differs from a turn-based system in that the intervals vary significantly between combatants, and can be further manipulated by player actions. Character progression, via a branching maze of unlockable nodes ala FF X, unlock new combat abilities. This simple mechanic generates a variety of interesting fights, though by the end of the game I felt the battles were becoming somewhat monotonous, as often happens with turn-based battle mechanics in simple games.

The game is linier and story-driven. It is here that I had my major complaints. The game creators aimed for a moving coming of age story. (If you have seen it, the Neil Gaiman movie Mirrormask seems to be very much the sort of thing they were aiming for.) But this falls short in a number of ways. One reason is that story scenes are done in a kind of storybook mode with largely static images of the characters acompanied by text. Compared to the rest of the game these sequences are oddly uncharismatic. But a much more major shortcoming is the dialogue itself. The game sets all dialogue in verse. But it seems the writers did not have the skill to make this device actually work for them resulting in bad rhymes and perpetually stilted wording. This verbal lack of poise is oddly at odds with the stunning visual beauty of the game. Perhaps these factors alone are enough to explain my mixed feelings towards the story.

In the final count Child of light still offers a wondrous world to explore and marvel at, it still casts a spell. It just didn’t quite live up to its potential. I was left feeling that if every aspect of the game showed the beauty and polish that the graphics do then Child of Light would be one of the greats. The gorgeous, well-built, casual RPG Child of Light actually is makes me badly wish I could play that game.

I’m going to start this review with something that sounds like a slam, though it isn't: I really wanted to love Child of Light. But I didn’t. The reason that I wanted to love it is that from the very first trailer I saw I was enchanted with the graphical styles of the game. This enchantment lasted well into my first playthrough; well past the point where I tired of some game elements I was still excited just to look at each new part of the world Child of Light laid out for me. Every bit of scenery and every sprite looks hand crafted. Winsome characters and sumptuous backgrounds have the look of ink and watercolor art from some gorgeous, moody storybook. Woods give way to craggy rocks give way to villages revealing one stunning tableau after another. Broken statues stare poignantly. Light shines through stained glass and down from treetops. Giants are visible in the hazy distance… There is beauty, often mixed with melancholy, everywhere—even the fights are suffused with it. The animation of Aurora, the protagonist, is also arresting. The attention paid to the movement of her long hair alone is worthy of mention, as are the animations of her wielding a sword clearly too heavy for her tiny body. All this is true, but my reaction to the game as a whole is more measured. As mentioned, you play as Aurora, an Austrian princess snatched into a fantasy land where she must lead a struggle against the Queen of Dark whose aim is to steal all natural light in the kingdom. You must recruit allies to your party and complete quests to defeat the Queen. Gameply is a mix of metroidvania, side-scroller environments with puzzles, and quasi-turn-based RPG battles. The integration of these two is interesting: encounters are not random. Monsters are visible in the over-world, and how you interact with them there determines who has the initiative at the beginning of a fight. Another interesting mechanic is that your cursor is a character, a glowing sprite, which moves independently of Aurora and interacts with the environment aiding her progress. Mousing over objects is often counted as the sprite interacting with them, so to some degree you are controlling two characters at once. In general, the over world elements of play are quite easy, though. Battles involve two party members squaring off against a squad of monsters. The action is driven by a timeline, with each character receiving actions at intervals. This differs from a turn-based system in that the intervals vary significantly between combatants, and can be further manipulated by player actions. Character progression, via a branching maze of unlockable nodes ala FF X, unlock new combat abilities. This simple mechanic generates a variety of interesting fights, though by the end of the game I felt the battles were becoming somewhat monotonous, as often happens with turn-based battle mechanics in simple games. The game is linier and story-driven. It is here that I had my major complaints. The game creators aimed for a moving coming of age story. (If you have seen it, the Neil Gaiman movie Mirrormask seems to be very much the sort of thing they were aiming for.) But this falls short in a number of ways. One reason is that story scenes are done in a kind of storybook mode with largely static images of the characters acompanied by text. Compared to the rest of the game these sequences are oddly uncharismatic. But a much more major shortcoming is the dialogue itself. The game sets all dialogue in verse. But it seems the writers did not have the skill to make this device actually work for them resulting in bad rhymes and perpetually stilted wording. This verbal lack of poise is oddly at odds with the stunning visual beauty of the game. Perhaps these factors alone are enough to explain my mixed feelings towards the story. In the final count Child of light still offers a wondrous world to explore and marvel at, it still casts a spell. It just didn’t quite live up to its potential. I was left feeling that if every aspect of the game showed the beauty and polish that the graphics do then Child of Light would be one of the greats. The gorgeous, well-built, casual RPG Child of Light actually is makes me badly wish I could play that game.