Child of Light was developed by Ubisoft and uses the beautiful UbiArt engine, that has consistently brought stunning looks games. The artistic style will have you in awe at times. Released in 2014 and thanks to the Games With Gold program, a free purchase for me.
Set in Lemuria, a young girl, Aurora wakes up after freezing to death, and must return the sun, moon and stars, that are being held by the Queen of the Night. Aided by a firefly named Igniculus, they work together to return the light to Lemuria. Along the way, Aurora is taken to all different cities across the land, and meets a bunch of friends and enemies alike.
A side scrolling game featuring turn-based combat. With the ability to fly, this isn't a typical side scroller. You can explore off the screen, go far up and down, and far along left and right. The combat gives you two players to control and you can even swap out Aurora if you choose to. The combat features a time bar and at the end of the bar is a a red zone, once your characters hits here, you're able to start your attack, and once you reach the end, it completes your attack. You can see all people involved in the fight on the timeline, so you can see how close the enemy are to attacking you. If the enemy is in the attack zone and you hit that enemy, they a hit back and forced at the start of the timeline, left to make their way back. This is a great tactic to hit them back here, possibly giving you a fight without losing any health. Igniculus can also hover over enemies to slow them down on the timeline, or even hover over your guys to heal them.
You meet a bunch of friendlies that join your party and you can use to fight with. I felt you got too many, at first you have a couple of allies for a long time, then all of a sudden you have a huge posse and don't have much time to experiment with everyone. You can avoid a lot of fights, as some are only triggered when you get in an enemy's vicinity. You can use this to test all your new companions and see who you prefer to use. While fighting you can also choose to defend if you feel you'll be attacked before you can. You can also use health and enhancements to speed you up or apply more damage. Unfortunately there is no health bar for enemies, so you have to just keep attacking until they fall.
There is no talking in the game, only when there is rarely some narration. There are speech bubbles when the characters talk yo eachother. There seems to be this rhyming dialogue that people speak with in Lemuria. One character doesn't rhyme, and Igniculus always corrects them with a rhyme they should've said. It got really annoying and made me want to just skip these segments, but I kept with it because I enjoyed the story. The lack of dialogue audio is accompanied by some well put together music. It's wonderful to listen to and goes perfectly with the artistic direction they went with.
Each character has a huge skill tree, because there is so much choice and so many characters, it can be quite daunting and often lead to me just choosing anything. Each character has a bunch of moves and once I found two or three characters I liked, I stuck with them and used the same few moves that did massive damage. Some enemies are resistant to certain attacks and could throw a spanner in your style. The boss fights are great and can be very challenging. As well as fighting, you can explore and solve some well done puzzles. There are chests scattered around, containing consumables, even better, when you can't find a way to a chest, Igniculus can and he can open them for you.
I loved the enemies, lots of them were unique and each had their own moves and fighting style. I never lost a fight for quite a long while, but I certainly didn't do every boss fight first time. You also can get side quests when you talk to certain people with exclamation points above them. A huge problem though, is you have no quest log and you don't know where to go for some. You can travel back to previous places you've visited, but the lack of a log means you have to remember what you've picked up. There was also a betrayal with someone in your party, thankfully it was someone whose move set I hated and found them to be useless.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this, I pretty much wrote it off once I first played it, to save it for a later time. Especially because I'm not a huge fan of turn-based combat, but I loved it here. I'm in love with UbiArt games and will keep a lookout for future releases. CoL is quite short and I did lose interest at times, but this is a decent game, it does need improvements though. I'm more interested in UbiArt games than I am in actual Ubisoft games, as they often lead to disappointment.
6.8/10
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