Child of Light
Producer: Ubisoft
Release Date: April 29, 2014
Platform: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, WiiU, PC
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Role-Playing Game
Step Into The Light
Written by Jesse Seilhan
JRPGs are a bit of a lost art form, with Western developers mostly picking up where their Eastern brethren left off. Games like South Park: The Stick of Truth show that the genre can still work, but Ubisoft decided to create a new IP and give the classic turn-based formula a shot with their game Child of Light. The first thing you’ll notice is the amazing art style. Instead of picking ulta-detailed graphical representation or tons of animation tricks, the game is fluid and smooth in a way that most games never attempt. Sticking to 2D with some 3D backgrounds makes the game feel like a dream it takes place in, especially with the wide variety of colors and enemy types. Everything seems so deliberate, which gives Child of Light an edge in a saturated fantasy market.
You play as Aurora, the daughter of an Austrian Duke, who has contracted some sort of illness that has put her into a deep sleep. While in this daze, the young lady awakes in a dreamworld named Lemuria, which has fallen into darkness do to the evil Dark Queen Umbra. Aurora is a pretty awesome protagonist, as the game never really treats her like a little kid. Similar to the way Peter Pan takes charge of a world where he is outnumbered and underage, Aurora always strives to find her way home and never flinches in the face of danger. Even better, the party members you collect along the way all have unique personalities and help flesh out the story even further. Because the player knows so little about this dream world, it is up to the dialogue between characters to fill in some of the smaller details. The only potential hiccup here is that the all of the writing is in a rhyme structure, which can get a little repetitive over time. Luckily, you can skip any and all of it if you find this to be more than boring over the 10 hours it will take to beat the game.
The combat is where this game really shines, as the Active Time Battle system found in classic Final Fantasy games is the main fighting mechanic. Your party lines up on one side and the opponents on the other, all of which are represented on a horizontal bar along the bottom. Each character’s icon moves at a different speed, ultimately hitting the end of the bar, allowing you (or the enemy) to make an action, be it an attack, potion, or spell. The extra wrinkle shows up when you make a move before the enemy has a chance to execute their maneuver, thereby knocking them back down the bar and interrupting their attack. All the standard RPG buffs and debuffs apply like haste and slow, but finding the rhythm between attacking, defending, and keeping your enemies from doing the same always makes each battle an active event, not something you can just pound one button to get through. The skill tree makes each player proficient in a few skills, giving you more strategy to take into each battle, boss or not. The ability to rotate party members on the fly also means that you’ll never have a trial run where you realize that you needed two mages instead of your bruisers.
While Child of Light might not instantly appeal to everyone, especially the Call of Duty or Madden crowd, it has a layer of depth, charm, and design that few games have shown over the past few months. While it’s early in the year, it is going to be hard-pressed to knock this game off of a few Top 10 lists come December. Good on Ubisoft for attempting something new and taking a risk that works 99% of the time, giving fans of a dusty genre something worth spending time in during the “dead time” of gaming.