Child of Light (PC)
Greetings
Ladies and Gentlemen. I’m the Guardian and welcome to the No Holds Barred
review of the latest brainchild to work its way from the powerhouse studio that
is Ubisoft Montreal as well as the development team behind last year’s hit game
Far Cry 3. This is Child of Light.
Now, to be
perfectly honest with you, when I hear the sentence “from the team that brought
you Far Cry 3” the last thing that came to mind was a 2D RPG with a fairy-tale
story written in a Shakespearian style, but here we have it. Which just leaves
us with one simple question to ask, is it any good?
Starting
off, let’s take a look at the general premise of the game. We see the story of a young Austrian girl in 1895 called Aurora
who dies in her sleep one night only to wake up in the mystical land of Lemuria,
a strange land caught in the clutches of the Black Queen who has stolen the
Moon, Sun and Stars. This leads us into a fairy-tale world as we see Aurora
travel Lemuria in an effort to get home to her father (an Austrian Duke) while
making friends with a motley crew of creatures along the way, and her we find
the first strength of the game as each character has their own backstories and
dreams as well as a unique personality which leads to some interesting dialogue
as they interact with the other characters and the world around them. This unfortunately
doesn’t translate to the rest of the game however as the rest of the characters, outside of one
or two instances, aren’t nearly as fleshed out as the main cast which
unfortunately leaves the world of Lumuria feeling a lot smaller and bit more
flat and lifeless than it should otherwise actually be.
As
for the story itself, the story of Child
of Light is quite unique in its writing as it is written entirely in an
almost Shakespearian style with every line of dialogue having an almost sing
song quality to it - a massive feat in itself when it’s considered just how
difficult it would have been to write all
the dialogue in a style such as this. Unfortunately this is both a blessing and
a curse as, yes, thought the dialogue is impressive and lends itself quite well
to the games fairy-tale feel, it also has the drawback of being quite
distracting at times and causes some of the dialogue to become confused, which,
quite naturally, hinders the story.
That said
however, the story itself is fairly well written for the most part and, though
it’s nothing really earthshattering, it does its job of telling a story as well
as managing to keep some of the darkness one would expect from a traditional
fairy tale but sadly it really doesn’t hit as hard as it should have otherwise
done, instead comeing off as a bit trivial at times and sadly leads to the
story being a bit of a disappointment. Quite
a tragic turn of events really, especially when the general premise of the
story was a really interesting one. Sadly though, it seems like the writers
really weren’t up to the challenge but here’s hoping they learn and give us a
much better story next time.
As
for the games graphics, Ubisoft have used their UbiArt game engine to wonderful
effect here as Child of Light is easily
one of the most staggering games that I have seen in quite some time. Each
environment is wonderfully designed in a style almost reminiscent of a water
painting and really does look like something from a fairy-tale, be it a dark
and creepy forest or the watery depths of the sea. It doesn’t just stop at the
level designs however as this level of detail here has been applied to all the character
and enemy designs, something that becomes very apparent when you look upon
Aurora who has an unworldly look about her as her hair swishes and billows
around with an almost ethereal quality about it as she moves and fights. Sadly
though the graphics are spoiled from time to time by a small slew of graphical
bugs that seem to effect the 3D rendered sprites whenever 2 or more of them are
on screen at the same time – hardly a game breaking bug but at the same time it
was more than a bit annoying to see multiple sprites jittering all over the
screen during combat or a cutscene. Also, in addition to this, it would have
been nice to see a bit more of the world of Lumuria as the map is relatively
small in comparison to other games of its kind.
The
sound work of the game is also something to behold as it is some of the best
that I have ever heard. Each footstep you make has the satisfying feedback of
footfalls against stone and earth, each physical blow has the enjoyable sound of
a weapon (or fist) hitting an enemy in the face, each spell has a distinct
sound; be it the roar of fire or the crackle of lighting, and even Auroras
wings give a gently flutter as she travels through the skies of Lemuria but it
doesn’t just end there as Child of Light
also boasts one of the most amazing soundtracks that I have ever heard and has
fast become one of my favourite OST’s - solidly
up there with the soundtracks of Crysis 2, Mists of Pandaria, Assassin’s Creed:
Revelations, and Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.
As
for the gameplay of Child of Light, we
see a 2D game in the classic side-scrolling style with a slight twist. Very
early on in the game Aurora gets a pair of wings which gift her the ability to
fly. From then on in you can take to the skies in full 8-direction movement
which opens up the full extent of the map, allowing you to explore hidden areas
for treasure chests containing upgrades for Aurora and her companions or to
solve environmental puzzles to progress the story, which brings me nicely onto
my next critique of the game. Child of
Light seems to have gotten pretty lazy on the puzzle front as almost all of
the puzzles you will encounter in the game will be almost identical to one another
with only slight variations thrown in on each one to stop them all looking
exactly the same. As such, all the puzzles play out in pretty much the same way,
“shine your light on the symbol in the foreground to cast a shadow in the right
place on the background to undo a lock then repeat 2 more times, and then walk
through the now unlocked door to the next part of the story”. Thankfully though
there are only 3 – 4 of these puzzles in the game and are hardly a strain to
solve. That being said however, I do like the idea behind the puzzles and they
make good use of Igniculus (more about him in a minute) who generates the light
you use to solve them but as I’ve already said, I just wish it wasn’t such a copy
and paste job – it would have been nice to see a bit more complexity to them as
well.
Moving
onto the combat of Child of Light. The
combat system is a new twist on the classic idea of turn based combat. Taking
elements form turn-based, real-time and timeline combat systems, Ubisoft have
added a few new idea’s to the RPG combat formula such as Auroras firefly
companion ‘Igniculus’ who can be used to heal Aurora and her companions during
combat as well giving you the ability to slow enemies; giving you the ability
to strike first and knock said enemies backwards down the timeline, a handy
little trick to have – especially in the boss battles of the game. That being
said however, the combat system isn’t as fine-tuned as it should otherwise be.
One instance of this would be the small fact that none of the enemies in the game have health bars which leaves you
with no idea of what their health is and nothing but a change in animation when
they are, “sort of close to death” to indicate that your attacks are doing
anything to them at all. That being said though, the absence of a heath bars
did make the boss fights feel much more intense for the simple reason of not
knowing how much life they had left. With that said, if Ubisoft made a few
tweaks here and there, such as a mechanic to dynamically change the enemy
sprites over the course of the fight to show physical damage from your attacks,
then we may have one of the best RPG combat systems to date.
As for the
skill upgrades to aid you in combat, Child
of Light’s skill system is a bit of a jumbled mess with a few spell
upgrades strewn amongst a mash-up of generic stat upgrades. In all honesty this
system strongly reminds me of the “Crystarium System” from Final Fantasy 13,
where you get useful skills only after you’ve wasted a bunch of upgrade points
on useless stats that should have been mixed in with the levelling system
instead. As for how the skill system works, it works in the same fashion as
many of its predecessors, you level up and you get a skill point which you can
add a skill to your skill tree. That is if you go into combat at all as you can
miss out every fight simply by flying over the enemies in your way or blinding
them with Igniculus and just walking past, which inevitably means you have to
find a nice balance between progressing to the levels final boss and grinding up
levels so you actually stand a chance against said final boss.
As for the handling
of your party members, thankfully you don’t have to level up each of them up
individually as they all share XP from each of the fights you win. The game
will also give each new member of your party a skill point boost which
allocates 20 or so skill points to them automatically to help you get them into
a useable state.
The crafting
system, thankfully, isn’t as much of a mess as the skill system is in its
execution but unlike the skill system it is inherently useless for the most
part. The crafting system allows you to take gems called ‘oculi’ that you
collect from the overworld which can then be equipped to each of your
characters weapons, armour, and trinkets to give them additional stats boosts
when in combat such as elemental damage (fire, water, earth, lighting or light)
as well as elemental resistance and an additional stat depending on which oculi
you attach to said characters trinket such as HP or MP.
All in all
it’s a nice little system, though the interface seems to be in much need of
refinement as the crafting screen doesn’t show each oculi’s description which tends
to get a tad frustrating at times when you have no idea what you have just made
until you go to equip said oculi to a character. In addition to this the oculi
system, as I said before, is inherently useless for the most part, with the possible
exception of boss fights, as no matter what elemental damage or resistance you
put on your sword or armour, the games AI will counter your counter you with up
to 2 random enemies each fight who are resistant to your elemental damage. Or
in the case of the endgame boss, you will set up all your oculi to counter the
last level boss and then the game will the drop you into the endgame boss fight
without giving you any clear chance to set up your oculi for the final fight.
As
for the games difficulty, the whole game feels rather easy when left its
default difficulty. The endgame boss suffers especially in this regard as she
is just as easy to defeat as every other boss in the game which doesn’t just
come across as disappointing but also rather cheap. As such I strongly
recommend that you look at setting the game to the harder difficulty if you’re
looking for any form of challenge from your experience. In addition, if you
don’t want to take on the game alone, Ubisoft has you covered as Child of Light boasts a local only Co-Op system, where a second
player takes control of Igniculus and aid you in battle. Also, mentioning
Igniculus, the game supports both controller and keyboard & mouse and I
have to say that, after playing with both, keyboard & mouse wins out easily
as it allows a much more fluid use of Igniculus in and out of battle and so, as
such, I strongly recommend that you buy this game on PC over console wherever
possible.
And with that the time comes again for me
to pass down my final verdict upon this game.
Child of Light is a charming little game
that comes with a great art style and a beautiful soundtrack as well as one of
the most fun combat systems that I have played in a while and clocking in at
over 24 hours in playtime, without doing all the exploration and side quests,
it can hardly be criticised of being short. However, the story, though
ambitious, suffers from its Shakespearian style which leaves parts of the
dialogue in a confusing mess at times and trivial in nature at others. The game
is also too easy on the standard difficulty and the endgame boss is
disappointedly easy which is, in my opinion, inherently cheap and more than a
touch annoying.
With
that all said however, the game was indeed a lot of fun to play and, though
many would disagree, I really did enjoy the story and writing style and it was
nice to play an Ubisoft game for once that wrapped the story up neatly for a
change rather that throwing in a cliff-hanger at the last moment. That said
however, I can’t really say the game is particular grown up. Yes it’s dark at
times but at the same time it is also light hatred and never malicious. As such
I think this game would be perfect for kids to play and would be a great
stepping stone to get into the whole area of classic RPG’s in general, but
that’s just my stance on it.
And so, with that said. I hereby
give Child
of Light a solid…
6/10 – Good
And with that Ladies and Gentlemen. I am
the Guardian and I thank you dearly for reading. Goodbye and be safe.
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