Child of Light: Early impressions
In my thirst to find a new metroidvania game I bought this one because it is "kind of" metroidvania-esque. It also bought it because it is an older title and it was something like $3. I figured, why not?
src
There are a lot of people out there that have a hatred for Ubisoft for some reason but since I don't know what that reason is and it never applied to me, I didn't consider that a factor. I don't like how they ask you to create an account but at least they allow you to not do so. I don't have many PS Network friends from real life or otherwise and I rarely play online multiplayer games, therefore I never grew my "friends" section. Apparently the only thing that you are missing out on by not getting an Ubi-account or whatever it is called is that you can't gift your friends any gems. Since i have 3 friends in total in my network there is very little chance they would even want said gems so I just skipped it.
src
Child of Light has what I consider to be a very beautiful art style that is kind of retro. Maybe it is hand-drawn or something like that. I dont' know and I don't care enough to look that up. Instead, let's just talk about what I consider to be the pros and cons of the game so far
Pro: Very good storytelling
In story-driven games, especially if they are translated from Japanese, the dialogue can become something of an annoyance rather that something that actually adds to the game. This is NOT the case with Child of Light.
src
Not only do they have a wonderful fantasy story but it is also very poetic. The dialogue is all in rhyme and if you think about how difficult it would be to make a compelling story anyway, imagine how difficult it would be to accomplish that as well as make nearly every sentence poem-like? I'm not really a fan of poetry or anything, I just like it when studios put so much effort into assuring that the story is good and they definitely did this with Child of Light
Con: Repetitive combat
Normally I quite enjoy turn-based RPG's but I actually wasn't expecting this when I started this game. I was actually a bit disappointed to see that this is how the combat is going to happen. Perhaps it gets better later in the game but the instances start to all feel the same pretty fast. They do have some interesting aspects to the combat such as being able to time your strikes perfectly in order to "interrupt" an opponents attack but for the most part it is the usual strike strike maybe a spell here and there, defend, wait, do it again type thing.
src
So for people that don't enjoy turn-based RPG aspects, you are definitely not going to enjoy this game. Maybe it gets better later, I can't say as I am only a few hours into the game at this point.
Pro: Fantastic music
Music can make or break a game in my mind. There are games that I really enjoy such as Chronicles of Teddy that have worse than NES graphics but have an absolutely captivating soundtrack. To me, this is a game-changer as far as overall ambiance and "fun" is concerned and Child of Light has some of the best music I have heard in a while.
Pro: RPG and metroidvania mix?
While this might not be the first time it has been done: In fact, it almost certainly isn't. It, thus far, has kind of worked. you'll be standing somewhere looking at an area that you can't get to and you are thinking to yourself "how the hell do i get up there?" only to later realize that the item that you need to get to that cliff is not yet in your possession. You'll only make this mistake a time or two before you don't really even try to get to things that are just out of reach.
src
For example, you gain the ability to fly relatively early on in the game and this REALLY opens things up in the areas that you just walked past early on in the game. I would say that this may actually open things up a bit TOO much because if you are like me you now spend loads of time exploring all the skyward areas to find mostly nothing is up there. This brings me to my next point.
Con: Mostly useless rewards in chests
The discovery of a chest needs to be a wonderful experience IMO. If these chests contain something that you already have 20 of like a healing potion or something like that, it kind of makes chest discovery something you don't really even look forward to anymore
src
Hooray! More useless crap!
For me, I would much rather the chest not even be there than to open it up to discover it has some garbage loot that I already don't use the dozens of which I already have. Again, maybe this changes later in the game but thus far, I haven't really found anything of interest in the 20 or so chests that I have discovered.
Overall early opinion
This is a great casual game this is visually appealing and the soundtrack is one of the best I have heard in recent times. This game will only appeal to people that don't mind turn-based RPG combat because that is all it is going to have at all, ever. My love for this type of combat is waning over time but I still have some affinity towards it. I don't think this is going to be a terribly difficult game to complete so I will likely end up doing so.
It's only a couple of dollars so if you are into RPG's maybe your opinion will be similar to my own: Why not?