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Child of Light
PC (Steam)
Something Good from Ubi?
4/5 stars
Ubisoft is one of the Big Three videogame publishers that, in my expert opinion, are dragging the industry through the muck for the sake of profit over the betterment of the medium. Ubisoft is also a French company.
As a Big Evil French Company, Ubisoft is responsible for a lot of the banality that has permeated modern “AAA” game development, what with annual releases of bland franchises (like ‘Assassin’ s Creed’ and ‘Tom Clancy’). Even dating back to a time before they became Big and Evil (they were always French), Ubisoft produced the uninspired character-driven platformer franchise, ‘Rayman.’ In general, I am perfectly happy to ignore Ubisoft products and pretend they don’t exist, as they offer very little in the way of what I want out of gaming.
In recent years, however, Ubisoft, like its kin in the Big Three, has decided that the critical acclaim heaped upon small, Indie games is too tempting to ignore. Thus the gigantic publisher has endeavored to produce a handful of smaller-scale and one-off games to ‘prove’ that it still hasn’t lost touch with the way it used to be before the 7th Gen happened and it became one of the gigantic boots on the throat of modern gaming. The first small-scale product out of Ubisoft was the abysmal “From Dust,” which seemed to prove that Ubisoft is incapable of making good games, regardless of scale.
“Child of Light,” however, comes as an incredible surprise. Not only is it a Turn-Based RPG in a time when that genre has fallen out of vogue and is commonly found being slandered up one side and down the other by shooter fanboys, but “Child of Light” is actually… good!
Presentation
“Child of Light” is built in the same UbiArt 2D framework as recent ‘Rayman’ games (specifically, “Rayman Origins” and “Rayman Legends”). Almost all of the graphics are hand-drawn 2D assets animated by the framework, with a few key characters appearing as low-detail polygon models overlain with hand-drawn textures. The result is a game that looks like a pop-up book drawn with colored pencils that has magically come to life. This whimsical art style fits perfectly with the overall fairytale themes of the game.
The soundtrack is a collection of lovely classical music, mostly piano. There are a number of very catchy tunes, including a beautifully performed vocal piece during the ending. The voiceacting could be better however, as there is only a female narrator whose voice sounds like it is constantly on the verge of cracking. None of the characters have voiced lines, which is a real shame.
The only thing preventing me from giving “Child of Light” a perfect score for Presentation is the fact that it is an Ubisoft game, and thus it has unnecessary DRM. As a digital-only game, there is no way to be free of the DRM shackles. On consoles, players have to deal with the draconian DRM attached to the Nintendo e-Shop, the PlayStation Store, or the Live Marketplace. On PC, where the game is sold on Steam and Ubi’s own Steam knock-off, Uplay, players are stuck with Uplay no matter what, which is quite annoying. If Ubisoft removed the DRM and put “Child of Light” up for sale on GOG.com, they’d be doing everyone a huge favor.
Story
“Child of Light” is a very “Chronicles of Narnia”-esque fairytale about a young girl living in 19th Century Austria who suddenly finds herself drawn into another world. This other world, named Lemuria after the lost continent theorized by 19th Century biologist Philip Sclater, exists on the other side of the mirror, and is currently suffering under the lightless rule of an evil queen who has stolen away the sun, moon, and stars.
Our protagonist, Aurora, is, naturally, the Chosen One who must set out on a quest to liberate Lemuria’s light, all while struggling to return to the real world and the bedside of her terminally ill father.
Throughout her quest, Aurora meets a large number of strange, creative fairytale creatures, most of whom end up joining her cause and traveling with her. Each of these characters has a ‘plight’ that consists of either a side quest or a portion of the main quest, providing them with some bit of back story and character development. “Child of Light” handles character interactions among party members in an interesting way, as each new party member will have a short conversation with an existing party member after each battle until all of them have had a chance to chat.
While “Child of Light” isn’t 100% creative in its storytelling, relying on predictable tropes as narrative keystones, it has enough novel ideas and a good enough execution that any borrowed ideas can be readily forgiven.
Another thing that makes “Child of Light” stand out, but which ultimately makes the storytelling weaker, is the fact that every bit of spoken dialog in the game forms rhyming couplets. One character even has the rather amusing personality quirk of always botching their rhymes and needing to be corrected by another party member. But while the poetic nature of the game’s writing is incredibly novel, the execution frequently must make some incredible stretches in order to create rhymes, and the fact that all dialog must rhyme means that there is less of it than there could be, as the entire game takes less than 20 hours to experience.
Gameplay
“Child of Light” is a classic style Turn-Based RPG that has clearly taken some inspiration from the ‘Grandia’ series in the way its battle system operates. Outside of battle, Aurora leads her party through 2D environments in a minimally Metroidvania-eque manner of exploring an interconnected world, searching out secrets, and acquiring a small number of upgrades (very early in the game) that unlock additional means of moving around. Environments are scattered with treasure chests and free-floating Stardusts – the former providing consumable items and Oculi, the latter providing one-time permanent stat boosts to a given party member.
Oculi are gemstones which form the entirety of the game’s available equipment. Characters can equip one Oculus on their weapon, one on their armor, and one as an accessory, but otherwise character gear remains unchanged. It is also possible to craft better Oculi by combining existing Oculi according to pre-set formulae. It is a bit annoying that “Child of Light” doesn’t have any form of currency or shops, as it means players are reliant on finding the finite treasure scattered throughout the world or receiving goodies as random drops after a battle. Consumables are in overabundance in the game’s Normal difficulty (which has been insultingly renamed to ‘Casual’ in an update patch that did nothing else), but the Hard mode (now renamed to ‘Expert’) might see players hitting the wall with regard to consumables.
Any RPG is really only as good as its story and battle system. “Child of Light’s” combat allows the player to command two party members against teams of up to three enemies. Every boss battle involves a huge boss enemy with two weaker minions. Character and enemy icons appear on a sliding meter at the bottom of the screen. When an icon hits a mark near the right side of the meter, the player can issue a command and the icon must slide through the final ‘Casting’ portion of the meter before the command is performed. While Casting, any hit to a character/enemy cancels their turn and bumps them leftwards on the meter, in the style made famous by ‘Grandia.’ However, “Child of Light” at times actively discourages players from playing the game ‘correctly’ by giving enemies (typically bosses) special counter attacks that allow them to do terrible things to the player’s team if they have a move canceled.
The player can freely cycle between the entire cast of party members simply by choosing the swap option on a character’s turn, all without losing any progress on the meter. This mix-and-match party building allows for plenty of nifty strategy, and combines well with the player-customizable skill trees possessed by each character. When it comes down to it, though, the fact that the player only has two active party members at a time can be problematic, especially in situations where a lot of healing is needed, as having a team of two with a dedicated healer really limits the opportunity to perform any other actions, especially when compared with the traditional RPG team sizes of three or four active members.
Overall
“Child of Light” is an incredibly pleasant surprise from the bowels of Ubisoft. Not only is it eye-catching and creative, but it is a surprisingly well-built RPG. It could stand to be a bit longer and a tad less streamlined in its mechanics (more party members at a time, options for buying and selling items, etc.), but is otherwise a solid little faux-Indie title that I don’t hesitate to recommend.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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