PLATFORM: Windows – PC ¦ DEVELOPER: Ubisoft Montréal ¦ PUBLISHER: Ubisoft
RELEASE DATE: 29/4/2014
The phrase ‘If looks could kill’ springs to mind when reflecting on my time spent with Ubisoft’s ‘indie’ RPG, Child of Light. Aptly so, as in invoking that cliché I find myself rather relishing the swift death that never came upon first taking in its gorgeous visuals. At least then I wouldn’t have been privy to the paint-drying drudgery and misguided attempts at charm that lay within.
Child of Light is an insidiously average game in that its mediocrity is efficiently masked by the phenomenal art direction. The pastiche storybook environments and character designs are filled with a charm that betrays the amount of care and effort that has gone into their crafting. Sadly, the visual elements are the only part of the game with any real substance – everything else feels, superficial.
The most notable example of this, with no surprise, is in the story. Princess Aurora is dead – stricken down in her sleep by an illness, vaguely characterised as a ‘chill’. However, Instead of passing on to the great beyond, she wakes atop an altar in the mysterious land of Lemuria. Unsure of where she is, or why she is there Aurora, with the help of a new friend, Igniculus the firefly seeks to find a way home. On their journey they will make new friends and together overcome the malevolent creatures of darkness that stand in their way. The narrative structure is fairy-tale simple by design – in keeping with the storybook aesthetic – the hook, and subsequently, the problems come from the stories delivery. Everything, from dialogue to expository collectibles is told in rhyming verse.
At first this seems an interesting and original way of exploring a game narrative. However, after a short time it becomes clear that this is nothing more than a desperate attempt to cover up inadequate design with ‘quirk’ and ‘charm’. The use of poetic verse as a way to make an otherwise simplistic tale more interesting would be fine, but it is executed so poorly. The writing flip-flops between rhyming schemes on a whim, showing no care or consideration to structure or flow, the role of syllables is almost always ignored, leading to clumsy, stunted rhymes, and the pronunciation of words in a few of the narrated sections are broken to fit in a way that would make even Kanye West blush.
Worse still, since the entire cast speaks in broken stanzas it’s impossible to know them as characters. No one has a voice of their own, they stumble all over each other, finishing each other’s sentences in a desperate attempt to fit whichever rhyming scheme is host to the current verse and at the same time come across as whimsical. Ironically, it just comes off as flat, clunky and uninteresting. Child of Light relies entirely on the ‘idea’ of poetry to make it appear charming rather than using actual poetic technique to present an engaging narrative.
Mechanically Child of Light feels just as half-hearted – there is absolutely no fun to be had wandering this wonderfully illustrated world – traversal is a senseless chore. This is due to one silly design choice which renders any kind of level design utterly pointless. Very early on Aurora is granted the power of flight, meaning that she can go anywhere – all the time – with nothing to hinder her progress. From this point on the environments may as well be completely flat. With full access to everywhere in the game, there is no need for exploration, backtracking or platforming. All that is left is to drift from one ungratifying plot point to the next.
As a matter of fact all of the systems are similarly revealed to you at the beginning of the game. There is no gear to obtain or upgrade and you cannot customize the characters in any meaningful way. Even the combat, the only truly RPG element to the game, reveals all of its secrets from the outset.
The battle system is a pretty faithful approximation of the one found in Grandia II, first released for the Dreamcast at the turn of the century. It’s a turn based system where characters stack actions on a timeline that runs along the bottom of the screen, the interesting thing is that all actions have a start-up time and if an enemy is attacked during this period it will cancel their action and knock them back on the timeline. Of course this can happen to you as well but it is a fairly gratifying risk reward system with enough nuance to be entertaining for a short time. It’s a solid system, as it was over a decade ago – the problem is that it doesn’t do anything original with the concept, nor does it develop over the course of the game. The rules of combat at the start are exactly the same as they are at the end. Again, simplicity is fine but when there is no variety it lacks a sense of progression, and without progression it’s just kind of…boring.
Conclusion
Child of Light is a disappointment. What at first looks to be a beautiful and charming blend of Japanese and Western design turns out to be nothing more than a façade – no amount of artistic talent can distract from what is ultimately a hollow experience. Mechanically unambitious, and poorly conceived, who knew Ubisoft could write such bloody awful poetry?
spoiled broth 