Child of Light

Child of Light stands out mainly as a fairy-tale styled side-scrolling RPG, with watercolor art and a combat system built around timing and turn order. By our assessment, its strongest quality is the presentation: it looks delicate, uses a storybook mood, and gives ordinary battles a softer shape than most genre games. The downside is that the writing and structure can feel simple next to more involved role-playing games, so the charm does a lot of the work. In practice it is a calm, pretty game with exploration, light puzzles, and battles that ask for attention without demanding constant speed. It sits between a platformer and a traditional RPG, which makes it gentler than heavy systems-driven games but less substantial than the big-name story adventures. Child of Light is mostly for players who want atmosphere first, and it stops being interesting if someone wants deep character builds or lots of mechanical bite.