{"id":11962,"date":"2014-06-06T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T00:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=11962"},"modified":"2014-06-01T01:50:25","modified_gmt":"2014-06-01T01:50:25","slug":"child-of-light-360-xbox-one-wii-u-pc-ps3-ps4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/06\/child-of-light-360-xbox-one-wii-u-pc-ps3-ps4\/","title":{"rendered":"Child of Light (360, Xbox One, Wii U, PC, PS3, PS4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CHILD_BOX\"<\/a>Young Princess Aurora happily lives with her father, the king.\u00a0 But one day she falls into a deep sleep and wakes in a strange, new magical land.\u00a0 She soon meets a talking firefly and is given the power of flight, and is tasked with the job of saving this world.\u00a0 She must return the moon and the stars to their rightful places, and thwart the evil plans of the dark queen Umbra.\u00a0 Along the way she\u2019ll meet a colorful cast of characters who will fight alongside her, including a jester, a merchant mouse, and many more.\u00a0 Child of Light is a downloadable gem for nearly all current consoles that is one part 2-D platforming and one part tried-and-true turned based RPG gameplay, and it\u2019s also one of the best games this year so far (Xbox 360 version reviewed here).<\/p>\n

When exploring the magical land of Lemuria, you\u2019ll walk or fly around in a 2-D, side-scrolling fashion.\u00a0 But you\u2019ll still need to avoid obstacles while searching for treasures and other goodies.\u00a0 When you bump into an enemy, the screen changes to a typical turn-based RPG battlefield.\u00a0 Try to sneak up on enemies from behind to strike first.\u00a0 When fighting enemies, you\u2019ll trade blows when it\u2019s your turn to attack, and you must use physical blows and magical spells to whittle down the hit points of your foes until they\u2019re all defeated.\u00a0 You\u2019ll gain experience when you win, and when you level up you can divvy out skill points to increase your stats and skills for you and your party.<\/p>\n

Your firefly companion plays an important role in the game, too.\u00a0 Using the second analog stick, you can move your firefly around and shine light by pushing a button.\u00a0 When out on the field, your firefly can help you nab hard to reach items, open certain treasures, trigger light-operated switches, and even blind monsters with light so you can sneak past.\u00a0 In battles, you can heal your party by shining light over them, or blind monster with light, too.\u00a0 This is especially handy because on the bottom of the battle screen is a gauge which shows who will attack next.\u00a0 If you can successfully slow down monsters by blinding them, and then hitting them before they can attack, you can keep them from using their turn!\u00a0 It adds an extra bit of strategy to fights.\u00a0 Best of all, a second player can pick up another controller and take control of the firefly for you!<\/p>\n

One other unique aspect is that you\u2019ll collect lots of different gems as you progress.\u00a0 You can combine gems to make new and more powerful ones, and then equip them to your characters to give them elemental attacks and defenses, and other stat boosts.\u00a0 There are also lots of hidden secrets and sidequests, too.\u00a0 The graphics have a wonderful, hand-drawn watercolor painted look to them, and the music is hauntingly beautiful, too.\u00a0 It kind of reminds me of one of my favorite newspaper comic strips called Little Nemo in Slumberland, which was popular in the early 1900\u2019s.\u00a0 Capcom even made a Little Nemo game on the NES which I loved as a kid, and that\u2019s what got me interested in the comic strip in the first place.\u00a0 I recommend doing research on it if you\u2019re curious.<\/p>\n

Really the only problems I have with the game are personal preference quibbles.\u00a0 There is no currency earned in the game, so you can\u2019t buy and stockpile helpful healing items.\u00a0 So you\u2019ll need to use your items carefully and sparingly.\u00a0 Luckily there are plenty of other ways to heal yourselves.\u00a0 I also wish you had more control over saving your game.\u00a0 It saves automatically but I wish I could save when I wanted as well (actually you can if you switch gems out in the menu).\u00a0 Some RPG veterans may find the gameplay too simplistic and the adventure over too quickly, but personally I prefer a shorter RPG experience nowadays.\u00a0 Most of today\u2019s RPGs are too long and meandering anyway.\u00a0 At any rate, I highly recommend this title and I think it\u2019s one of the best games of this year so far!<\/p>\n

\"CHILD_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Child of Light is rated E10 with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence, and Use of Alcohol and Tobacco.\u00a0 While you do trade blows with enemies with slashes and magical blasts, you really aren\u2019t shown actually hitting anything, and defeated characters just fall down and disappear.\u00a0 Some of the monsters are a little scary looking, but nothing too bad. There are people shown smoking pipes and there is a bar and allusions of people drinking too much, but that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 Really the best reason why this game is better for older kids is the high level of reading skill required (the text is all charmingly in rhyme, though), and the slightly complex nature of the gameplay.\u00a0 But kids who cut their teeth on RPGs like Pokemon should have no trouble here, and a younger player can always take control of the firefly.\u00a0 It\u2019s really a great game for the whole family that plays like a charming bedtime story come to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young Princess Aurora happily lives with her father, the king.\u00a0 But one day she falls into a deep sleep and wakes in a strange, new magical land.\u00a0 She soon meets a talking firefly and is given the power of flight, and is tasked with the job of saving this world.\u00a0 She must return the moon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11962"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11965,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11962\/revisions\/11965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}