I'll be honest. I'm not a fan of sidescrollers, cartoons, or playing children. I definately have a preference for western over JRPGs. I also bought Child of Light on sale, for about 33% of its original price (which isn't very high). I wasn't expecting too much, but there was something about the game's trailer that enchanted me. It was a mixture of the beautiful watercolor backgrounds and the fine voiced narration. I therefore came to the game with rather mixed expectations.

I originally decided I would write this review halfway through the game, and was at that point completely enamoured with it. Child of Light does, despite being a very small game, many things very well. The atmosphere carries the game. The beautiful watercolor backgrounds, the fine animations, the sparse but extremely well done voiced narration, even the non voiced dialogues which are written in verse, all fit together wonderfully. Child of Light succeeds in transporting theplayer into its faery tale world. That may not be everyone's cup of tea, but Child of Light shows how to properly make a faery tale into a game.

The gameplay elements of Child of Light are also very well done. The inventory system for example is relatively simple. There are three basic gemstones, which are combinable into nine different colors (with one additional hard to make rare stone), and three different sizes. You can equip each stone into the armour, weapon, or accessory slot, which changes its effect. This leads to a lot of fun in the beginning of the game with experimentation, trial and error, and trying to figure out the best combination of stones for your characters.

Combat is also very streamlined, but fast. It is real time turnbased like in some of the Final Fantasy games and Septerra Core. What's really well done is that attacks have a speed and can be interrupted, and that if you know that one of your characters could have an attack interrupted, defending is a good option as it reduced incoming damage and makes your next action 70% faster. You also control a small firefly who can slow down one enemy. This makes timing important. With the exceptions of boss fights, combats play out very quickly. While you get up to seven characters in your party, only two of them can fight at once. However, you can switch out a party member when one of your characters can act. This is especially necessary in the late game boss fights, in which combining your party's powers is necessary for victory.

Though a typical sidescroller, Child of Light also offers opportunities for exploration. There are often alternative routes to reach the next goal. There are also treasures and secret rooms one could miss if one only travels straight from A to B. Many of these secret rooms are a series of traps or timed obstacles at the end of which one is rewarded with treasure chests. I'll admit that I'm no puzzle master, and often don't like puzzles in games. Either they're so simple that they seem like a chore, or they're so hard, I need to look on the internet for a solution. I was pleasently surprised by Child of Light's puzzles. They were never unfair, but often made me experiment and think. Even the timed obstacle courses are well done. Instead of having to make one perfectly timed action, you often have to navigate about five obstacles in a set amount of time. If you complete four (they all have small margins of error), you complete the course and get the loot.

Most of the challenges in Child of Light are also completely optional. You can, if you choose, grind out every battle, but you can simply avoid most of them. You firefly companion can blind most enemies for a few seconds, and unless they are guarding a treasure chest, you miss nothing (except some experience points) by flying by them. Also most of secret room full of traps are obstacles also aren't important to finishing the game. You can simply pass them up if they are too annoying.

Despite all of these good things, Child of Light has its problems. Once you've made it halfway through the game, you've seen everything it has to offer. While many RPGs suffer this problem, most of them are longer than eleven and a half hours.

While Child of Light's combats play out fast, and offer a decent amount of options, only the boss fights truly require a good deal of thought. The standard fights get repetitive after a while, and are in general farely easy. Also while you get more characters, you really don't get many more combat options. The protaganist Aurora, for example, can get very early on access to a self buff, a sword attack, and two very similar light attacks. Depending on how you invest you're skill points you can improve each ability and even get a variant of your attack ability, which hit all enemies. These abilities get stronger, but don't really change any. Also after getting your first four characters, the others don't really offer you many new abilities, with the one exception of the warrior Oengus, who can act as a tank. I skipped about half of the late game combats, simply because I no longer found them interesting.

Child of Light's inventory system also loses its interest late on. Once you've figured out what each gem combination does, you simply find one that works well, and finding new gems loses its thrill. This is especially true because getting the biggest gems require combining large numbers of gems. The number of gems you find doesn't increase dramatically, meaning each gem found has less and less benefit, and so you spend less and less time in the inventory screen. Also many gem combinations are only situationally good, and so once I found, for example, that a citrine makes for a universally good weapon gem, I simply equipped all of my damage dealers with them.

While Child of Light offers an enchanting world, it presents a rather typical faery tale, no matter how well told it is. There is nothing really surprising about how Child of Light's story unravels. That means while its enjoyable to read, there aren't really any elements of it which push you forward to make you want to know how it turns out. Also the characters, while likable, are pretty typical stereotypes without any real depth. These are minor gripes, in my opinion, but stronger characters and story could have helped offset the mechanical weaknesses of Child of Light's endgame.

Just for the record I like to make screenshots for my reviews. I couldn't do this in Child of Light. I had to do the Steam-Uplay thing and I couldn't get screenshots either in Steam or by conventional means. Also registering the game on Steam and Uplay is a minor annoyance, as it is with all Ubisoft games. Still if you've played any Ubisoft or EA game recently, you know how it works.

For me Child of Light is a solid three star game. I wasn't sad it ended, but I enjoyed the time I spent with it. The game mechanics are really well done, but it would have helped Ubisoft Montreal to give the player more variation in the second half of what is a rather short RPG. In many ways Child of Light is rather simple for an experienced RPG player, but has elements, like its boss battles, which could be a source of great frustration for someone inexperienced with complexer computer games. If you like faery tales and JRPGS, and aren't bothered by simple mechanics and short gameplay, then you'll probably enjoy Child of Light.