simpleek

April has been a balanced month of being active, as the spring weather has made it impossible for me not to be outside, and staying in to recharge those batteries when I may spend too much time being social. It’s during those stay in and rest days that I have devoted some time into playing this month’s video game challenge pick. To wrap up the month, let’s dive into my progress report.

Child of Light is an adorable fantasy game that is both beautiful and charming to get lost in. The characters and music are enjoyable from start to finish and Aurora’s journey home to her father is a simple plot that hardly feels boring. With ten chapters in total, the game is fairly short and probably easy to complete in a few weeks than a month if you have time to do a marathon session with the game.

Gameplay overall is pretty straightforward and not difficult to pick up. As I’ve mentioned in my previous announcement post, the game feels really similar to a Final Fantasy game where the battle system is all about tactics and strategy. Every time your characters level up, they each have their own unique skill tree to enhance their stats or unlock better and more powerful abilities that will be more useful in the next fight. There are some minor side missions available to play, if you so choose, but I mainly stuck with doing the story missions. I played at least one side mission in the game and I felt it’s only good to play if you want to stretch out your time with the game or gain more items. There are also plenty of opportunities to level up, which is something you’ll want to do fairly often, as the game does get progressively more challenging.

There are only two difficulty options to choose from, casual or expert, and playing casual still doesn’t make this game a cakewalk. There were some creatures I had a hard time beating, if I wasn’t choosing the right character or method to vanquish them, or some boss fights did require a certain amount of strategic thinking and planned out timing to gain the advantage in battles. Despite the light challenges this game posed for me, Child of Light has been a much less stressful game to play, a necessity when my schedule didn’t always afford me a lot of time to play on some days. The only minor gripe I’ve encountered in this game was glitched achievements.

I’m no achievement hunter when it comes to unlocking every achievement in a game, but when it comes to simple achievements to unlock, like gaining a new character or completing a chapter in a story, I tend to want those unlocked and the points added to my gamer score. Playing the game on the Xbox One, I’ve only unlocked about four or five achievements for Child of Light but never unlocked the rest when I kept playing, even though I know I should have. Doing a quick Google search confirmed that this glitch wasn’t uncommon with other players who have experienced achievements not unlocking properly. Unfortunately, the only fix to get the achievements I was robbed of during my first go with Child of Light is to delete the whole save file and start again. As much as I’m annoyed to not have those other achievements unlocked, I’m not sure if I have the time or motivation to want to play this game again for those missing achievements. I’m not saying I wouldn’t play the game again, but there are other games to move onto.

This leads me to where my progress stands with Child of Light. I can happily say this game is a completed success. While storytelling and plot isn’t groundbreaking, Child of Light does succeed in being a cute and fun game to play when you don’t have time to play a long drawn out RPG like Dragon Age or don’t want to deal with facing off against hoards of difficult enemies like Shadow of Mordor. This is the kind of game to play when you need a less stressful and time consuming game to fit into your already busy schedule. The length of the game may be off putting for those who want a longer game to play, but I think a game like this one is perfect for people like me who want a good game to play but just doesn’t have all the time in the world to spend several hours playing it until the end. If you’re into adventure with a touch of sweet whimsy, Child of Light may be the game for you.

Next week, I’ll be selecting my next game for May.