Elegance. It's a word I've rarely found applicable where video games are concerned, but there's no better way to describe what Ubisoft has achieved with Child of Light. With its earthy, hand-painted art style and charming character designs, it deftly sidesteps the tropey land mines that have littered the RPG landscape for the better part of a decade. Yet it still pays loving homage to what's come before it with enjoyable exploration and puzzle solving, and a combat system that's second to none. The intelligent simplicity with which it's been crafted makes it both easy to grasp, and rewarding to master in a way that very few RPGs can match.

Loading

From one screen to the next, Child of Light commits fully to its hand-crafted aesthetic. Each stunning, water-color backdrop looks ready to be framed and hung in an art gallery. That's not strictly because of the high level of overall quality, but also due to how warm the characters and environments all feel. Dark silhouettes of gnarled, ancient trees scroll through the foreground, adding a sense of depth to painterly forests, and oppressively dreary caverns give way to towering windmills amidst rolling hillsides.Each area possesses a rare, naturalistic beauty that words honestly fail to capture.

The endearing, if slightly forced Shakespearean iambic pentameter reinforces the fairytale sensibilities of the plot, but it also kept me from getting fully absorbed in the characters. There’s a travelling jester who can’t figure out how rhyming works, a love-sick mouse archer, and most importantly, a young girl named Aurora who’s trying to save her father rather than the other way around. None of them adhere to the overly worn, widely accepted conventions of powerful men and sexualized women, and the motley cast is all the more memorable for it. Aurora’s transformation from a frightened child to the hero of her own story is framed relatably by filial strife, making her journey feel deeply personal despite the broad strokes it’s painted with.

This feeling of warmth and sentimentality can be seen in every aspect of Child of Light, from the character portraits in the menus, to the lovingly detailed hit animations in battle. The net result is an experience that feels less like a power fantasy, and more like the cherished memory of a childhood bedtime story.

Some modern RPGs suffer by either abandoning too much of the choice and depth that first made the genre interesting, or by piling on needless, bloated systems that don't add anything to the experience. Child of Light makes neither of these mistakes, striking a near-perfect balance across each facet of its gameplay. Loading

Its biggest success is the combat system, which skillfully mixes turn-based and real-time elements. Icons move along a bar at the bottom of the screen, indicating when you and your opponents get to act next. Scoring hits on an enemy who's winding up for a big spell interrupts them, canceling their move, and sending them back on the timeline. This creates a constant tension, forcing me to plan two steps ahead while looking for chances to interrupt, and keeping enemies from doing the same. That fusion of big-picture planning, and second-to-second awareness kept me feeling like a tactical genius battle after battle.

A village of crows?

Your spritely helper Igniculus also plays a vital role in combat. You (or a friend in co-op) control him independently with the right stick, slowing down foes, healing allies, and grabbing health and mana pickups when necessary. You’re doing all this while switching characters in and out of the fray to capitalize on their assortment of well-tuned spells and abilities. Enemy encounters, especially the boss fights, are balanced tightly around the tools you've been given, so while the tool box isn't huge, every piece of hardware has an application. Armor spells actually add a noticeable amount of survivability, and crowd control abilities like Hinder, and paralyze work 100% of the time, even against bosses. Every card in the deck feels like an ace when you use it at the right moment.

Shining in the darkness...

Even great RPGs struggle to make what happens between scraps interesting, but Child of Light nails this too. Giving us the ability to fly almost right away is a smart touch, one that invited me to explore constantly for mini-boss encounters, side-quests, and collectibles. Igniculus proves useful here again, helping you solve puzzles, stunning enemies, and lighting your way through dark caverns. Granted, most of this will look and feel familiar to RPG veterans, but it all worked well enough to hold my attention outside of combat. Like everything else in the 12ish-hour-long adventure, it does just enough to be engaging without feeling cluttered or ungainly.