Do you love classic SNES RPGs like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger? What about the gorgeous visuals of Rayman Origins and Legends? How about the stylish visual, audio, and written poetry of movies like Amelie?

If you answered "yes" to any of those three questions, then Ubisoft's Child of Light is a game that you will absolutely need to play when it's released at the end of this month. Last fall, Andrew Goldfarb and I explained at length why Child of Light's lean, adept take on its classic JRPG roots completely won us over in the short 30 minutes we spent playing through a dungeon cooperatively -- take a look at that preview for a solid summary of the game's basic mechanics. Well, seven months later, I had a chance to trek my way through the opening three hours of Ubisoft's latest trip through the stunning world of UbiArt Framework, and I'm overjoyed to say that it completely lived up to and exceeded my expectations.

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Child of Light strips away the pomp, fat, and cliche from the modern JRPG -- think bloated length and a stereotypical story -- and does an incredible job of bringing the genre back to its 16-bit roots. Battles are swift and smartly rely on a Grandia II-esque race meter at the bottom of the screen that rewards well-timed attacks with staggered enemies, while also punishing your mistakes with your own characters losing their turns. Bosses specifically made for some tense, satisfying encounters. In Child of Light, you need juggle elemental affinity, party member abilities, and what gear you have equipped going in, all while keeping a constant eye on your battle meter.

Though Child of Light is undisputedly beautiful at first glance, it's the little details that make this fresh take on a fantasy world completely shine. Your hero Aurora is a young girl, so when she swings her massive sword in battle, she has to heave into it with her entire body. When she takes a particularly devastating hit from an enemy, she gets knocked backwards and loses her crown, which she quickly scampers to in order to retrieve it. And although you might miss it if you're intently focused on a battle, the background is crammed with moving details that really help enrich the feel of the world and make the entire game feel whimsical.

That's the word I've been looking for. It's hard to convey just how whimsical Child of Light is until you've gotten your hands on it. The story's told through spoken narration and written dialogue, all of which is written in iambic pentameter. That's right, it's an RPG that entirely rhymes front to back. What's more is that the opening of the story I played is really fantastic. While Aurora's arc of being whisked away from the real world and forced to journey back to her home has melancholy notes, her interactions with many of her strange party members -- from jesters abandoned by their circus to manic dwarves trying to rectify an avian curse -- are kept refreshingly light. Aiding the literally poetic writing is a fantastic score that knows when to swell, as well as when to stay silent.

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As much as I wanted to use my three hours with the game to make as much progress as possible, I found poking around every nook and cranny of the world to be irresistible. Traversal through the gorgeous, painterly world is all handled on a 2D plane, but is rife for exploration thanks to Aurora's ability to fly. Whenever I ventured off the beaten path, I found new party members to recruit, floating sonnets that provided the kind of human introspection rarely seen in RPGs, and stockpiles of precious gems that could be equipped for stat upgrades, or combined to create even stronger jewels. That last part about upgrades is especially important -- Child of Light's battle system wisely rewards you with experience points at a steady enough interval that I found myself moving another step across the sprawling skill tree after every other battle or so.

I spent my time with Child of Light's opening wearing a big dumb grin wide across my face. It's a gorgeous, lean, and smart reimagining of the classic RPGs that I grew up on through the '90s. Though their content couldn't be any more different, the thing it kept bringing to mind was South Park: The Stick of Truth. The way both games wholly embrace their world and aim at delivering a JRPG experience without any of the fluff that generally bogs down the genre is so completely appreciated by me. If the rest of the game is as creative, gorgeous, and entertaining as the opening three hours, Child of Light will be one of 2014's premiere RPGs.

Marty Sliva is an Editor at IGN. He absolutely can't wait to dig his teeth into Child of Light. Follow him on Twitter @McBiggitty