RF Generation Message Board

This month we're taking a look at a game that has been on my radar since its release because of its unique style and almost universal critical acclaim. Also, it was developed and published by Ubisoft (yoo-bee-soft), a company well known for its prominent AAA series' such as Far Cry and Assassin's Creed.  

Child of Light is, incredibly, a turn-based RPG! Blending classic elements of Japanese RPG mechanics with a fresh watercolor art style and an innovative battle system, the game is easy to learn, difficult to master, and impossible to put down once you get started due to a provocative story and intriguing characters.

One of the great things about playing this game now is that it is pretty much the opposite of Diablo in almost every conceivable way. Where Diablo is brutal, dark, gritty, and unforgiving, Child of Light is relaxing, meditative, and colorful. I played Diablo in the morning over a hot cup of black coffee. I find myself playing Child of Light at night right before I go to bed. I loved Diablo, but I am finding Child of Light to be a perfect contrast to it.

The game is available on everything so there's no excuse not to join us!

Participants:
grayghost81
douglie007
disposed hero
raidou
zophar53
singlebanana
buriedonmars
crabmaster2000

Checkpoints
Week one - (4/1 - 4/8) - Chapter 1-3
Week two - (4/9 - 4/15) - Chapter 4-6
Week three - (4/16 - 4/22) - Chapter 7-8
Week four - (4/23 - 4/30) - Chapter 9-10

Tips and Tricks
-Explore every nook and cranny of the map for maximum lootage. Although you can rely on magic for much of the game, you may find you need to lean on items later on.

-Utilize Ignictus, especially in battle! Your little helper can heal you and slow down enemies on the timeline. Paying attention to Ignictus during battle will give you an incredible advantage.

-Don't get too comfortable with a specific set of party members. Experiment with different pairs, you may be surprised which ones work well with each other. Also (hint hint, wink wink) you never know who will actually be available for your party (from a story standpoint) at any given time.

-Put your headphones on if you can. The music and sound design in this game are breathtaking.

-At times, it can seem like almost your entire party is leveling up after every single battle. If distributing skill points every time gets annoying, put it off for a while, then do a bunch in a big chunk for each character. It can actually be way more satisfying to reach a powerful spell that once seemed way out of reach.

-Speaking of powerful spells, Unstoppable (full party) combined with Lull (full party) damn near break the game. You may think that should be under spoiler tags but it's not a spoiler, just a valid strat, my friend.

Announcement on today's front page. Who's joining us next month?

I'm in of course

I'll join in this month. I've been meaning to try this game since I bought it when it came out but have never gotten around to it. It's looks gorgeous.

I'm on a massive Vita kick right now, so I'm in.

I've been playing my handhelds more lately and have been interested in this game for a while, so I just picked up a copy for the Vita and will plan on playing through this next month.  Looking forward to it!

This has been on my backlog for a long time.  Count me in.

Tempted. Let me see if I can get it on vita


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Was told that Child of Light was a GOTM on Steam. Right now it's 50% off. Great timing!  Thanks BuriedOnMars!

If you need a copy for the Vita Russ, let me know. Tons of GameStops here with copies. Same goes for anyone else.

I don't want to speak for Shawn, but I think that I can safely state that Child of Light is a game you will not want to miss out on if you haven't played it yet.  As you know, we typically get started early so that we can map out the playthrough, and even though it's not my month to host, I find myself not being able to put this game down and thinking about during the long work lulls throughout the day.  It's as fun to play as it is beautiful and I don't want anyone to miss out on it.

Just got a copy traded into the store yesterday! Persona 5 is gonna eat up most of my gaming time this month, but if I can squeeze in some Child of Light I will

I feel that! Luckily you can either blast through CoL this weekend of play it when you take breaks from P5.

***

Welcome to the playthrough everyone!

Checkpoints are in the op but I'll just say the game is ten chapters long so you can chop it up however you like, but as always please keep any spoiler talk on schedule.

I was inspired by Rich's "tips and tricks" segment in Diablo last month to put in some of my own for CoL. They have also been added to the op.

Thank you all who are participating! I know there have been some crazy hot releases this year so far (I took two days off of work to play Persona 5 this coming week) so we really appreciate the participation.

Enjoy the game!

Trying to put as much time in as I can before Persona so I got to Chapter 7 tonight. Fairly quick paced game.

You're totally right about feeling like someone in your party goes up a level every after every damn battle. It feels lame when you don't go up a level!

I'm not really feeling the story so far. I played through Song of the Deep pretty recently and the story telling and art style feel super similar and I didn't get too into the story on that one either. Something to do with the way it's being told I think. Just not very captivating even if the premise is neat.

Feels kinda odd having so many party members when you can only ever have 2 active ones. Finn is my boy though and I've been sticking with him exclusively since he joined. Slammed out his path for the Lightning attack that targets all enemies and have been spamming that like crazy along with my own Slash All attack. Took a few battles for the combat to sink in, but it is a lot of fun. I basically ignore my little fire fly though. Once in a while I remember he is there and just plop him on a teammate to recharge their health.

Is there any sort of bonus for getting all the collectibles in a certain area? I'm only missing like 3 chests in the second spot and wasn't sure if it was worth trying to find them.

I had my headphones on in bed tonight while playing and it does sound pretty great. I don't like the battle victory music, but pretty much everything else has been fantastic.

My one big complaint is that as beautiful as the backgrounds, buildings, enemies, allies and NPCs are it's like they went out of their way to make your playable character the ugliest thing on screen. She is often glaringly polygonal in an entirely 2d environment. Not sure if that as done to make her stand out, like she doesn't belong there or something, but it is very distracting. Not a fan of that decision. If that character was changed I think this would be up there with Odin Sphere and Muramasa as one of the best looking and most artistic games, but as it is there is constantly one big gross eye sore on the screen at all times. Her profile pic in the menus is great though so I really don't know why they did that.

I havn't had to use a single item yet either. Seems weird for how often I've been collecting them. 

[img width=700 height=393]https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3844/33749156506_78db508012_o.jpg[/img] (https://flic.kr/p/TqifqJ)

Finished the game tonight. Was a lot shorter than I expected. I'll do my best to discuss without spoilers. I used 3 potions during the course of the game.....and that was it for items. I feel a little mislead in the item department since I open upward of 200+ treasure chests worth of stuff I largely didn't need to play the game.

I think it was also a mistake to show the player the skill trees available to them. Like I mentioned above I just stuck with Finn as my partner for the entire game (except when you are forced to use someone else story-wise). Being able to plan it out so that Finn was my Magic guy ad Aurora was my Muscle with some Light Magic that Finn was lacking made those two unstoppable. To the point that I beat the final and second to final boss without a single heal. They were putting out so much damage that the bosses little helper guys were out of the battle in 3 attacks. The bosses in this game are not threatening in the least once you kill their back up. 3 Star Lightening Attack and 3 Star Light Attack was wiping the board through the entire last couple dungeons even against enemies that were not vulnerable to those types of attacks. Made the combat a lot less interesting since I literally just did the same thing over and over with the occasional "darn I got interrupted...." then my second character would fry anything still standing. I almost exclusively was using "very long" attacks at the end was didn't get interrupted very often in battle as long as you used a defend when necessary. Made the whole battle system feel kinda meaningless as I learned to subvert it.

Child of Light really seems like an RPG-lite. Like a modern Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Incredibly easy and straight forward. Lots of rewards for little work (constant streams of items and gems, leveling up after each battle, very little progress required for story to advance, short game overall). It never requires you to actually learn how to use the systems effectively that are in the game to do well (gem crafting, item management, igniculus in battle, skill tree).

It also seemed like they were having trouble keeping up with the rhyming near the end. Igniculus would just pop into conversations that he wasn't a part of to add one single word that just happened to rhyme several times or they would use modern language that didn't fit the medieval Celtic feel of the game. The worst offender being when someone used the word "extreme" like they were a 90s neon-clad youth.

There was a side-quest near the end that I would have ignored if I realized it was optional that required me to backtrack to each area I had already visited and recruit Igniculus's buddies. It really showed off how small the world actually is when you can run across each area in like 1-2 minutes.

All in all I was thoroughly underwhelmed by everything Child of Light had to offer outside of it's art style and occasional song by the end of the game. Seems like it might be a great title for someone who is adverse to jRPG style games as an easier entry into the genre. They should have called it Child of Lite.......... ha............

Behold my game breaking Aurora!!
[img width=700 height=393]https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2873/33810823135_90988e15dc_o.jpg[/img] (https://flic.kr/p/TvKiLt)


PS - Child of Light wishes it was as cool as FFIX!

[img width=700 height=639]https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2820/33770632806_b1d0ea8dfb_o.jpg[/img] (https://flic.kr/p/TscjzL)

[img width=618 height=348]https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2938/33681965871_4cc538fb2b_o.jpg[/img] (https://flic.kr/p/TjmSZv)

I just got to the thorn tree and beat the giant.  I like the art also but agree the story is ok.  I have only found the jester so far.

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You are very, VERY early in the game.  The story gets more interesting as you get closer to the end.  I do agree with Crabby on in that there is something in how it is being told; it doesn't advance much throughout the game. It's simple and not an intense narrative. However, with that said, I could say the same thing about a game such as "The Legend of Zelda" or "A Link to the Past," granted not RPGs by formulaic standards, but still, games considered amazing classics where gameplay outweighs the story. 

I don't think that the gameplay is bad, but I do agree that some of it is wash and repeat....if you let it be. I think it's a shame that you decided to stick with one duo for the entirety of the game, as mixing it up and trying out different talents can be a lot of fun and make the experience much better. Just because the game doesn't force you to rearrange like others do, doesn't necessarily make it bad. I think making the personal choice not to flush the characters out more is a mistake.

I didn't notice any polygonal difference in my main character as it compared to the rest of the artwork in the game. Were you playing on the Vita, or another system?  Just curious as to whether this may be specific to a console.

Granted, CoL is not a very difficult game (though you can play the more difficult +edition a second time through if you want a challenge).  I don't fault the low difficulty and I think it's charm has to do with how it can be played by all level of gamers.  I know that the Vita even offers a "difficult" setting at the beginning, so I think the option is there for more challenge.  I think there is something to be said about shorter games like this that also have a lack of overbearing difficulty. I can appreciate what they are doing in opening the game up to less experienced players.  Though it has a few tweaks, I think it feels a lot like a more classic RPG and to me, that was refreshing.

I'm quite surprised that you are being so highly negative of this game Crabby, as I and several others who are decent and long-time RPG players seemed to have really enjoyed our time with it. To each their own, but I have to ask, do you think that possibly being in a hurry to finish CoL to be able to take in Persona 5 may have been a contributing factor to what seems to be an overly negative experience with this game?  I'm not sure that CoL, though it can be completed quickly, is a game that is intended to be rushed through.  My preference was to sit back, take my time, seek out the areas fully (whether I needed to or not), and enjoy the beauty that this game has to offer. 

Hey Crabby, do I have time to rush through this, before Persona 5?

@Rich - I think with something like Zelda LttP storywise is that you play for long stretches without story progression so when you get little sprinklings of story they seem more impactful. When you get dialogue every few minutes it's maybe too much. Not 100% confident with this just thinking out loud.


I think it's lazy design to not find inventive ways to encourage players to explore your game if that is the intention. When you've got a game that takes less than 10 hours to complete, but requires a relatively long time investment to improve characters long enough to make some of them viable/interesting coupled with the fact that there were 8 playable characters on my team throughout the game it seems unavoidable that several of them are going to get overlooked. I obviously started with Rubella as my teammate early on. Weak attack power and a focus on healing, a skill that you could easily replace with items/Igniculus/playing well, really made her unnecessary to the game since she doesn't have a relevance to the story either. Cut that character out or make them more interesting and useful.

Without giving too much away for late in the game I played an entire dungeon with a very physical character on my team. While it did change up the way I approached battles since I lost a big chunk of my firepower by not having Finn I had to rely more on Taunting and defense with one character while chipping away with the other.  The battles were still very simple and repetitive just longer.

Granted sticking to a team and trying my best to master them is how I play every RPG unless forced to do otherwise. I like finding characters that I either find interesting, like the design of, or sometimes seem the silliest and force them onto my team. They might not be the most synergistic or powerful, but they are the characters I like the best and I want to learn how to use them efficiently enough to beat the most challenging areas of a game. I even do this in action games with weapons. Duke kept complaining when I was playing through Mega Man 10 at his house that I wasn't exploring the new weapon choices available to me. I know how the Buster works and I feel comfortable using it unless forced to do otherwise. I finished Bloodborne with my starting weapon of the Hunter's Ax because I got so used to it I didn't want to put the time into learning the intricacies of mastering a new weapon when I found them and was still able to be successful on later bosses just by getting proficient with the Ax.

And judging by Ghost's tips and tricks section at the start there are more than one way to "break" the combat in this game ;)


I did play through this on the Vita. It really bugged me when she was in motion. Standing still it wasn't quite as glaring. But the times that it was the worst were when she faced the player. It looked like she was cut from another game and pasted into this one.


I wouldn't say I was rushing to finish. Just had a lot of spare time at work over the last few days to sink in. I would have simply put it on the back burner after P5 came out if I hadn't finished it by then. Most of the areas I found nearly all of the collectible items except in the final area where I stopped caring after noticing items weren't really necessary at that point. I took the time to explore the world and find little secrets and complete many of the side quests (including the flying pig hunt, lol). I think playing Song of the Deep so close to this may have made Child of Light not feel so unique and special since they share a lot in terms of design, story telling and art despite being in different genres.

Here's a couple screenshots to show you what I mean. Notice the father daughter dynamic in Song of the Deep that was also very much akin to Child of Light in the second pic. I know Child of Light came out earlier so it's not it's own fault, but I didn't play them in that order so it unintentionally flavored my experience I think.

[img width=700 height=393]https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2825/33831236965_4e7debb6a6_o.jpg[/img] (https://flic.kr/p/TxxW64)

[img width=700 height=393]https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3946/33017741963_f1a938ebf6_o.jpg[/img] (https://flic.kr/p/SiEyna)

This is not a game I ever see myself playing again, BUT depending on the person I could see myself recommending it to someone as an entry into the jRPG realm. I do see it's value, but this game obviously wasn't made to be played like I want to play it.

PS - No one wants to comment on how they stole the FFIX jesters!! Look at those facial markings, the ears, the hats!!

[img width=476 height=412]http://www.blogcdn.com/slideshows/images/slides/374/441/6/S3744416/slug/l/screen-shot-2015-12-19-at-10-36-12-pm-1.jpg[/img]

Trolls gonna troll....  If you have something game related to say here after actually playing the game, do it. If not, well....you know.



Okay, I'm understanding what you're talking about a little bit more now. My comments pertained to the overall story, while you seem to be talking about the stories of the side characters and the overabundance of dialogue that occurs after you find a new one.  I agree, that dialogue didn't add a lot to the story and was rather intrusive (i.e. slowed the game down).


I can agree to a point. While I did find some of the characters a little useless, I did play them all and worked out their talent trees to fit a certain style I felt necessary for establishing supporting roles.  For me, it was fun to swap them out during battles and have some fun with their different talents. Sure, you could play the entire game with two characters, but my curiosity and willingness to experiment with different combinations of party members got the better of me.  I guess this is just the way I tend to play these types of games, so to each their own.

I am very familiar with the physical character you mentioned that you get later in the game.  I really liked that character a lot and I think it changed the way I played the game a great deal.  I played in different spurts of party members with Aurora. I started with

Spoiler (hover to show)

Rubella of course, moved onto Finn, then to Norah, back to Finn & Robert, and finally ended with Onegus.

 Having a tanking toon was pretty cool and provided another way to play and yes, "break" the game.  As I mentioned before, I really didn't have a problem with the ease of this game and the ability to set it for more challenging play in the beginning and on a second playthrough (+) kind of negates any complaints of ease.  If anything, I think it, along with the art style, make the game more approachable for those being introduced to RPGs.  I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing, since it does offer a few more challenging options for the more experienced.


That makes sense. I've never played SotD, but can see how they are very similar.  Thanks for pointing this out!

As always, appreciate the comments Crabby! :)  

I meant the overall story. When I get a constant onslaught of dialogue boxes I tend to not get the excited when new dialogue boxes pop up, even if they are much more relevant to the overall plot.

I actually started New Game + this morning and selected Hard Difficulty to see if I could use my same tactics or if I needed to explore the game a bit deeper. I'm at chapter 6 now and still havn't lost a fight. Although there have been a few close calls and I've had to use Igniculus a lot more wisely than my first play. Even used a couple items in battle on a boss fight!

Rubella is useless though. Just terrible. Like the worst.

[img width=700 height=393]https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2836/33794812556_ea6185abfc_o.jpg[/img] (https://flic.kr/p/Tukfo1)

Yeah, she's pretty bad. Be cool if the duo had some special "Wonder Twin" powers. :)

Totally epic!

I started the game over the weekend and am probably around the halfway point now, and I'm really enjoying the game so far.  I have to agree that the default difficulty setting felt far too easy, but after a couple of battles I turned the difficulty up to Hard and feel that this is a more appropriate difficulty level for the game.  I've had a few close calls, but haven't gotten a Game Over yet.  I've been making good use of items and rotating my characters regularly (and I even make good use of Rubella's healing since I like to hoard my items as much as I can).

The only real gripe I have with the game right now, however minor it may be, is the Oculi system.  I actually really like the ability to equip the gems and gain an advantage over enemies of certain elements, but I just find it to be a pain to have to re-equip all of my characters' gems every time the enemies' elemental types change.

Yeah the Oculi system wasn't an issue on my initial playthrough because of the ease. I could see that being very frustrating in Hard Mode.

I have to agree with Steven about the Oculi system.  Switching those things in and out constantly was a pain in the ass. Plus, when crafting stronger Oculi, I found that I didn't have enough to spread out to all of my characters, since it took 3 to upgrade.  I would have preferred to not have separate Oculi stats for offense/defense/bonus?.  It would have been better if I gem could have served for fire prot, fire damage, and my bonus.  Plus, you had to remove gems from all of your players to upgrade and craft them, which was further aggravating. I think that this was a fairly complicated system (in terms of time dedicated to it, not difficulty) for such a short game and that minimizing it would have made it more efficient.  Just my 2 cents.  

This thread sure has gotten off to a rollicking start, which was certainly not what I was expecting! I love it though. I really appreciate the verbosity of everyone's thoughts.

Crabby, I can certainly see why someone with your history as someone who relishes in old-school, twitch based, "NES-hard" gameplay would find this game to be too easy, to the point where it turned you off. Everything you have written is valid from this viewpoint.

For me, as much as I love video games and they are a huge part of my life, I'm not very good at most of them. I tend to skew towards games that are easier, more pleasant, and more relaxing as opposed to going to gaming looking for a challenge. I'm of the mindset that life is stressful enough that I (mostly) choose leisure activities that help me escape that stress, not add to it.

I do know the difference between a game that is easy and a game that is too easy because of design flaws. I recently played Crusader of Centy, an action adventure game designed for children. Though it was easy and breezy overall, I never felt bored or insulted except for one boss battle. This particular boss was defeated with three hits before it could even move. That is poor design which made me gripe "too easy!" as a result.

As for Child of Light, it was definitely right in my wheelhouse and I would be hard pressed to point out any major design flaws for a player of average or below average ability like myself. I played on easy, and though I never game-overed, I had plenty of instances where things got pretty hairy and thus pretty thrilling. Yes, perhaps there are too many systems stacking to the player's advantage, but I love when games can be broken with the right combinations of tactics. Without getting too much into it, it reminds me a tiny bit of Symphony of the Night.

I also didn't really notice anything amiss with Aurora's model, but I can see it being one of those things you couldn't "unsee" once you noticed it.

Beat the game this afternoon. I would have beaten it earlier but one of the side quests was giving me some grief (two in the plain my eye!!)

As charming as the rhyming theme was, it bugged me, as it was a clear case of ambition outweighing ability.  Crabby mentioned that the rhymes got worse as the game went on, but I found that the game struggled on this front from start to finish.  Dialogue would sometimes shift from rhyming every second line to rhyming couplets.  There are also quite a few lines with forced rhymes, such as having two people speak on one line, odd lines being overly long syllabically, and "brrr".  The best thing about the rhyming dialogue was when Rubella would accidentally ruin it.

This made me laugh! (not when it happened in-game, I mean this comment)

Yeah, I can't deny that while charming, the rhyming dialogue can be a bit annoying.  It seems to be a valiant effort in the beginning, but it falls off in terms of quality toward the middle of the game.  Still, I think the rhyming dialogue gives it a child-like feel and conceptually works for a fairy tale type game, which this is.  I think I sent a message to Shawn at some point that this game is like a combination of Shakespeare and a Disney film.

So until you started talking about it. I didn't see the rhyming.  Lol dyslexia is a bitch, I read each line, but never seen it I just thought they talked odd

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I just finished Child of Light last night.  I'm not sure what happened, but this game really fell out of favor with me towards the end.  I think the problem for me was that the game really sticks to the same formula throughout, and I just got tired of it around the halfway point.  My play style probably factors in to this, as even the normal non-boss battles in the game tend to be longer than in other games, and I always felt like I had to fight every battle so I wouldn't become underleveled.  Although, I eventually dialed the difficulty back to Normal and started skipping text because I was ready to be done with it.  I don't want to sound overly negative about the game though since I feel like I enjoyed it overall and would probably recommend it if someone asked me about it.

Also, I noticed in the trophy list that there was a trophy for recruiting a character named Tristis.  I guess I just missed out on this character?

Yes, you must have missed that character as he is a little off the beaten path in the level where you fly upwards. Golem is the only usable character not in the original game and only available via DLC.

Ah, ok.  I was trying to be pretty thorough when exploring all the areas, but I guess I wasn't as thorough as I thought.

I think that when moving vertical, it's a bit easier to miss areas.

Speaking of trophies - this is the only game I have played where ALL of the trophies were bronze, except for 1 silver for beating the game.  No Platinum :(

Just finished the Diablo podcast. Felt quite terrible several times as you guys gushed about how great/excited you were for Child of Light. I feel like I should like this more than I did! I'm so sorry.......

No need to apologize. We like what we like. You put down some valid points about this game and it's surely not without fault.

I didn't realize how much praise this game got from media until hearing from you guys too. I wanna look into what else was released around the same period to see if that had an effect on how much love gets tossed onto this game.

No Trophies for me, I have been playing on the Wii U and I thought that Tristis was the brother of the other clown.  I found him, he was hidden in the area right after the giant took you to the top of the mountain.  I have no extra DLC.

I finished the Game... the last battle sucked, it didnt give you time to change crystals after the battle before. 

Sorry I haven't interacted more about this game here.  Very busy month so far...

I just wanted to thank Rich and Shawn for having me on the show!  It was a blast and I hope you all enjoy listening to it.  A lot of the earlier comments in this thread were discussed on the show so I'll save repeating myself here.

Just curious if people did play this on the "expert" or "casual" setting.  I think the wording of those setting are misleading.  I played on expert and the game felt right for someone like myself who has played a few JRPGs.  It felt like the normal setting to me.


We talked a bit about how the game at times doesn't give you a chance to prep before a boss fight.  If you die during the final boss (like I did) it spawns you right between the two.  So you have a chance to prep then and I was able to swapped all of my water oculi to light ones.  I agree with you though, it wasn't the best design.

Enjoyed having you on the show Kevin!  I hope that all of our participants will give it a listen in May.

Over all I liked this game, I don't know if i am going to find all the missed treasure.  Does it open up anything extra?

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I don't think so, though there's probably a trophy for it.

It's on the Wii U so no trophies

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