Child of Light: Finished.
Overall, I'm unimpressed by the game I have to say. I'm not fond of the interrupt mechanics because I never felt safe doing anything and enemies always felt like they had the advantage there, which I'm not really fond of in gameplay. It's especially insulting when enemies have cheap "Interrupt Counters" that PUNISH you for doing such things, making things like "high speed" punishing for you, but almost never the case with enemies. I vastly prefer Grandia's style of moves having interrupt properties, while others do not, as now it's a case of "What is optimal here?" I will say Interrupt counters aren't ALWAYS bad, but ones where the game actively punishes your team feels detrimental to the system, especially when it's something like "lol damage + paralysis, fuck you for learning the system!"
The other thing that I found problematic was fights had very little deviation in them; how hard it was really depended upon how many enemies you were fighting. 1 enemy = curbstomp, 2 enemies = alright, 3 enemies = this is a pain in the ass until one dies. Boss fights I felt were the exact same thing everytime; once ONE support dies, the fight just kind of falls apart. I think there was like one fight where-in I killed the support and had a reset and that was due to unexpected revival? Only fight I approached differently. yeah, the final had revival, but even then it was easier to kill support, then wail on boss until it revives a support, kill support, repeat. It didn't help how good items were in this game leading me to underuse certain characters based entirely around support.
The plot was...kind of bad to be honest. The main problem is there's like no focus on it whatsoever until Act 3 pops up. This makes the big plot twist surrounding one character fall on it's face because you don't grow attached to said character so when the secret is revealed, it's more of an "oh, ok, that's nice." It was a complete moment of "Show, don't tell damn it!" Then after that the game is like "so...yeah, go kill the villain and her henchmen" and tried to do all POWER OF FRIENDSHIP but that scene felt so rushed, and again, I didn't really feel an attachment to anyone in the roster, and the story's attempt to go from "things are only kind of inconvenient" to "SHIT GOT REAL" gradually...again, the fact that we weren't there to see this happening hurts. I can't say this enough; show, don't tell. Having the butler go "Oh no, my lord, you're dying!" or "oh no, the floods are rising!" doesn't do much; it's more powerful to show the people actually suffering, for example. We don't get a sense of gravity when we are told it's happening as opposed to showing it (it's for this same reason I think Lucas is an awful silent protagonist, but I won't get into the details there)
Also, the rhyming scheme got old after a point, and the rhymes made it sound awkward and forced in many instances. I should note that I'm not against rhyming schemes, but when it's done well, the dialog sounds natural in-spite of the rhyming, just a bit poetic as well. CoL had many moments where the dialog came off as awkward just to fit the rhyme. God knows Dr. Seuss has proven you can do that...ok, his dialog was anything BUT natural, but then, his stories are so goofy that the unique style compliments it, not detracts.
And I know people are going to hate me for this, but the music didn't impress me really at all; honestly I felt like I was listening to the same song in different styles for over half the game, and the times a new song kicked in, it was too underplayed. All the music really blends together and not in a good way. I know a lot of people like the music in this game, but it did absolutely nothing for me.
All in all, I think my problems with this game is that it favored being "artsy" above all else. The Rhyming style, the adherence to a very specific music style with no real deviation from it, and the art itself all lend itself to a game being artsy, and unfortunately, that does nothing for me. Yeah, I've played and liked artsy games before, such as Okami, but Okami just felt like a much better put together game than this. I can see why there are people who like it, but honestly, CoL did very little for me.
