Child Of Light Review Switch Page

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s a lullaby. And on the Switch, tucked under the covers at 11 PM, a lullaby is exactly what you need.

Combat is turn-based, but with a timer (a la Grandia ). You wait for a bar to fill, then you act. But here’s the hook: you control two characters, and you can enemies.

Platform: Nintendo Switch Genre: Turn-based RPG / Platformer Playtime: ~11 hours child of light review switch

The problem? The difficulty curve is a flat line. You will die exactly three times in the entire playthrough. The game hands you a healing spell that is so overpowered, you can spam it every turn. Hardcore RPG fans will yawn. Casual players will feel like tactical gods. Let’s be honest: this is a Wii U/PS3/Vita game. It runs at a flawless 60fps on Switch, but there is no HD Rumble to speak of, no touch screen inventory management (a missed opportunity), and the font size for the rhyming text is criminally small in handheld mode.

But here’s the twist the screenshots don't tell you: It’s also a . It’s not a masterpiece

See that enemy about to heal? Switch to your fastest character, hit them before their bar finishes charging, and they get pushed back in time. The Switch’s shoulder buttons let you swap between your party instantly. It feels like a rhythm game mixed with chess.

Now on the Nintendo Switch, Ubisoft’s 2014 watercolor dream has found its true home. But is this "little princess saves the kingdom" story worth your time a decade later, or does it drown in its own whimsy? Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Child of Light is the prettiest game you’ve never played on a handheld. The UbiArt Framework engine paints Lemuria like a storybook that crawled out of a Studio Ghibli fever dream. On the Switch’s OLED screen, Aurora’s golden hair catches the light of a dying sun. The ruins crumble in soft, melancholic purples. Combat is turn-based, but with a timer (a la Grandia )

In an era where every RPG wants to eat 100 hours of your life with crafting systems, skill trees the size of a small novel, and open worlds full of question marks, Child of Light feels almost rebellious.

But it is the .

Child of Light floats like a butterfly and stings like a gentle, rhyming bee. Buy it on sale, play it in bed, and let the watercolors wash over you.

After you finish Tears of the Kingdom and your brain is fried from fusing rocks to sticks, or after Persona 5 Royal makes you dream in calendar dates, pick this up. It is a short, sad, hopeful poem about a dead mother who fights the darkness with a sword and a firefly.