Reviews are out!

Dualshockers - 10

The Sixth Axis - 10

Videogamer - 9

Push Square - 9

Games Radar - 4.5 / 5

Destructoid - 8.5

Gamespot - 8

CVG - 8

Eurogamer - 8

Game Informer - 8

Polygon - 6.5

I have been looking forward to this game since it is reveal and have pre ordered it so it is a nice surprise that this game has reviewed well.

Awesome. Though, again, I went into this expecting Polygon to be the low score and what do you know...

I'm probably the only one but I really don't like the art style of this game.

i really dont count polygon anymore in anything. let alone arthur gies,

glad to see the majority of reviews are solid. might pick this one up, good on ubisoft doing small games in between the high class releases.

Same, This whole month has been dry of any new interesting games, but next month we'll have Watchdogs. Till then I'll keep playing Warframe and check out the new update for that game. Gotta have that Ninja on Ninja action in my life.

I know there's a stigma around Polygon and Arthur Gies especially, which I understand to a certain extent, but I don't see anything in their review really worth taking issue with. He just didn't like the game as much is all.

@euandewar:

I didn't read it and don't really want to. I just think it's great that it's so predictable. Every thread here where reviews are compiled Polygon is almost always the lowest score. It's crazy. I'm not offended or anything. It's just that, if I were an editor there, I would wonder about our review process if my team were that predictable. I'd say the same thing if they were always the highest score.

I'm with you, sir. An art style that looks unfinished isn't my cup of tea.

Great to see it's reviewing well. Also I just found out that Yoshitaka Amano made artwork for this game. That's really cool.

@jasonr86: Looking at their reviews page their scores seem pretty evenly spread across the spectrum. In fact I'd say they consistently score things quite highly. I think you're just seeing some pretty specific examples.

You watercolourists!

I don't see the much touted inspiration it supposedly took from Final Fantasy VI. The subject matter and art direction is way too *Children's Fairy Tale Story Book* for that. Final Fantasy VI is a steampunk-fantasy epic with a strong ensemble cast tackling the Apocalypse, and what comes after. Nope, not seeing that in Child of Light. If I would, it'd be playing it right now. I don't, so I won't. False advertising.

@euandewar: I suppose.

@euandewar: Based on my own preferences and how Polygon's opinions don't mesh with my own, they're an unreliable review source for me. Part of it is how predictable their lower review scores have been for games I've liked in the past. There are very few reviews they have that I would agree with.

@jimmyfenix: Is it an indie darling?

I don't even know if it's an indie developer..

Everything about this game looked great, until I saw it features turn-based-esque RPG combat which completely turned me off from it.

I was looking pretty forward to this little gem. I'm glad the reviews turned out well!

...I'm sure it won't be long until the internet hates it.

Huh, I was dreading they would be lower, that makes me hopeful... Hm, hopefully there will be a quick look soon.

Game looks beautiful, but I have too much of a backlog right now. Definitely gonna pick it up in a Steam sale after seeing these scores. Thanks for compiling them, btw.

So excited. I'm really hoping it's a 10hour+ game

@stepside: Ubisoft has said that it's about 10 hours long before, so maybe. (I'm not trying to be snarky with that " maybe " btw, it's just that devs generally love to lie about how long their games actually are).

@steadyingmeat: A ten hour RPG?

No thank you.

@hailinel: To be fair, it's only 15 dollars. Which is kinda surprising since the Rayman Ubiart games were both 60 dollars and not that much longer.

It still kinda sucks, though. I'm replaying FF VIII right now, and I just realized how desperately I want another old school, 60 hour RPG like this, but we'll probably never get one again.

A negative review from Arthur Gies couldn't be more of an endorsement. Pre-ordered.

@steadyingmeat: Play Bravely Default! Lengthy and old school in its design.

Tom McShea's review of the game was actually kind-of gut wrenching.

@humanity: It's developed by a small team at Ubisoft on their UbiArt framework that they claimed was going to be opensource sometime in the future. It has all of the trappings of an indie game, but it's not independent. I talked to some Ubisoft reps at PAX and they basically are claiming that the game is a proof-of-concept for the UbiArt framework.

@hailinel: I find the battle system more needlessly annoying than I do innovative or fun, and the story/characters don't look interesting at all. I do like the class system, though, so I'll probably buy it at some point. Also, I am incredibly curious as to why everyone seems to hate the second half with a burning passion, so that alone is tempting me to play through the game. :P

I was actually about to buy it the other day, but just as soon as I was about to confirm the purchase, I remembered " oh wait, there's no chance in hell the default 3DS storage will be able to hold this! " (I was on the eShop) =_=

The battle system in conjunction with the class system is what really makes the game shine. The story is pretty meh, but Edea is an excellent character.

Have you played Tales of Vesperia? It's easily my favorite JRPG since the psone era. If you're a fan of that old school style JRPG, I'd say it's even worth buying a 360 for.

@hailinel:

A 10 hour RPG sounds fantastic right now. Why would an RPG be required to be long?

@hollitz: I have played Vesperia! It's a great game. Not as good as Xillia, though. Mwahaha.

Also, @jasonr86, I dunno if this is how Hailinel feels about it, but when I play an RPG, I want a lenghy and satisfying...uh,sense of progression I guess you would call it? and a really fleshed out story and characters, and it's extremely hard to do that in a measly 10 hours. I'm still playing this game, though, since I think it looks super fun.

10 hours is about what I would have expected from a game like this, which is fine. Assuming it's actually 10 hours, and not "10 hours". (But really 5.)

I like me some long-ass RPGs, but a game should only be as long as it needs to be. Ironically, Bravely Default is the very definition of a game that breaks that rule. It is a worse game for its length.

@steadyingmeat:

You can do plenty in 10 hours. In fact a lot of RPGs fall flat when their content has to fill 30-80 hours because it just isn't interesting enough to last that long.

@jasonr86: Ten hours isn't enough to give me the sense of depth and scope I generally prefer in RPG gameplay and story.

I keep flip-flopping. Some days, I think it looks great. Others, I don't care for it.

The last half (or third) of Bravely Default is basically running through the Cliffnotes version of the first half four times in a row, from what I've heard.

For my own response, I thought Child of Light sounded really interesting when I first heard about it but now I'm not very interested. I don't really like the 2D perspective for what is ostensibly a JRPG made in the West.

It's one of those games that I'll probably pick up at Thanksgiving or Christmas after seeing that it's on sale.

@hailinel:

That tells me RPG writers aren't very good.

@jasonr86: I'd still take a forty or sixty hour RPG with passable writing over one that's ten hours long and, well written though it may be, is over almost as quickly as it starts. Child of Light doesn't have the meat it needs to interest me as a game or story, even at its asking price.

But it looks a hell of a lot more entertaining than Costume Quest and its simplistic premise and gameplay, I'll give it that.

It looks so nice to me visually but I don't think it's gonna be my bag. I enjoyed my time with Costume Quest but there's something weird to me about an old-school turn-based RPG system where you never have to look at, care about or caress any numbers. Kinda makes the process of turn-based combat feel a little... pre-determined.

Definitely need more info on this. The pros score heavy on story, atmosphere and succinctness (nice way of saying it) so when it comes to this sort of game I rarely come away from reviews feeling particularly informed.

Can't wait for a Quick Look.

When I saw the 6.5 from Polygon, I was like "Gies reviewed it, didn't he?!" Yup... He did. I'm not saying it's a bad thing that he wasn't digging it, but he's predictable. That's probably a good thing, it means he has some sort of personality as a writer. Most reviewers are nameless/faceless to me. He's doing something right, even if I usually disagree with his views.

I'm not reading any of the reviews yet. It's something I've been wanting to play. I don't need to know more than that for a $15 game.

Any idea why this is coming out on Wednesday instead of Tuesday like most games?

@seppli: The character portrait art and box art and stuff like that had a sort of similar watercolor look to it. Never much cared for that aspect of it.

@grantheaslip: I mean, the game really isn't like Final Fantasy at all, so they'd be wrong to say that anyway. It has a similar battle system to some of them, but that's about it.

Also, @thatonedudenick, this is just me totally assuming that the GameFAQS release dates are right and being kinda paranoid, but uh, it seems to be only coming out on Tuesday on PlayStation platforms, so.... yyyeahhh.

Kinda. I'd love a game in the artstyle of the Final Fantasy VI box cover and concept art. Both are certainly painterly, but Child of Light looks like a childern's book, where-as Final Fantasy VI does definitely not. I'm not an art major, so I lack the proper words, I'll just say the FFVI box art is simply awesome, and not *Childern's Book* awesome like Child of Light.

@seppli: The whole game doesn't look like this, but this is still pretty cool regardless. In case you don't know, that's the guy who's behind all that FF art.

Yeah, that's much more like it. Shame the team at Ubisoft made his design *softer*. It seems like a lot of the darkness of his original design was lost in translation, like it was made more child-friendly, and has been somewhat westernized. I would have dug Child of Light much more, if the art was darker and had more of a mean edge to it, like Amano's design in this trailer has.

Oh look. Arthur Gies is typically lukewarm in another review. I find his reviews increasingly spineless and only gently prodding at controversy. He could be fantastic if he had something interesting to say and didn't hold back, but alas, 6.5. Neither one way, nor the other, and is increasingly become a trend in his reviews, regardless.

At least that guy on Forbes spouting flowery nonsense about Dark Souls 2 had the balls to do it. His mistake was just being offensive and guarding his ego behind literary quotes. Polygon is all the pretence without any of the backbone to be anything other than pure tabloid.

I'll wait to watch Brad float around whilst he blames the controls and decide for myself.

I hate to clash horns with you again but, this says it all for me.

@jazz_bcaz: That I prefer entertaining games that last as opposed to games that might do something better in some respects but don't last long enough to fulfill potential?

@hailinel: Length has nothing to do with quality or potential. Journey is beloved and only about 2 hour long. Often, creativity thrives within constraint.

@jazz_bcaz: On the contrary, length can directly impact both. A game can certainly stretch on too long, but if it's too short, the story may feel truncated or rushed, and the gameplay may be too simple or not be given enough time to demonstrate its strengths.

@jasonr86: I like long RPG's because it gives the games plenty of time to stretch their legs with the mechanics. I often find shorter RPGs not nearly as satisfying even if they are good games in their own right. And story wise it gives the writers room to have more room to build believable character arcs.

I get slower paced games aren't for everyone but I enjoy them. Which is why I loved Ni No Kuni's deliberately slow build.

Maybe that's something at the mercy of execution rather than length in and of itself. Personally, I wont be approaching this game from a mechanical standpoint. I fully intend to play it with my family, whom I'm still trying to introduce to gaming, and the co-op mode seems perfect for this. As does the length and the style.

I also find slow build unforgivable if the creators cannot pay it off in full. Often slow build feels like filler because they skimp on a genuine and meaningful exploration of whatever they're trying to do.