Child of Light is a wonderful RPG made with the battle system of Grandia and artistic drive of a poet.
From start to finish, Child of Light makes itself known as being a super pretty game with very flowery language. The large majority of characters speaking in an A, B, C, B rhythm really also helps submit to it's fairy tale aesthetic. Even the cast of characters feel they come out of a children's book with them having problems like a mouse having to search for treasure, a monster that is scary looking, but is super helpful and friendly, and Aurora herself being a lost princess trying to find her way back home. For the most part the game is light in tone, but it does have it's dark moments that really help with the idea of growing in this game. In fact the majority of the characters often have a growth moment or realization thanks to Aurora's help.
On top of the neat little story, Child of Light also has an interesting combat system where defending is entirely a viable option, and one that I honestly haven't seen repeated in any game before or since. Combat is akin to Grandia's timeline based attacks where each character has to wait for their turn to attack till they hit the end part of the gauge, and can even bump back certain characters if they time their attacks well. Each character is given a different set of abilities, attacks, and buffs that help make for interesting team set ups. Aurora is always out and is often your most powerful unit on the team, but the way you can pair her with others gives you options on how you want to play. From having support through debuffs or healing to just having another attacking party member or anything in between. Child of Light has a shockingly robust amount of options with it's minimal design choices. There are even different skill trees and bonus gems that can help suit your play style and how you want each member to grow. Heck, there is even a way to fuse bonus gems that given into stronger effects or entirely different ones if you want.
In the end, Child of Light is a labor of love, and something I am very happy to have played. From it's looks, to it's charm, and especially to it's combat; Child of Light is a game with a lot of thought behind it. If you haven't given it a chance yet, I suggest trying it as soon as you can.

I'll start with the good
the battle system is unique and interesting
The art is beautiful
Unfortunately this game doesn't really have anything else going for it. The writing is abysmal (writing in rhyme doesn't make what your writing good) with your classic team of vagabonds on their way to collect the 3 magic macguffins with magic girl and her magic sword to end the darkness blah blah blah. It's all very cookie cutter and predictable. The combat feels fun and exciting until you realize that spamming the basic attack is just about as effective as any other spell or special attack. I do appreciate that buffs and debuffs break the conventional mold of damage/defense/health penalties and actually relate directly to the timeline. Plus interrupting someone is pretty fun. Outside of that the combat gets pretty stale pretty quickly which is a shame for something that had so much potential. This game is begging for deeper mechanics and equipment like item that aren't just permanent stat buffs or unexciting small percentage boosts. Exploring and puzzle solving are extremely lacking in depth with each obstacle being barely noticeable with the ability to fly and turn off hazards with the second player mechanic(it's required to use this even with only one player to it's not like I'm going out of my way to use it) puzzles all boil down to about 2 variations on the same "cast a shadow" mechanic introduced in the first level down to the final level. This game drags on too long and feels too samey. Barely worth checking out, there are so many other better RPGs our there

I actually have some really complicated opinions about this one. cw/ Sexual abuse, physical abuse
First off, Ubisoft is an awful company never forget that
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-21/ubisoft-sexual-misconduct-scandal-harassment-sexism-and-abuse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRhYT5Lgp98

Regarding the game, this is a difficult one. The presentation is fantastic. The music, by Coure de Pirate is really really great and adds to the atmosphere, and its the atmosphere that's really the star of the show. The game is obviously mimicking a fairytale, both aesthetically and thematically. In this regard the game succeeds exceptionally. The combination of the aforementioned music, the hand-drawn art-style, and the idiosyncratic way the characters always clumsily rhyme their sentences. This is all great, and the best part of the game, the story is secondary to this feeling or experience you have while playing the game. This is to say nothing of the unique and interesting world and characters. I actually played the game over a year ago now, so it's not all as clear as it was, but i can remember the main cast of characters vividly. The fantasy world that they inhabit is great too, with really interesting and unique elements like Magna and the Bolmus Populi who travel on his back. The visuals in said world are obviously gorgeous too. As for the story, it is about a young girl who's mother has died going into this fantasy land where she has to save it from her evil stepmother, yeah it's like a fairytale. There are also a bunch of other cool smaller stories from the individual characters which are usually quite fun. I noticed a lot of them surround conflict resolution but I'm not entirely sure of what to make of that so I'll just point out the observation. As for the main story, it is essentially an allegory for dealing with the loss of a parent in ones formative years and how accepting the loss is the only way to grow up and move on (Aurora, our main character literally grows up). The decaying fantasy world is presumably allegorical for the loss. There's probably more stuff I missed but it isn't very subtle or deep and that's absolutely fine. It's a game that throws you in a world that is colourful and interesting and gives you a bunch of great characters to go through that world with, all in service of creating this dream like fairytale. This game is about the experience. I haven't even talked about the 'game' part of this yet, which is also great. It's an interesting riff on the turn based rpg that has some complex stuff in it. Anyway this has gone on for too long and no one will ever read it but it's here anyway.

A beautiful RPG with a sidescrolling perspective, Child of Light's a fun game with a pretty interesting priority-oriented battle system. Here, each move you make will place you in a "queue" of sorts that determines when you get to attack next (so, for example, choosing a strong attack means your next turn will take more time than choosing a weak attack). Alongside regular attacks, there's also a variety of abilities and spells that can alter this "queue", giving the system a strategic aspect. Recommended.

The characters have zero relatability because they mostly talk in rhyme. To add to that there's one character with a running gag in that she messes up obvious rhymes, but as a result she technically rhymes better and more consistently than the other characters, because otherwise the gag wouldn't work.

There's actually a rhyme for non interactive doors.
"It's locked."
"I'm not shocked."
But that's like the game joking about how it objectively sucks.

In battles you have to keep remembering to move the thing around to collect health orbs, so playing the game ends up feeling incredibly maidworky. Enemy encounters are generally repetitive and sleep inducing overall. I eventually grew tired of it.

I played this on both Vita and Wii U, and quit both times. It's just a bad, bad game. Also, the girl's head looks like a dude's. Just saying.

Battle theme is epic though, I'll give it that. Actually, it's one of best RPG battle themes I've ever heard. Wat up wit dat.