Strayed Lights Review

Strayed Lights Review

On Paper, Strayed Lights seems like an amazing idea. What if you took Ori and the Blind Forest but made it 3D with a souls like combat? This atmospheric action game definitely has plenty of bright spots, but unfortunately, it feels like a PS2 era game with a modern day coat of paint.

Unlike Ori, Strayed Lights lacks essential things like polish and heart. It’s very hard to focus on the positives when you are constantly being reminded of the issues holding back the game. The story is lacking in both actual narration but the environmental storytelling isn’t carrying the load either.

There is no map or objectives, so you never really know where you are going or what you should be doing and instead of exploring in most open world games where you can see the danger and choose to avoid it, enemies spawn out of nowhere like a bolt of light.

There are invisible walls littered all over or times that your character would just go into free fall mode a few feet off the ground. Some boss fights completely glitched out by leaving the battle area, leaving only them with the ability to attack from range. Then there is the platforming, which is one of the major elements of Strayed Lights, that lacks character precision, which makes platforming frustrating at the best of times.

The highlight of the game and the main mechanic is a parrying system that is built around the theme of inner light. You can attack enemies, but the most effective way to rid the world of them is to parry them by matching the color they are. Enemies can either be orange or blue which you can parry with trigger. Once the gauge is full you absorb their light and use that to level your character up.

The other main highlight of Strayed Lights is the art direction and how it feels inspired by Ori with an atmospheric world full of magical, extra terrestrial flora and fauna. There can be areas where you just want to look around at the beauty.

Sadly, there are a lot more downs than ups with Strayed Lights. There is likely a solid game here somewhere but it’s buried underneath plenty of technical issues.