So not even 2 weeks into my promise of not buying new games aaaaand, I faultered lol. I bought Child of Light Ultimate Edition. The basic game was like 50 pesos or so, and the ultimate edition was 73, so.... sign me up.
The game description is farily scant, it simply says, "An Adventure based on fairy tales." Ok, I'm a fairy tale fan. So you play as Aurora (sleeping beauty), it takes place in the 19th century and you are the favorite child of some duke in Austria. You die (not a spoiler) BUT you wake up in the land of Lemuria. I only know of Lemuria thanks to Therion and their brilliant 2004 double release Lemuria/Serius B. It reminded me of Del Toro's Pan's Labrynth. You spend most of the game, is this real? Is this a Dream? And by "you" I mean Aurora. The Queen of Night, Umbra and her daughters, Crepusculum and Nox have stolen the Sun, the Moon and the Stars plunging Lemuria into eternal night. You are tasked with getting them back. So season one of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic lol.
This game is REALLY good. All the expectations I had for Slain: Back from Hell, were met and in some instances surpassed. Slain is supposed to be based on Heavy metal, but the world doesn't look very... Metal-y. The creatures were very generic skeletons, witches, hellhounds, etc. The "Metal" soundtrack was a very generic chuga-chuga-chuga and the boss fights didn't feel epic and the music didn't help. The graphics were cute, but again... safe.
On the other hand, Child of Light looks GORGEOUS with water color animation, the whole game looks like a story book. The music is beautiful with a mellow piano track as you traverse the world and becoming intense orchestral during fights and it just becomes EPIC during major boss fights. The animations, settings and music of those final fights against the Queen and her daughters were EPIC, just amazing. I was even won over on some aspects I initially scoffed at. It's an RPG and like any classic RPG you have a party of companions. As you travel you recruit two clowns (well, jesters), a dwarf mage, a robin hoodesque mouse, a golem, an amphibian lizard girl, and what looks like a Japanese Oni warrior. While fairly new to turned based RPGs, I normally settle on three characters and forget the rest. Later on in the game I found myself rotating the ENTIRE party. The clowns were the quickest casters, the dwarf mage's magic was VITAL in some fights and it added great depth to the strategizing. When the first clown joined I thought, "you're fucking kidding me?" Later I was, "Get in there you damn clown! Tag in!"
So in short, I was very pleasantly surprised by this game for which I had low expectations for. Fairy tale fan, RPG fan, unorthodox are style fan... pick it up.
Also, FINALLY got a game that's been on my wishlist for YEARS, The Bridge, got it for a dollar, again... couldn't help it. Now back to my back catalogue of FEAR, OUTLAST, KOTOR, Fallout 3 (second run) and Bully.