As someone whose style of play tends towards impatience, I’m eager to get past this current moment when every other game is trying to copy/combine some element of Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring. There’s a certain subset of gamers who find those games absurdly popular, but I don’t particularly enjoy attempting to dodge and parry perfectly.
Strayed Lights is pretty much just dodge and parry all the time. Needless to say, it wasn’t my favorite. Combat – or what you’d call blocking, dodging, and parrying – is a big part of Strayed Lights, but exploring its dreamlike world is equally important. Sadly, it’s too big and empty to be really engaging, but you can still wander around big, empty spaces to a score by Austin Wintory – who’s done Journey and Abzu, so he knows a thing or two about music that works well in big, empty places.
Additionally, while the story isn’t particularly deep – you’re a tiny being of light trying to get rid of darkness and corruption – it’s cute enough that you can’t really dislike it. The combat, though, doesn’t do Strayed Lights any favors. Your light being can attack enemies, but the attacks aren’t strong enough to make any sense. The majority of your encounters with enemies are built around matching your color to theirs (if they’re orange, you switch to orange; if they’re blue, you switch to blue), waiting for your enemy to swing down at you, and parrying at the last second.
Once the enemy is so weak, you have an opening to push energy at them in order to finish the counter and purge the darkness, which is when they just kind of vanish. It’s always kind of anticlimactic at the end of each encounter, for all the time it takes. Strayed Lights has drawn-out, repetitive encounters and a kind of empty world, which is why it’s hard to love. It looks and sounds nice, and if you’re really into dodging and weaving rather than charging into battle, I could see how it might be fun in small doses, but as it stands, there’s not much here to make for an enjoyable experience.
