Strayed Lights Xbox Review

Strayed Lights is an intriguing title. It’s an action-adventure game that makes some bold choices with its design. From its visuals and art direction, story and gameplay mechanics, Strayed Lights takes conventional tropes and design choices and strips them back to a more simplified, but no less interesting core. When almost every title these days seems determined to be the next big thing in its genre, Strayed Lights choices make it a bold outlier. But it’s also these choices that may polarise you over whether or not you actually enjoy it.

Strayed Lights doesn’t quite fit into any one category of gaming style. There’s an exploration adventure feel to it, slight platforming elements, hub-like elements, somewhat Souls-like combat and an approach to cinematic storytelling in its framing of cut scenes and environment design.

There’s clearly a lot of ambition on display here, but developer Embers’ first significant statement with Strayed Lights is their choice to tell their story with nary a word of spoken dialogue. Instead, the story flow is told through action and the occasional still image entirely. Is there a story here at all? Certainly, but it’s also open to interpretation which is a big plus in my book.

This bold choice puts you in the shoes of a newly born being that holds the dual elements of light and shadow in it’s makeup. During its birth, something goes wrong and the darker side of its nature, along with a healthy dose of power, splits from it and begins a reign of terror. Thus begins your journey to not only reclaim this manifestation and your power, but also cleanse the souls of your siblings who seem to have been corrupted through their fears.

Strayed Lights uses its non-verbal approach to tell a story about the manifestation of fear and overcoming the darkness around you. At least, that’s what I gathered from my time with the game. The developers have somehow managed to tell a tale that – especially if you go to the website – is fairly defining but also open to interpretation by respecting that the player is quite capable of figuring it out.

There’s no hand-holding here, no item or lore descriptions to tell you what’s going on. Only the world, its devastated appearance and the wordless cinematics for you to think about.

Strayed Lights alien planet is simplistically grand. The stylised art and environment design won’t win any awards for polygon-pushing visuals. Still, there are often enough artistically designed vistas and remnants of a destroyed culture to gaze at that it makes the game’s photo mode a joy to use. Dripping caverns, desert-like areas, thriving jungles and shattered towers all make up the world that you’re going to explore.

Across a variety of levels that seamlessly connect back to each hub area you will get to do some light platforming, some limited exploration and a fair amount of fighting. Each area essentially has you trailing a boss – one of your siblings who has been corrupted – through the level and fighting them multiple times until you can cleanse them of their trauma and evolve in the process.

Every enemy you defeat will give you a shard that can be used to upgrade your character. Strayed Lights has a stripped-back skill tree with only a handful of skills and abilities for you to unlock. Each of these skills has been designed to enhance the game’s basic combat system. If you don’t get used to that, to begin with, none of these will matter.

And that’s where Strayed Lights most divisive element comes into play: the combat system.

Ember has built the game’s combat system around parrying and a dual colour/nature system. The story’s light and dark focus also plays into the game’s combat as you can switch between colour states at any time. Now this doesn’t change up your abilities at all but is important to what attacks you can successfully block and parry as the enemy and bosses have this dual nature as well. Simply put, a shadow attack can only be blocked in the shadow state and vice versa. Failing to do so results in you getting hurt.

Successfully blocking attacks damages the enemy, lowering their energy bar and building up a large energy bar for you. Enemies can only be disposed of once this bar is built up fully and you unleash a large burst of energy. You do have a basic three-hit combo melee attack but it’s so ineffective as to be useless. In fact, it feels more like a tacked-on addition to appease melee players rather than one that is important to your toolset. No, you have to successfully parry attacks to win here or it’s a swift death for you.

There is a small variety of enemy types, with each one having its own attack combos and speeds with success dependent on recognising each enemy type and their attack patterns. As you will sometimes deal with multiple enemy types in a fight, you need to prioritise who to take out first as enemies won’t stand around and wait their turn. Fighting two enemies at the same time who have completely different attack timings can be very difficult, which makes it very difficult to find a natural flow to the combat. This may have the advantage of keeping you on your toes but it also provided a fair amount of frustration, especially since I’m not the best at parrying.

One of the nicer additions to combat is the lack of healing items. Instead, each successful parry restores your health in a fight so there is always some degree of hope when it may look like you’re on the back foot. After each fight your health is fully restored. I quite liked this addition to the design.

One thing I’m less enamoured with, apart from a system designed entirely around a mechanic I’m not fond of, is the multiple times you have to fight each of the game’s bosses. It felt entirely unnecessary and only dragged each of the areas of the game out. To aggravate the matter further is that the game suffers from long loading times on last gen systems. Whether you’re booting it up to play, waiting for a level to load or reloading after a death, Strayed Lights on last gen systems loading did test my patience. Current-gen machines fare better.

While Embers’ decision to tell their story through action may not sit well with some, it isn’t a deal breaker and a risk that I enjoy and applaud. Where Strayed Lights really will be divisive, and a factor in whether or not you will enjoy it, is how you feel about a game designed entirely around parrying. This will either make or break Strayed Lights for you. That said, the game’s attempts to try something different in today’s crowded genre markets should be applauded and this alone is worth your time to check it out.

Strayed Lights Trailer

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