Strayed Lights Reviews
Strayed Lights offers up some solid combat encounters, a beautiful world, and an excellent score that makes it worth playing even if some other parts like the story and exploration aren’t as great. The game is very cinematic and nailing the parrying against basic enemies and bosses is satisfying. If you’re OK with getting through it in just a few hours then I’d give this one a solid recommendation.
For a game designed by a relatively small indie studio, Strayed Lights is more than competent in terms of gameplay and combat.
Strayed Lights is a short and sweet game exploring a unique, defensive combat experience. It can feel shallow and falls short in aspects like the music, but it remains engaging throughout its runtime.
Embers' debut game is beautifully presented, with an interesting but flawed combat system. Lovely music (thanks to Journey composer Austin Wintory) and exciting boss battles make it worth your time.
Strayed Lights admirably tries its best to serve two masters, attempting to be a loving interpretive dance of a narrative held together with ruthless, tricky, defensive combat. The yin and yang of the game may not fit together perfectly, unbalanced as they are, but both sides are executed with enough forethought, joy, and panache to make the experience worthwhile.
Strayed Lights is something rare in the gaming industry; a game that genuinely surprises us. The combat is unique and accessible. The story is told in a subtle, heartfelt way. The music and visuals are stunning. However, a string of technical bugs, repetitive combat, and inconsistent platforming sections mar what would otherwise be a stellar offering from a new studio. If it ran better on the Switch, we would be giving it a much better score.
Strayed Lights is a decent game with some good ideas but can't use them to their full potential. The gameplay and enemy design will become repetitive after a while, but the narrative design of it is bold and something we don't see often. Strayed Lights isn't the best indie game of this year but it is worth a play if you are looking for something new.
Your view of Strayed Lights is going to depend on what kind of player you are. If you love playing defensively, then you'll like what's on offer, as it mostly works with a few hiccups. If you're more of an attacker, then the slower-paced fights and lack of minion variety doesn't make for an appealing adventure. The game is short enough that it doesn't drag on for too long, making it worth experiencing for those who are intrigued.
Strayed Lights is a gorgeous journey through a dreamlike world, one that is often haunting in its size and sense of loneliness. It's a fantastic debut, a promising start for a new studio looking to make their mark in the incredibly competitive indie-game market. A few missteps hold Strayed Lights back and stop me from recommending it to everyone, but for the right group of people this is an excellent game.
Strayed Lights definitely tends to stray from what makes its central mechanic great, but manages to wander its way back to the light, and offer a truly charming time.
There's a great deal of cool traits to Strayed Lights, including thoughtful enemy design, strong premise, and charming visuals. However, pacing suffers greatly, and combat forces its way into the forefront with memorization and inconsistent parry windows. It's short and can be sweet, but there's an overarching bitterness that's hard to ignore.
Strayed Lights is fun for what it is and a beauty to look at. However, hiding in the shadows are issues that left me wanting.
I can't stress enough how close Embers is to something great here. Strayed Lights is just a few design decisions, tweaks and adjustments away from being fantastic
Strayed Lights tells a great story without any words and brings a wonderful world to your screen. Its potential though isn't fully used as sooner or later, it's just your gateway to the next bossfight. The bossfights can become frustrating, especially due to the shaky performance of the game on Xbox Series S.
Review in German | Read full review
While undoubtedly ambitious and quite beautiful, the overall play experience doesn’t quite deliver on its promise
Strayed Lights is ultimately frustrating because there’s a brilliant game lurking somewhere here. Upon finishing the game, I understood the story to be about conquering corruptive behavior and going on a spiritual journey inward, but it’s let down by subpar platforming and gameplay. I would even argue that the game might not have needed combat at all and could have worked better as an explorative adventure instead. Perhaps Embers might consider this for its next project.
Strayed Lights has some interesting tricks up its sleeve. It puts a good first impression with its ominous atmosphere and unique brand of parry based combat, but those concepts falter in the face of mediocre game design in almost every aspect of the experience.
Strayed Lights is a beautiful game that tells an abstract yet meaningful story. However, its unique battle system grew repetitive, and some performance issues took some of the fun away.
Action game fans will be left bored by the combat, but kids who are getting used to 3D action games will find Strayed Lights worth a play. The emotive ambiance and the low-stakes gameplay make the experience intriguing for younger gamers who would normally be confused by exposition or extended scenes of dialogue or text. The disappointingly short playtime is a bummer, but that means it will hold the attention of kids.
With its unique twist on combat and a great sense of style, I went into Strayed Lights with high hopes. However, while its presentation and challenging parry-centric boss battles certainly shine brightly, its largely nonexistent story, a lack of enemy variety, and frequent crashes caused that light to fade well before the conclusion of its four-hour runtime. If you’re simply looking for a novel take on the action-adventure genre, maybe pick this one up once it goes on sale. For anyone else, Strayed Lights is tough to recommend.