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A Colourful Facade, A Colourless Experience

Strayed Lights' issues are difficult to describe; it's not a bad game per se, and although I enjoyed the combat, so many of its features feel hollow and lack substance, so much so that I often felt I was playing for the sake of completing it rather than because I wanted to. Whether it be the boss finishers relegated to QTE-riddled cutscenes, the unimaginative, linear level design, or the story that provides little to no direction or context for my actions, I never felt drawn in or engaged by the world, instead mindlessly trudging through skin-deep environments, not entirely understanding why.
Combat
Combat is, to its credit, entertaining and unique; enemies attack wreathed in different colours, and for the strongest parry, dealing damage and restoring health, you must receive the attack matching the colour, swapping between blue and orange with the press of a button. Unblockable purple attacks force a dodge instead, keeping you on your toes throughout an encounter. However, Strayed Lights is a cripplingly easy game: enemy damage is non-existent, and the amount of health restored on a successful parry is absurd, failing to follow through on the intensity this combat model should invoke.
Nevertheless, combat is varied: alongside the parry, you have access to a basic dodge and attack, with a few unlockable abilities down the road, all providing substantial depth to an encounter. It plays great too; with each action, particularly the dodge, providing a tactile and responsive feel. However, the parry is both your primary defence and offence so, in practice, much of the expanded moveset doesn't offer enough to be worth using; for example, bosses tend to end a flurry of attacks some distance away, and by the time you've closed the gap to get some basic attacks in, they're ready to go again with another combo.
Bosses are the highlight of the entire experience: despite their movesets lacking much variation, each attack chain can be surprisingly complex, mixing up all colours of attacks into a tight string of blows. Learning the patterns and perfectly dealing with the assault, parrying each strike with the right colour and dodging when necessary, gives rise to a riposte, offering immense satisfaction when executed. Unfortunately, these encounters are sullied in their conclusion: upon ending a fight, you're presented with an awkward cutscene in which you watch your character deal a climactic finishing blow with accompanying, equally awkward QTEs. The key word here is "watch"; although I'm the one pressing the buttons, the disconnect created by using a cutscene completely takes me out of the moment, leaving my opponent defeated, but a sour taste in my mouth.
The quality of combat encounters is far from consistent: basic enemies litter the landscape, and with their 2 or 3 attacks that never change or evolve, there is almost nothing worthwhile about them. Furthermore, every enemy shares the same visual motif, including the bosses, and you wind up feeling like no enemy feels particularly unique to fight because they don't look unique. New variants of enemies show up now and then, but a groan always escaped my lips as I saw another skirmish come into view.
Story and Visuals
As far as the story goes, Strayed Lights gives absolutely nothing: I couldn't give you a synopsis even if I wanted to. Stuff happens, and things play out on screen, but with no dialogue to contextualise anything, I couldn't make heads or tails of what's actually going on; "stuff" and "things" become the only words I can use to describe it. Yet that doesn't mean an attempt at a story isn't made; the first hour or so is just infested with 30-second cutscenes literally every few minutes, though they don't say or show anything worth seeing.
Now I imagine you think this doesn't matter; it's an action game, right? But it needs something and it bleeds into every aspect of the game; why am I fighting this thing? What am I looking at? What is my character's goal? If I'm asking myself these questions, I can't become invested in the epic boss battle. I don't bother looking at the scenery, however beautiful it may be. If I know these questions won't be answered, why bother asking them at all? And therein lies the problem: if I don't care about the world and characters around me, the whole experience becomes soulless, it becomes monotonous and it becomes forgettable.
I wish I could tell you that there's environmental storytelling, but there's almost nothing to speak of. Each distinct area is visually very appealing: the composition is pleasing, the colours are superb, and the positions of the moon or a mountain behind an eye-catching centrepiece are all executed well, but again, without context of any form, there's no deeper meaning between the brushstrokes. Suddenly all the beautiful art lacks intent. I don't look at the space and wonder how it came to be; it's just a forest, it's just a tower in the distance, and I never found myself compelled to care.
Exploration and Level Design
The playable space consists of two small hub areas leading to five moderately sized areas, each housing its own boss and making up the majority of the playtime. These locations are almost entirely linear, however, with very little room for any exploration; the most you get are occasional, slightly hidden side paths that lead to nothing more than an optional enemy or a collectible. Brimming with empty corridors, slow crawls along ledges, and far too many repeated enemies, these spaces feel like their only purpose is to slow you down. It's easy to tell that the intent during these long walking sequences is to give the player a moment to take in the views, although they only present as mindless slogs due to the narrative reasons outlined earlier.
With only two types to find, the collectible economy is scarce and essentially not worth bothering to engage with: the primary of the two improves the speed of "energy" buildup, the bar that fills up with successful parries and attacks, ending the fight once full. This buff, frankly, isn't felt at all; not once did I feel I was dispatching enemies faster, to the point that I'm not entirely sure I've correctly understood what it does. The other collectible is somehow less interesting: found in the hub areas, you can take them to a large shrine to unlock what is essentially concept art and more of the first main collectible. Added to the fact that both of them are easily missable, due to multiple unexpected points-of-no-return locking you out of finding them all, the whole system feels more like a checkbox than a properly implemented feature.
Final Thoughts
To reiterate, this is not a bad video game, but it's far from exceptional either, and in an indie scene awash with life, individuality, and personality, I feel that Strayed Lights failed to leave much of an impression on me. There are glimmers of an excellent game buried in this, and I think that Embers should be proud of what they accomplished in their debut title, but as it stands now, completely ignoring the £20 price tag for a four-hour game, this is not an experience that I can recommend.