Child of Light patch will rename difficulties to "casual" and "expert"

Child of Light is going to be patched to make its difficulty system more relatable.

In my playthrough of Child of Light, I was disappointed by how easy normal difficulty was, even as I lost myself in the brilliant battle system. It sounds like Ubisoft Montreal has received plenty of similar feedback, because writer Jeffrey Yohalem told Joystiq the current difficulty names aren't representative.

"In a patch that's coming up, we're changing the names to 'casual' and 'expert'. This has been an issue, obviously, that some people have had, and I think that the word 'normal' is a misrepresentation," he said.

"Or, rather, implying that there's one way to play that's normal is, I think, too strong."

Replacing "normal", "casual" is "for people that want to experience the world and experience the adventure without having hard combat", Yohalem said, while "expert" takes the place of "hard" and "is for people who love RPGs and who want to really have a challenge".

That certainly seems much clearer, even if "casual" has a bit of stigma attached to it.

The full article - and podcast - is quite interesting as there's some discussion of behind the scenes stuff; one notable point is Yohalem's insistence that Rubella, Aurora's first available companion and the party's primary healer, should be female - and maybe not for the reasons you'd expect.

Child of Light is available now on PC, PlayStation 3, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. I absolutely recommend it, although I'd love to see some DLC to extend the experience a bit.