After indulging in 20 hours of this game, finally I take a breather from playing to tell you guys about it. Don't listen to professional reviews, this Wii RPG is gold, better than most other games of a similar genre on this console. Not that there are many RPGs on Wii to begin with :P

First off, gameplay. Combat is intuitive, using only the Nunchuk for throwing your energy bonbon in various directions to hit enemy weak points ans dodge bombs. It never feels too difficult as your partners back you up most times. Battles are random, and can get a little irritating at times, but it's balanced out with combat-lite exploring of the huge overworld cities(called domes) and the side jobs you can take. Some are pretty drab, but others, like the fishing minigame, are solid. The one thing that grinds my gears here is the sheer amount of red tape you have to wade through. Yes. RED TAPE. In a videogame. You have to APPLY for citizenship as soon as you land, you APPLY at a registration counter to go to school, and all the jobs you take require licenses, which again, you have to APPLY for. Even a job as a janitor needs a license. It's by no means game breaking, but the fact that the whole planet is so bureaucratic makes it feel like you're in a part of some government agency than playing a game.

Next, the graphics. Being the cute-lover that I am, I was instantly drawn to the character designs. Opoona, Copoona and Poleena are all adorably cel-shaded and animate smoothly. The environments are not as detailed and look like it's been ripped off a Gamecube game, but that's still forgivable. The domes are the one in which the most effort has gone into. They're friggin huge, you can get lost easily, and each of them are well-designed and detailed down to the bathrooms in each residential area you visit(And we wondered if RPG characters ever needed to pee :lol: )

Music is great too. They sound abstract and otherworldly, especially the theme music. Some of them can get pretty annoying though, like the battle music. I won't delve too much into the storyline, but it's standard convention with a few twists and a interesting concept. Opoona is a child seperated from his parents in a spaceship crash, and has to adapt to his new life on an unfamiliar planet. The story would have been presented better, if the game didn't have such lousy JP to US translation work, which sometimes made me wish I had the original JP version. This can detract from Opoona's overall quality. Wonder if any of the guys at Koei ever applied for a language translator license? Or a game-making license? Did I even apply for a license to blog?*runs away*