Opoona – Wii
By Ken Bool
Opoona is a role-playing game developed by ArtePiazza and published by Koei for the Wii. It was released in September 2008 and is an exclusive to Wii title that is easy to play and suitable for ages 7 and up but enjoyable for all to play and watch with a soundtrack produced by Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII) it keeps you involved and you don’t want to let go.
The player follows the story of Opoona a descendant of the brave cosmo guard as he attempts to find the location of his family from which he was separated after the occurrence of a mysterious accident during their travels.
Opoona, after being separated from his family during a visit to the planet Landroll, finds himself injured in a hospital and unable to remember how he wound up there. As the player it’s your job as Opoona to earn a license to travel to other colonies and find out what exactly happened to his family.
The Game eases you in and gives you a good amount of story right from the word go, so its nice and easy to get your head round the controls and how the game works. The control for this game are probably the easiest you will ever see for a Wii game. My instruction to anyone on how to play this game are this..
1. Pick up controller and Nunchuck.
2. Put controller down.
3. Keep hold of the Nunchuck.
4. wiggle stick to run, fight, move, throw stuff at people and disco dance (ok, maybe not disco dance!)
5. Every now and then use one of the buttons on the controller to do something else.
That just about covers how to play Opoona.
How you win a battle handily, i have no idea!
The fight scenes in the game are also very easy to control. Quite early on in the game you get to use a fighting simulator which will help you learn and then improve on the basic techniques that you will use in battles like attacking using your energy bon bon and accessing your inventory, and not long after you have to take a test to get your first license. All of the licenses are gained by completing different challenges as the game goes through, for one you just have to open up a can of whoop-ass on a whole bunch of bad dudes then later on you have to go and find some Monsters Eggs.
As per all role-playing games you have to go and make friends with people who either help you by giving you stuff or wind you up by making you go and do stupid poxy missions and make you get really frustrated with the characters and you just want to bitch slap then upside the head but alas, for you cannot! You also encounter Opoona’s Brother Copoona and Sister Poleena who at points will fight along side you and require your controlling.
Its like the 3 Amigo’s in space and with less impressive outfits…
The Fighting system in the game is very easy to use. You quite simply hold the control stick on the nunchuck attachment forward which builds up power and then when you let it go, you fire your energy bonbon at the enemies to do them damage. You can also curl the bonbon for when you need to kill the monster at the back instead of the monster at the front by instead of just pushing the control stick forward, you push it at a diagonal. The further round to the side you go, the more it curls the energy bonbon. You can also access your inventory during battle by pressing the Z button on your nunchuck controller. Warning though, you cant access any items in your backpack so before you go into battle you need to make sure that you have moved all the items you’re going to need into your pockets… or they’re pretty much useless!
Like all other RPG games, you can upgrade your weapons. In this case you can increase the damage your energy bonbon does by changing its shell or the mass of the energy bonbon itself quite simply by going into a shop and buying the upgrade for it. It works quite well and makes a very noticeable difference in the early stages and as the game goes on you will notice that they get harder to earn and buy which is good at times and bad at others.
So overall, the game has a lot of charm, an extensive story line and easy controls, which is what you would ask for from every game, yes? No. Sadly this game does lack quite a few things, like a skip the irritating graphical sequences button and the camera view is very annoying at times. they have been nice enough to give you a button on the nunchuck that you can press to re-align the camera but even when you do its still quite irritating to use and practically as soon as you move its thrown off direction again.
‘excuse me sir, you appear to have something on your head’
When I was asked to review this game, I was looking forward to doing the review as i’ve always been quite into RPG games…lets face it, Final Fantasy VIII was, and still is in my opinion, the greatest game in existence (except for Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 on the PS2) so maybe I am being a bit harsh with my criticism, but I am trying so very hard to not compare opoona to any Final Fantasy game… but its so very hard not to do as they are similar and not in a good way.
this game is a bit to simple. it could do with a bit more depth to it. There is plenty for you to get involved in but it doesn’t entice you like any other RPG.
I’d give Opoona 2 and a Half out of 5 stars. it makes a bold Effort and in places manages to deliver, but it could of done much better.
