Opoona

Overall, I enjoyed Opoona. I loved the art style, the battle system was super fun and the overall game was charming.  Opoona has a ton of problems, including the tendency to rely on backtracking fetch quests, no voice work, terrible town designs, and poorly translated dialog.  However, I think the good ideas in this game, out weigh the bad.   

I had little to no expectations for Opoona.  It got beat up across the board by reviewers, and I just didn't follow the game at all.  I just knew the art style was straight out of Dragon Quest VIII and the game looked kinda quirky.  

One thing I remember is they hyped the living hell out of the "one hand controls", but I couldn't adapt to only using the nunchuck.  It proves how simple the game is, you CAN only use a Nunchuck with this game, but why would you?  I had a hard time with controlling the menu during battle with just the nunchuck, I also hated the camera system with the nunchuck.  If you use both the Controller and Nunchuck, you can use the A+B buttons instead of the C+Z buttons, which are more familiar with menus.  You can also use two hotkeys for menus, maps and your transportation (- and + buttons).  The best feature on the Wiimote that the Nunchuck suffers with is the camera control.  While you get more precision camera control with the Nunchuck, you have to completely stop to use it.  If you use both controls, you can change you camera view with the D-pad.  With that said, both camera options suck.  

The actual battle system is not very hard at all.  You might die a few times, but isn't much of a penalty for it.  There are option dungeons and option minibosses you can attempt that offer a bit more challenge if you crave that.  I won't dispute the difficulty in that part of the game.  The true difficulty can be wondering what to do next in the game.  You can get fairly overwhelmed rather quickly in this game.  Luckily, you're never rushed to do anything, but there is usally a long list of things to do.  Towns are completely massive, so running around a town that's twice the size of a Zelda dungeon, trying to find that one person, can get frustrating.  



----------Battle System----------
Opoona is a turn-based RPG.  The battle system uses an Active Battle Time system, similar to Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger.  A better comparison is Okage: Shadow King, but no one has played that.  

You can fight up to 8 enemies at a time.  There is no break from the enemy onslaught, even if you open your menu.  This makes for a faster paced battle system, but also a more frantic one if you are fighting a tough boss.  To make matters worse, they give you a timer, all battles must be beaten in 2 minutes.  If you are fighting a boss, they will give you 3 or 4 minutes, depending on the fight.  If you don't finish the fight and your time runs out, the you are basically dead.  

When you die, it's just a simple slap on the wrist.  You lose a few coins, a day off your clock and sent back to the nearest save spot.

The battle system is kinda unique, I can't think of a similar game to it actually.  Most battles are randomly generated (There are a few missions where you fight pre-determined / visible battled).  When you get into a fight, you are thrown into a 3rd person view behind your characters, similar to the early Phantasy Star games.  When you are in control of a character, you can fling your Bonbon at an enemy target.  A Bonbon is your energy sphere that hovers over your characters head (or in Copoona's case, below his body).  

To fling your Bonbon, all you need to do is hold back on your Analog stick, and let go.  The longer you hold your stick, the faster the Bonbon will travel to its target.  Once you fling your Bonbon, you have to wait for it to travel to the target, and then travel back.  The thing I find mostly unique about this battle system is how the enemies are placed on your screen.  They are often randomly placed, and can be placed at any perspective across the screen.  Each Bonbon fling consumes energy, you need atleast 100% energy to fling your Bonbon.  So, after your Bonbon has used energy, you have to wait for it to charge.

While enemies are randomly placed on the screen, they are permanently placed in that single position for that battle.  This brings a bit of strategy into the game, because when you fling your Bonbon, it will travel to that exact spot where your enemy is positioned.  Some enemies just stand on that stop the entire time, but other, melee type enemies, will charge after your characters.  If that enemy charges you, and you fling your Bonbon late, then you will miss him.  

Another cool thing about this system is how the enemies are placed.  Some enemies are directly behind another enemy.  Some even hide behind bombs.  So if you want to hit that enemy, you have to fling your Bonbon at an angle.  When you charge your Bonbon with your Up button, then your bonbon will fling towards the ground, if you fling it with the Down button, then it will curse upwards.  If you fling it right, then it will curse to the left, and fling it left, it will curve to the right.  It's a simple battle system, and very easy to learn.  

The battle system is only a small part of this game actually.  The biggest part is the adventuring elements.  A huge chunk of your time in Opoona is traversing through various towns and locations, while doing odd jobs for employers, and helping your friends out along the way.  

This element of the game reminds me a bit of a dumbed down Harvest Moon.. or Animal Crossing, or possibly even Shenmue.  At the start of the game, you are required to get a job.  Once you applied for a license, they give you a task to complete.  There is one major job, which usually requires you to go through a dungeon and fight a boss, in a traditional RPG fashion.  However, most of the side jobs require you to clean rooms, fish, or serve people.  

While at first glance these side jobs might seem kinda useless or unimportant.  You need most of these jobs to advance the story, unlock new paths, and even to complete the game (I'm glad I did them early on).  Making Friendships is also an important part of the game later on.  

----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Opoona, of course.  Opoona, and his family, are flying through space while on vacation, until their ship is attacked.  Opoona and his two siblings, Copoona and Poleena, are sent into escape pods, and sent to the closest planet, Landroll.  

Opoona lands safely on Landroll, and is quickly rescued by local rangers in the town of Tokione.  When Opoona wakes up, he learns that he was separated from his siblings and parents.  His parents are a deep coma, and he must get a job to help pay for their medical expenses (I'm serious).  

As soon as Opoona wakes up, who looks to be about 8 years old, he is forced to get a job.  Not just washing dishes or anything, but he's forced to be a ranger, which is a job that involves killing evil Rogues on their planet.

Ok, for one, I wasn't into the storyline to much.  I did like the cast of colorful characters, while most of them are bland and forgettable, some are pretty interesting.  I loved making friendships with the NPC of the world.  This reminded me alot of Suikoden or Radiata Stories.

The worst thing about Opoona is the poor translation.  I looked it up, and only two people did the localization for this game, and they're both Japanese.  The dialog just doesn't make sense half of the time.  Sometimes a character will ask you a question, or even just spout a statement, and they will give you the option of "Yes or No".  It's pretty bad when you have to guess at a "yes or no" question 90% of the time.  

The worst is the rampant misspellings and typing errors.  It goes so far that even character's names are screwed up at times.



----------Graphics----------
I love the graphical style in this game.  The characters and enemies have a cel-shade look to them.  Everything has a bold black line that surround them, which reminds me of the old Saturn game Shining Wisdom.  I love that look.  Enemies look great and show off a TON of animation in battle.  What I love most about the enemy animations is they slowly deteriorate the more you punish them in battle.  There is usually just a couple phases of that, but it's still cool to look at, even though it's kinda subtle.

I am not a fan of the town's layouts, I think they're just way to big and confusing.  However, I'm shocked how HUGE the areas in this game are.  If this was on the PS2, the load times would be atrocious.  

----------Sound----------
I enjoyed the music quite a big.  The town music was your standard spacey sci-fi, electronic type music.  Catchy and rememberable.  I really loved the battle theme music though, which reminds me of some weird Danny Elfman type song.  

There are NO voice overs at all in this game.  I think there might be a dog bark or a cat meow, but outside of that, nothing.  There aren't even sound effects in the battle system, besides your Bonbon charging or when you get hit.  Luckily, the battle system is fun and fast, so you hardly notice.


----------World Map----------
The world is a series of connecting fields, dungeons and towns.  Everything is proportionate in size, like Dragon Quest VIII or Twilight Princess.  There are five major towns in the game.  Each town has a "port", this is like an airport or warp station.  The game flows in a linear path, but once you get everything unlocked, you can go to any port, and choose any location that you previous visited.  

Once you reach a town, you can basically do whatever you want inside of it, as long as you have the proper licenses or if you know the right people.  Each town is sectioned off by mountains or ocean, so you can't really walk through the entire world map.  



----------Time to Complete Game----------
40-45 hours.

I was shocked how long this game ended up being.  I put a ton of time with the friendship quests, as I thought that was the most exciting part of the game.  Yeah, some of the missions were boring fetch quests, but it was still exciting find a new friend and boosting their friendship levels.  

Opoona doesn't record your overall time, but rather the days you spent on the planet.  I spent around 87 days or so.  Each time you go to sleep, die or warp you lose a day.  I checked my Wii calender, and I estimated that I spent around 40-45 hours with the game.  

After you beat the game, you can save your file.  When you restart, you are back on the planet, where I assume you can finish up any missed sidequests.