OpoonaPlatform: Wii
PublisherKoei
UK Price (as reviewed):£29.99 (free delivery)
US Price (as reviewed):$45.99 (free delivery)

Opoona surprised me when it first turned up on my desk, partly because I wasn’t expecting Tim to throw it at me quite as violently as he did and partly because where I grew up in Derbyshire a Poona was a slang term for something rather unsanitary. I won’t detail what.

Regardless, I was somewhat intrigued by the promise of a casual Japanese RPG adventure on the Wii, if only because it seemed to be a concept built entirely from buzzwords. In fact, I’m not sure a Japanese casual RPG adventure is something that is entirely possible.

So, with girlfriend in tow and a nunchuck in my free hand, I took to the Opoona as enthusiastically as I could and quickly found that I wasn’t in for as much anger and disappointment as I had expected.

In fact, one could go as far as to say that Opoona is a mighty attractive RPG for the quality-starved Wii audience.

OpwnerOpoona starts off with the usual quick draught of fictional mythology being forced down your throat in an adorably cute and loveable cutscene.

It begins like this; you are Opoona and your father is one of the guardians of the galaxy known as the Cosmo Guards. In fact, your father is the bravest of all the Cosmo Guards and is taking his first holiday ever in the history of his career…on a warship. Quite why your father thought to bring his entire crew with him on holiday is never really explained.

Still, you aren’t alone in your adolescence and Opoona does have his brother and sister to play with – Copoona and Poleena, respectively.

All of this goes wrong though when calamity strikes and an unknown evil force swats your warship from the sky. Quickly, your mother and father bundle you into escape pods and launch you off to the nearest safe planet – one where the earth is starkly divided into the world of Light, where the friendly human-a-likes live and the world of Dark, inhabited by the Rogues.

Landing on the planet below however doesn’t go as smoothly as it should and although your parents do manage to escape the ship before it is destroyed, they are horribly injured as a result.

Waking up on your own in a hotel on the planet surface, it’s up to Opoona to try and put the family back together again. Your brother and sister are nowhere to be found, with your brother Copoona apparently being held with the mysterious sages – a group who have wield awesome healing abilities too if rumours are to be believed.

Your path is clear; to reunite with your brother and sister and to collectively find your parents, making sure they get the best healthcare possible. That’s by no means the limit of the mystery and intrigue of course and the plot takes several twists and turns as the story drags out, but this is more than enough to get you started.

Off sets Opoona then, into a world of stark contrasts and Sunday morning cartoon-like smiles, where the line between good and evil is decisive – a world where little smiley-face goons waddle around on hoverbikes and have weird energy balls floating over their head. Can he survive the trip without losing that big marble that floats atop his noggin’? Maybe, but he’s going to need your help to do it...