AceGamez Review: Opoona

AceGamez: "It's been a long time since a Nintendo console was the go-to system for RPG fans and however much contemporary relevance the Virtual Console and Square Enix's daisy-chain of DS-bound remakes may have lent the genre's golden years on the SNES, the case with the Wii has to date proven little different than the lamentable early stages of the N64 and its misbegotten successor, the Gamecube. Ready at Dawn's port of the painterly PS2 favourite Okami tops the fledgling list, with strategy RPG Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn and, at a push, Super Paper Mario rounding out the few choice genre efforts available to Nintendo fans with a taste for role-playing. More than a year after launch, it's a sad and ultimately rather predictable state of affairs for the Wii to be mired in; despite their sales dominance and an assured slate of innovation, Nintendo's same-old shortcomings have begun to shine through the mediated veneer of success they've achieved this generation. Add pointed ignorance towards the core gamers that helped the Wii break out in the first place to the usual suspects: questionable quality control, a poor track record of third party support and that old chestnut, franchise fatigue. For its part, Opoona is hardly likely to change that lamentable fact; but although it looks to have been lost already amid the glut of ill-conceived tie-ins and waggle-enhanced flash games available for Nintendo's revolutionary little box, Japanese developers ArtePiazza have with their first original IP taken an important step in the right direction." 7/10