Once Upon a Time...

With the promise of any new Wii exclusive comes an endless period of nail-biting leading up to release. With the plethora of casual games that have swarmed and, arguably, conquered the Wii, a cutesy game pledging to appeal to hard core gamers contains some built in skepticism as to who this game is actually designed for. Such is Little King's story.

Little King's Story, however naive it may appear from the box art, comes not from unknown developers targeting yet another "easily accessible" "family friendly" Wii experience, but from names that we, the veteran gamers, have come to adore over the years. Names associated with Harvest Moon and Final Fantasy. Any game from such a distinguished team would seem unlikely to be capable of being just another game. Indeed, it aims to be something quite special.

As the game begins, we're greeted with an unusual, yet familiar sound: Ravel's Bolero. The repetitious masterpiece makes up the pre-rendered introductory movie's background music. The movie itself is styled after Russian oil painting animation, and one can't help but equate it to the Nutcracker with its Russian styling, innocence, and the back-story's menace: rats.

As the ubiquitous tutorial segment begins we see our hero Corobo, the newly appointed king of Alpoko receiving a briefing in his "castle", which, for the moment, more closely resembles a thatch-roofed shack than a castle. That, of course, will need to change, but first we need to secure a town square, and proceed through an unusually lengthy but quite enjoyable introductory period. Let's see just what this game has in store for us.

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