Lostwinds — A Review

First of all I’m going to break the number one rule of reviewing games and give you my final word on this game right off the bat… it’s a great game. If you own a Wii go start the download and then come back and read the rest of this review, It’s worth the 1000 points. With that being said (and not to mention losing half my readers) I’ll proceed to a slightly more detailed explanation of the game.

Lostwinds takes place in the land of Mistralis and focuses on the adventures of Toku and Enril; a boy with an exceptionally large noggin and a wind spirit, respectively. The game is based around the mechanic of controlling a separate character with the Nunchuk and Wiimote in a sort of single player co-op. Toku moving through the world and Enril aiding him with strategic gusts. I’m happy to report that the mechanic works great. After a short learning curve (30 seconds to 5 minutes depending on whether or not you know what a power glove is) you’ll be flying through the levels with ease — literally.

When you first begin your adventure Enril has been stripped of her power, reduced to making flowers wave gently in the wind. However, as you find “lostwinds” the broken wind spirit’s power will be restored and by the end of the game you’ll be chucking boulders around, hurling your enemies to their doom and carrying Toku into the wild blue.

The art and sound design in Lostwinds is incredible, so much so that it’s enough reason for anyone to go and buy the game right now. The music captures the essence of the world with laconic woodwind melodies and the art style, reminiscent of both Aztec and Oriental cultures (like some wonder fusion of Wind Waker and The Road to El Dorado) gives the world a charm all of its own. It’s one of the few games on the Wii that feels full of life, not a graphical powerhouse by any means but the world reacts to your presence and trees bend softly in the wind as you pass Enril over them with the Wiimote.

I could only find two faults in the otherwise perfect purchase; the first is the difficulty level. A newly indoctrinated “casual” gamer may find some of the puzzles hard enough to bring them to a head-scratching stop for a few minutes but for most players they’re just too easy. The game feels like the intro levels to a much larger experience which brings me neatly to my next point; length. Just a little over two hours of gameplay and I was looking at the tantalizing “to be continued…” on the final screen. It was two hours I don’t regret spending but it’s still only two hours.

Frontier is already working on the next episode in the Lostwinds tale and from what I could gather from the opening and closing cinematic it’s a safe bet we’ll be seeing the elemental powers of Earth, Fire and Water make an appearance alongside Wind which could bring a much needed depth and complexity to the game.

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