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Looking to quench your Pikmin hunger while waiting for Nintendo to give some info on the elusive Pikmin 3? Little King's Story should do more than satisfy that hunger, it may even make you just forget what a Pikmin is.

Although Little King's Story plays and controls similar to Pikmin at first, it quickly outpaces the simplistic Pikmin with an extensive amount of depth.

The game starts off with a young child finding a golden crown in the dirt. He is quickly recognized as the new King of Alpoko that the 12 citizens and 3 Ministers of Alpoko have been waiting for. You begin your reign over Alpoko with a small run down castle and a very small population. As you explore your kingdom and expand your territory and wealth tons of new options become available. Just browsing through the options available after playing for about 5 hours can be overwhelming. Thankfully all the new options are unveiled at your leisure and have optional tutorials, thanks to one of your Ministers.

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Each citizen has their own identity. Unlike a lot of RTS style games where you just grab all your soldiers and run into battle your citizens are a lot more personal here. Each citizen has their own name, health meter, job, equipment and if you should choose to be interested even a life partner. Pretty much any part of the citizens life you can influence, with the exception of their name. If a citizen falls in battle due to your mismanagement you must pay a Death Benefit to their grieving family.

As your treasury grows from discovering treasures or defeating monsters new options to expand your town and you peoples happiness also grow. Some of the Town expanding options include: Different Job classes (which seems to be a staggering amount), New housing developments (which encourage new citizens to join your kingdom), Different Laws being passed (which benefit your citizens in many different ways), New military skills, Ways to beautify your town (which make for happy and more productive citizens), Message boxes (to receive your citizens ideas on how to improve), Podiums (to address your citizens), and lots more.

In addition to the treasury constantly needing to grow you obviously need more land to expand and build these new items. That is the main point of the game. As you explore you'll eventually find other rival kingdoms and in order to expand Alpoko further you'll need to defeat each rival kingdoms leaders and wild animals in order to ensure its safe for your citizens to live in the new territory.

The music in Little King's Story is FANTASTIC. It mainly uses very recognizable classical music which suites the game, and every situation you find yourself in, very comfortably.

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In addition to the already staggering amount of depth I've described above Little King's Story has a plethora of optional side questing to be done too. Anything from responding to citizens letters via the town Suggestion Box to collecting childrens artwork that has been scattered around the world to finding new areas to record. All of this is optional and can be stopped or picked up again at any point you wish.

The game has a wonderful sense of humor to match its child like art-style. Here is a cut scene where the Onii King challenges your to battle for expanding into his territory. Unfortunately I couldn't find a video with subtitles, because it is a lot funnier (he calls you names like a Fart-Face and stuff), but you should still see the humorous style that is prevalent throughout the entire game.



Little King's Story is easily one of the best games on the Wii. The game sounds great. It plays great. You can go straight though it if you like. You can spend hours upon hours exploring/questing/building/customizing if thats your thing. It looks great. Its funny. Its polished. It has NO WAGGLE (or any specialized use of the Wii Remote). Its really an amazing game. Unfortunately it most likely gets passed over many times due to the childish style the game is presented in (much like The Muchables, which I reviewed some time ago). But don't be fooled by the presentation. This game is not only deep and involved, its incredibly challenging at times also. Having dropped to $15 or so for a new Sealed copy, I would highly recommend getting this if you have even the slightest interest in it.

Final Score - 9/10

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