Straight from my site nineinchsandwich.com:

You know that I have been keeping my eye out on LostWinds ever since I first saw videos of the game way back when. Well, I bought it first thing this morning off of the Shop Channel and played through it after school. Is Frontier Developments’ Wii Ware launch title worth your time and money? Hit the jump to find out.

Let me just get this out of the way first. This game is fantastic.

The story follows a young boy named Toku on his journey to stop the evil spirit Balasar. At the outset of this quest, he meets with the wind spirit, Enril, and the two work together to stop Balasar.

The game plays a bit like Kirby: Canvas Curse where most of the action is done by an outside force and not the actual on-screen character. The controls are very simple and intuitive. The wiimote’s pointer ability controls Enril while the nunchuk controls Toku. You use each of Enril’s powers with the A and B buttons and draw on screen to manipulate the environment.

The game looks great. In fact, it puts many third party games to shame. There are plenty of environmental objects like bushes and trees that react to the sweeping motions of your wiimote and there is no slowdown even when you mess around and draw long lines of fire and water.

LostWinds progresses in a Metroid/Castlevania kind of way where you find a new power, use it to solve puzzles and explore new areas. This is where the game hits a couple of minor snags. I found myself getting lost quite a bit, especially toward the end of the game. Unfortunately, the game has no map whatsoever so you have to remember the names of the general areas because there will be a little backtracking. The other disappointing bit is that this game is short. You can beat this game in a little over three hours. You can pad your time by collecting the various totems scattered throughout the world but the main story can be beaten in an afternoon.

The lack of a map and short length aside, this game is great and should definitely be a part of any Wii owners library. It is one of those games where you can just stop, relax, and just soak up the atmosphere. The future of Wii Ware looks good if games like LostWinds will continue to come out on the service.

Verdict: Buy It