Finished Opoona. The story behind Opoona is that on your way to vacation with your family on a foreign planet, your ship gets shot down and the lot of you crash land in individual escape pods, splitting you up. The locals take you in and make you work (not in a slavey way, but rather productive member of society way) to to earn your way to the dome your injured parents are recovering in. You may forget all about that little fact as your playing because you're loaded with quite a few things to do. The job you're assigned with is a ranger (kill things) and as you do missions, you upgrade your license to get access to different domes. In the process, you can earn licenses for other jobs that you can do on the side that will give you access to other areas.
You'll probably find yourself spending a lot of time inside the domes doing side jobs and making/bolstering friendships, while killing things is typically done outside of the domes. There isn't too much exploration to do outside of the domes as for the most part you just leave the dome and do your mission and come back. There are random encounters outside of the domes, but it's not too annoying since you don't spend all that much time outside. Also, regular battles can't last more than two minutes and are usually quite brief.
Combat is done... differently. You've got a ball over your head (a "bonbon", for reals) that you throw at enemies by pulling back (or any direction, really) on the joystick to charge and then release to throw it. Depending on the direction you release from and the charge you put on it will change the curve on your throw. This isn't very important in the very beginning, but there is an item you can get that allows you to attack one enemy through another, so you can try to aim your throw to hit as many of them as possible. Otherwise, there may be times when you try to angle your throw to avoid hitting things, or you want to throw the bonbon in such a way that if the enemy comes in to attack he's still in the trajectory to get hit. To go along with the bonbon throwing, you've got your magic and items that can be used in battle, too. You can outfit your bonbon with different coatings and such to give you different abilities and stat-boosts.
It's a decently lengthy game (don't know how many hours I put into it, but I guess I spent around three weeks on it. It's been described as a life-simulation RPG, which I suppose is a fitting description as you go about your everyday life while progressing. If you've got some time and are looking for a cheery little RPG to fill it, Opoona's worth a look.
I'm thinking I may try Baten Kaitos after I'm done with Finals. I'm interested to see what Monolith did before Xenoblade.
