I decided to give the game a try too! I really love the story (the dialogue!) in this. Very funny and witty. The characters are really something else! XD I couldn't stop laughing at some parts. ^^
I'm more of a storymode kind of girl, so I went for narrative with 60 steps and I thought it went pretty good. I like that we can change the difficulty of the game as well as the steps as we progress in the game too. I was going insane with the currents, I spent AGES trying to figure out which way to go (especially after meeting the shark pups, those were really cute btw!), so being able to change the steps so that no battles would trigger was a plus to my sanity. LOL
The battle system was ok, honestly I didn't really like or dislike it. I didn't feel much about it. I pretty much always used the same method to winning the battles too.
The mapping was really nice. I really liked Riya's house and the beach. But the undersea maps! Those were sooo pretty! The fishies swimming around was a nice touch too. I loved it really! (You need to do a whole game in there because god I would love to explore all those pretty maps again! :P)
Overall: A great game! Definitely one I'll be saving in my harddrive to continue later! haha
Good luck in the contest! :)