It's almost hard to believe how good this is!
The graphics are good. The terrain is simple and not really textured, but the art style works so well that you won't even care. You can zoom out and view your islands from high in the sky or you can zoom in and watch the little people go about their business. Everything just looks great and very pleasing/easy on the eyes.
Controls are great too. You use nunchuck to move around the screen and use pointer to move things/build things and control ships. There are some things that you have to get used to (like using the map screen and sending ships to certain locations), but building/demolishing is very intuitive and fluid.
The story mode is straightforward and is more of a tutorial. You won't really care about the story too much, but some of it might make you laugh. But it does a great job of easing you into the experience so that you know the general order of things, the tech trees, the upgrading system, etc. And after you finish the story mode you can get into the real meat of the game which is the continuous mode.
Anyway, it's a great game and it's at a great price ($13 on newegg). It may seem less functional compared to its PC version, but if you don't have a good enough PC to handle the PC version OR if you're not really that into the concept anyway and a complex version sounds daunting...this is a great alternative.