And in an update to my last post here's some thoughts
1) I'm very happy with Subversion, I suspect that if the choice is mine I won't be using CVS again.
2) Despite having a not particularly great first 5 or so hours, Okami is my current choice for game of the year.
3) I had thought about using boost::spirit for parsing the current form of my level data, but thought it might take too much time to learn how to use it. After seeing the post from MaulingMonkey in this thread, I might take the time to look at it (if only for educational value).