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Reviews » The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass [DS]

The Legend of Zelda is one of those series where damn near every new iteration has enough differences from its predecessors that it comes standard with a large side of fear, uncertainty, doubt, and fanboy bitching. "OH MAN, THE NEW ZELDA IS 3D WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?" / "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I ONLY HAVE THREE DAYS?" / "MORE LIKE CELDA, AM I RIGHT?" / "THEY DELAYED THIS SHIT FOR A YEAR JUST TO ADD WAGGLE?" And now here we are again with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and as expected the dissenters have emerged from their caves to bitch that "OMG THIS SUX I HATE TOUCHSCREENS!" Luckily, just like every other first-party Zelda game Nintendo has come through with a brilliant and innovative experience. However, for a change the dissenters happen to have a bit of a point this time, but fortunately the game doesn't significantly suffer because of it.

Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to 2003's Wind Waker (you know, the one you probably didn't finish thanks to the mind-numbing mandatory fetch quest right before the end), and takes place in the distant future-past, where the land of Hyrule has been flooded, leaving only a few sparsely inhabited islands around the world. Having saved Hyrule from destruction again, Link - the Hero of the Winds - spends his time sailing around the world with Tetra (Zelda's assumed name in this time period) and her pirate crew. In their search for treasure they come across a ghost ship, but after Tetra boards it the ship immediately starts disappearing. Link tries to go after her, but ends up lost at sea.

Link is awakened on an unfamiliar island, by yet another annoying fairy named Celia who acts as your cursor in-game. After securing a sword and convincing a local captain to provide transportation (in return for free reign over whatever treasure is found on the fabled Ghost Ship), Link and crew depart in search of a way to save Zelda for the 40th time.

From here on, the game is pretty much standard Zelda fare. Find a dungeon, find out how to get in, explore it, get a new weapon, use the weapon to beat a boss, get a heart container and shiny thing (in this case Spirit Fairies, in common flavors of "Power", "Courage", and "Wisdom"), repeat two more times, enjoy your mid-game plot revelation, proceed through another three dungeons, head to a final dungeon, win the game. But, of course, Phantom Hourglass does bring some new stuff to the table. On the gameplay side of things the really big change is that the game is completely controlled by the touchscreen. The buttons available to either your left or right hand (depending on handedness-preference) only serve as OSD button hotkeys: left opens your menu pull-out, right opens your items pull-out, up/down swaps you map down so you can make notes, and L is your "start using item" key. Everything else is the touchpad. Moving, rolling, attacking, aiming, interacting with NPCs, making notes on your map, everything.

Now, ok, this might turn some of you off. I know it turned me off when I first played the game at E3 2006, and I know Metallian has been bitching about it ever since he got the game, but it really isn't hard to get over. After about a half-hour of gameplay I had adjusted to it fine and really came to enjoy the new input method. Once I figured out that you could activate your item with L, it became even easier. The only thing that I still feel I'm missing out on thanks to the lack of normal controls is mobility while using an item. It would be nice, for instance, to be able to strafe around while I've got an arrow drawn. But that isn't so important to me that it ruined the game or whatever. Metallian's complaint boiled down to "There's no reason for them to force us to use this input scheme, so they should have at least given us the option." I don't agree with this, because on the DS there just aren't enough buttons, and if you're using both hands to hold the DS, there'd be a game-breaking time lag to get your stylus out and draw a path for a boomerang, or make a note on your map, or any of the other necessary uses of the stylus built into the game.

Phantom Hourglass brings some new stuff to the game structure side of things, too. Before proceeding to the next dungeon you have to make a trip to the Temple of the Ocean King, a mysterious and highly dangerous dungeon on the first island. The temple has several unique characteristics, the most apparent of which is the fact that it drains your life while you're there. If you stay out in the open in the temple you will lose life, a fate that befell several adventurers whose ghosts you'll encounter in the temple. Once you obtain the titular "Phantom Hourglass" and start collecting sand for it, you'll be protected from the damaging effects of the temple as long as the hourglass runs. There are safe areas in each floor of the temple, but they won't generally help you progress, they'll just give you somewhere to hide while you figure out what you're going to do next.

To make things worse, the temple is haunted by incredibly powerful "Phantoms" which patrol set paths of every floor. Think "invincible Darknuts". Not only will their attacks beat you up pretty badly, but they'll also take a sizable chunk of time off the clock, giving you less time to work through the temple. This means not only are you rushing from safe area to safe area just to keep time on the clock, but you're also hiding from Phantoms, and all the while you're still expected to solve puzzles. Phantoms get progressively harder as you get deep into the dungeon, as do puzzles, which start spanning floors.

The normal dungeons, unfortunately, are cakewalks. Generally you'll spend about equal time finding your way to the next island and then making your way to the dungeon as you will in the dungeons themselves. I was rather effortlessly knocking out an island, dungeon and corresponding trip through the Ocean King's Temple in one sitting. So despite the fact that it had 8 dungeons if you count the Ocean King's Temple, I burned through the game in less than a week of casual play. The dungeons were all fun and innovative, but they just weren't long enough, and the puzzles just weren't difficult enough. The bosses were similar in that they were all original and all had innovative methods of beating them, but they were all easy and went down fast.

Luckily, to break up those short periods of time in dungeons, there were quite a few sidequests. As you're sailing around the world you might sight uncharted islands full of treasure or a minigame, or you might spot a new warp point frog, or you might find a drifting ship in need of help. You also might come across pirates or other dangers at sea, but thanks to your ship's upgradable nature you can get addons like a cannon to protect you and a crane to help you liberate treasures from the sea floor. Your ship itself can be mix & matched, as throughout the world you'll find parts like anchors, paddlewheels, and hulls, each belonging to one of 9 "sets". You can mix & match these to customize the look of your ship, and depending on how much of one set you've got equipped you'll alter the ship's stamina, increasing the number of hits you can take in high-seas combat.

Apart from hunting down pirates and chasing after fish, there's a rather short trading quest, and there are a couple of enjoyable minigames (I'm partial to the Molida Island shooting gallery), but even these suffer from the same problems as the rest of the game. Not enough, too easy, too short.

Unique to this incarnation of Zelda is a multiplayer mode that works locally or over Nintendo WFC. It's a series of arena maps based off of the Ocean King's Temple, where you battle someone 1-on-1. In these maps, one player controls Link, and the other controls a set of three Phantoms. Link has to get force gems back to his designated safe area, while the other player tries to stop him. Once Link gets hit, the sides switch. This process repeats for three rounds, and someone is declared the winner. Unfortunately, on random multiplayer you'll be surprised if you ever get that far, as pubbies seem to greatly enjoy dropping at the first sign of them being horribly trashed. It's a neat concept, but unless you've got a bunch of friends with the game you're not likely to get a lot of action out of it.

Really the only beef I've got with Phantom Hourglass is that I just wanted more. I wanted dungeons to be longer, puzzles to be harder, and more side-quest areas to explore. On some quadrants of the map there are only two or three points of interest. They also scaled way back regarding how many heart pieces there are to collect by doing away with heart pieces altogether, and just handing out heart containers as prizes for things. Despite this, it was still a good game, a very good game in fact, with all the polish you'd expect from a first-party Nintendo game. I just wish it had more lasting appeal.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - DS

Presentation

Like any first-party Nintendo game, the presentation is slick and impeccable. It's one of the best-looking full-3d DS games.

Gameplay

There's a great divide over if the touchscreen controls are a good move or not, but I'm coming down on the side of "for", so fuck the haters.

Replayability

Unfortunately, there just isn't a ton of stuff to do in the game. And like any Zelda game, once you've made one trip through the game, there isn't a whole lot to entice you to come back. You might get some replayability out of the multiplayer mode, but I wouldn't hold your breath there.

Value

A week of casual gameplay just doesn't cut it for me. Especially not for a game I'm paying full retail price for. Super especially not for a Zelda game. I'll admit I'm a fanboy, so I bought it at release regardless, but if you care about value, you might wait until you can find it used or on sale.

Overall

It's a great game, and definitely a game worthy of being part of the Zelda series, I just wish there was more to it. Quite a bit like Wind Waker, actually.