Of all the titles in the Legend of Zelda series, some of the most-respected have been for handheld consoles. Link's Awakening, the Oracle duo, and Minish Cap all manage to combine on-the-road gaming with a certain purity of Zelda-ness. Link's most recent adventure on the small screen, Phantom Hourglass, generally continues this tradition and introduces a number of new elements to the property. Unique controls, a true sequel, and cel-shaded graphics all make Hourglass stand out from 'traditional' Zelda games, and together the whole hangs together fairly well. Read on for my impressions of this pint-sized return to Hyrule.
- Title:Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
- Developer/Publisher: Nintendo
- System: DS
- Genre: Top-Down Adventure Game
- Score: 3/5: This game will appeal to genre fans. Not the strongest entry in the series, but worth your time.
Phantom Hourglass is a first for Nintendo in a few ways. Story-wise, it's the first time a Zelda game has directly referenced elements from a previous title. In this case, Hourglass is a direct sequel to 2003's Wind Waker. The first moments of Hourglass recap the end of the GameCube game, and sets the scene for the game's overall conflict. As befitting a handheld game, the story (at first) is a bit less epic than in games like Link to the Past. A ghost ship of some kind is haunting the waves, and snags Tetra/Zelda from the deck of her own vessel. Link hooks up with a scoundrel named Linebeck, who owns a paddleboat capable of crossing the seas. Together with the amnesiac fairy Ciela, the three adventurers explore the Temple of the Ocean King looking for clues as to where Tetra has gone. It's a brisk story, without a lot of deep characterization or extremely memorable moments, but it serves the gameplay quite well. Some Zelda games feel like a constant 'one more thing' struggle, as you finish X to get to Y but then find you you have to complete A to get to B before you can return to Y. Hourglass's fairly linear tale doesn't allow for many cul-de-sacs like that, and works just fine for a handheld title. My biggest complaint about the story is that the ending is fairly weak, especially compared to the finale of Wind Waker. I didn't feel as though I was satisfactorily paid off for my investment, and that's always frustrating. Gameplay-wise, the finale was great; I just wish they'd ended on a different story note.
On that gameplay front, Phantom Hourglass offers up more new elements than in any other recent Zelda title. Twilight Princess had Link swinging his sword with the Wiimote, but fundamentally the game played like pretty much every game since Ocarina. Phantom Hourglass makes full use of the DS's touch elements and microphone to produce a completely new play experience. Moving Link, attacking, throwing the boomerang, all are done with the stylus, and these elements were all polished to varying levels of success. Simple movement is effortless, and is an easy mental switchover from the D-pad. There are some moves done with the stylus that take some getting used to (like a circle at the edge of the screen for a tuck-and-roll), and those I found to be sometimes a bit clumsier. Actual combat is as easy as poking your enemy with the stylus, and those simple attacks also feel very 'right'. Some more advanced combat moves will require practice to get regularly, and some never quite felt spot-on to me. The best element of the touch controls is the 'drawing' gameplay, used for items like the boomerang and in navigating Linebeck's ship. The boomerang control feels like this is something that should have been in Zelda games from the very beginning, and it never got old using that simple 'low-level' item.
Beyond the controls, a lot of the gameplay additions were hit or miss. The phantom hourglass itself adds a time-based puzzle to the Temple of the Ocean King maps, requiring you to complete a series of puzzles in a specific amount of time. Given the handheld nature of the game I felt that worked really well. In fact, the handheld basis of the game was well respected throughout. Puzzles never required more than a minute or two of mulling to figure out, you can save whenever you want, and in most cases an entire island only required about 15-20 minutes of your time to complete. Sailing, on the other hand, was just as tedious as it was in Wind Waker. The designers took some deliberate steps to make the experience less onerous than in Hourglass's predecessor, but it still felt like far too much time was spent wandering the ocean or fighting off pirate attacks. Boss battles on the whole were fairly strong, often using DS touch elements in interesting ways. A few, like the requisite fight with Dodongo, felt like they made things different just for the sake of being different. The Gleeok battle, on the other hand, was a great use of the DS's charms to turn old hat into new fun.
Visually Phantom Hourglass holds up the standard of Wind Waker very well, which is highly impressive given that the latter is a GameCube title. I've always personally liked the cel-shaded style used in these games, but folks who found the style's use in the original game offputting won't find any comfort here. In fact, Hourglass goes a step further with the 'semi-cartoony' elements, giving Link some goofy expressions and over-the-top takes over the course of the game. If you go in expecting cartoon instead of Twilight Princess, none of these gags should be too annoying. Probably the only 'classic' element of the game is its auditory presentation. Sound FX are taken right out of Wind Waker, and the musical compositions are surprisingly sophisticated for a handheld game. I particularly liked the composition of the Zelda theme used for the title screen, a stirring combination with Wind Waker music elements set against an ocean scene.
It's strange saying that a Zelda title is 'merely competent', since I've over-the-top enjoyed most of the other entries in the venerable series. Link to the Past is still one of my favorite games, and so in some ways I feel like every new attempt to rescue the princess is held up to that gold standard. Here, sailing around islands that were once the mountaintops of Hyrule, I feel like the gameplay too was a bit flooded. Nintendo tried to cram a lot of new elements into one experience, and ended up with some that were spot-on, and some that weren't. I'm not even sure if the weaker components could have used more time; in this game, some things just felt out of place. Overall, though, it's hard to fault them for trying something so deliberately new. Phantom Hourglass is a fun handheld title, with a focus on quickly-resolving puzzle and action elements perfect for its format. It's well worth a look for anyone who has yet to tire of another try at the Triforce.
Touch screen issues (Score:3, Interesting)
I admit the control scheme is (when working properly) quite well-conceived and makes me happy. The boomerang and bow+arrow especially are fun, as is the boat cannon.
The game is great, although whoever came up with the idea of repeating that one Temple over and over (even with some shortcuts thrown in) is a total prick.
Re:My short review (Score:5, Interesting)
If you didn't like it at first, I'd play until you get the boomerang. It gets better after that but if you still don't like the gameplay by then, you probably won't enjoy this game much. It was an experiment by Nintendo and I personally think they did a good job with it. Not for everyone though.
Deep Thoughs by a Lazy Coward (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, I recently beat the game so I'll add my 2 cents.
Its a very good game. The first time I put it in my DS I could not put it down and managed to kill 6 hours in a single sitting. The graphics were very good, the characters are nice and developed, and its got a great story to it.
There are of course some drawbacks. First, an option to use classic controls would have helped at some point, as its somewhat hard to control link in close quarters combat using just the stylus. It also would have helped if the L an R buttons could have controlled different items, like how in almost all zeldas since ocarina you cna have multiple gadgets equipped on different buttons somehow.
Second, the audio wasnt as detailed and thoughtful as in past zelda games. The same short tune plays in each dungeon, and its not even a really suspenseful tune. I finally got around to playing Twilight Princess a few weeks ago, and every dungeon in that game had a different, deeply immersive tune that added to the feeling of the game. Heck, even the first portable zelda: links awakening had unique tunes for the dungeons.
Third, and this has been mentioned before, you have to repeat the same dungeon like 6 times in the game, and only after the 3rd or 4th time through does a portal open up to take you back to that point the next time you enter. It wouldn't have been nearly as repetitive if each time through you unlocked one of these portals.
Now, this game did offer a lot of positives. Being able to draw routes for your weapons was absolutely brilliant. This is the only zelda game in which I actually enjoyed bombchus and regularly used them. Being able to tell your boomerang exactly where to go was great as well, and helped in many places. Being able to draw notes on the map was a great addition as well, and I hope they add that feature to the next Zelda on the Wii. Sailing was also much less of a chore in this game than wind waker, and the warp methods were actually useful, even tho I didnt manage to get all of them before I beat the game.
Humerously, when I started the game I actually had the same feelings as a recent VG Cats comic and literally said out loud "Oh no, not navi!" But the fairy in this game isnt that bad, and actually ads a decent amount to the game in the later stages, especially if you pay attention to one of the side quests.
Anyway, I think its an extremely well put together game, and a must-have for any zelda fan or DS owner. There were some shortcomings, but the freshness more than makes up for it. This anonymous coward gives it a solid 8.7 out of 10.
Re:not the first sequel (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it gets less now than it used to. It used to be more of an odd one out - the side-scrolling action instead of the other games' top-down model was certainly weird. It didn't feel at all the same as the other games, and so it got a fair amount of abuse. I loved it myself - I'd played it first, and only got the others rather later, so I didn't see it as so strange - but I can understand the criticism.
That was the case while Zelda II was compared with Zelda I, LttP and Awakening. All top-down adventures clearly related to each other, leaving Zelda II out in the cold.
Then Nintendo decided to change the rules a bit. I remember feeling a certain trepidation when I heard what was being done. 3D? How'll that work? The whole thing was pretty much a complete rethink, making the difference between Zelda II and the other three seem rather less significant.
And then the game came out, and... well, there's Civilization II and Super Mario Bros. III, and maybe Half-Life, and that's all that stands comparison.
Now Zelda II isn't so much seen as an oddball, a black sheep of the family. It's a precursor to Ocarina, ahead of its time. Fighting side on? You do it in Ocarina, when you're not viewing it from behind instead. Using magic spells? Well, that's what the ocarina's for. And better yet, Ocarina explicitly endorsed the awesomeness of Zelda II: Rauru. Ruto. Saria. Mido. Nabooru. Darunia.
Now, I'm looking forward to the second (or the first exclusively) Wii Zelda. I hope to find out at last just who Kasuto was :-)