Plot wise, Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to The GameCube Nautical opus The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but unlike the 'small beginnings' early-game of Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass starts with a bang. Picking up right where Wind Waker ended, the title screen shows Link on the bow of Tetra's ship, as they set sail on an adventure to find a new land. Boarding a ghost ship they were tracking, Tetra disappears, and in an effort to go after her Link falls into the drink, and washes up on an island. With the help of an amnesiac fairy, a mysterious old man, and a rascally sea captain (the delightful Captain Linebeck) Link sets out to find Tetra and discover the mystery of the ghost ship.
The Nautical theme carries over from its predecessor
What immediately sets Phantom Hourglass apart (and not just from other Zelda games) are its controls, as the game is controlled almost exclusively with the touch screen. You move Link by pointing where you want him to walk, and attack by tapping an enemy or drawing lines to swing Link's sword. You also select and use all items and refer to your map with the touchscreen, and apart from a couple of useful button shortcuts, the game is entirely stylus driven.
Initially it feels quite awkward to have to 'drag' Link where you want him to go, and it feels weird to be able to just tap an enemy to attack, but after a short while it becomes second nature, and the ease with which tasks can be accomplished makes the idea of d-pad and buttons controls seem quite cumbersome. Annoying features of puzzle adventure games, such as having to line up perfectly with switches/levers to hit them, have been completely eliminated by the streamlined controls. You simply tap the switch, and Link automatically moves to the correct position and executes the command. There's definitely a loss of the tactile feeling of a button-press sword swipe, but it's a loss worth taking for the incredible precision available. And it's actually quite satisfying being able to target an enemy with a simple tap, without having to line yourself up first. The combat engine is simply a marvel, and it's quite amazing the way movement and attack have been combined into one fluid system.
The touchscreen innovations don't end there though. As you go on, the new tools you pick up make more and more use of the touch controls, and they also feature heavily in the game's integration of the map into the puzzles. Writing on the map is just so obvious an idea, but is one of the best features ever seen in adventure games. But Phantom Hourglass isn't content to just make your life easier by not requiring memorisation (or an external notepad), it plays on this feature to create a whole new level of interactive puzzle. Using map points to draw lines, and digging where they intersect would be cumbersome without the feature, but here it makes you feel like a true adventurer.
Dungeons are as involved as ever
This also carries over into the game's travel sequences. Leaving Wind Waker's involved sailing mechanic behind, in Phantom Hourglass you're on a powered boat (driven by Captain Linebeck), and to travel you simply map a course on your sea chart, which Linebeck will then follow automatically. There are enemies to defeat and things to do as you travel, including fun fishing and treasure trawling minigames, as well as changing course on the fly to avoid pirates.
For a Wind Waker fan, Phantom Hourglass initially feels like a bit of a disappointment. Within the intro all of Wind Waker's characters and locations have been discarded, and soon Link is left alone in a seemingly much less expansive world. However, the exploration aspect remains intact, but with a different focus – instead of focusing on quietly discovering a world and its history and characters, there's a feeling of high adventure. The story is not as grand, but it somehow matches the world and gameplay just as well as Wind Waker's did, and there are still many memorable characters and events. It's not an overly long game, but it's certainly not too short either – it's pretty much the perfect length, as you'll spend just the right amount of time doing any particular task or using any particular item that it hasn't had a chance to become boring.
One slight downer is the way the game uses some of the DS's other features, like the microphone. At certain points you have to blow into the microphone, which is fair enough in context. But when you're asked to yell it's a bit too much, as could be the time when you have to close the DS to 'print' one screen on the other (depending on how laterally the player is inclined to thinking). These ideas are often used to break the fourth wall and allow the game to poke fun at itself, but could get annoying or frustrating for some players
Another thing that does break the spell a bit is that the game runs on a separate engine for the sea travel parts. Instead of the seamless world of Wind Waker, where you moved from sailing to land travel within the same engine, Phantom Hourglass employs an 'overworld' not unlike a 3D Final Fantasy game. The overworld resembles Wind Waker, with full camera control, and full views of islands as they approach in the distance, but when you dock and move to dry land, the game bears more resemblance to a traditional 2D Zelda, with primarily flat representations of the same landscapes.
But speaking of landscapes, Phantom Hourglass is an absolutely beautiful game, and a technical marvel on the DS. Everything is in full 3D and is presented in the same cell-shaded style as its prequel, but remarkably very few sacrifices have been made. The textures and geometry are obviously not as good as the still phenomenal looking GameCube game, and the generally overhead perspective is obviously more limited graphically, but the style has been maintained perfectly, as has the art direction. The world is just as full of life and just as appealing, and you'll want to explore it just to see it. Sound direction is also carried over intact, although with more of the strident and less of the whimsical, as is appropriate for this game's much different plotline.
It's an absolutely beautiful game
Many were wary of the direction Nintendo seemed to be taking with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. With claims the game would be 'easy for new gamers to play', many fans were worried the series would be 'dumbed down' for players graduating from Nintendo's casual supersmash hits like Nintendogs. But they needn't have worried. While Phantom Hourglass does offer a streamlined version of the Zelda formula, many of its cuts are welcome renovations of built-up conventions. The new interface is both approachable and revolutionary at the same time, the holy grail of game design. And underneath it is the most tightly designed Zelda since Link's Awakening. Phantom Hourglass is another must-buy in the hallowed series, and we can only hope this re-invigorated Nintendo can continue to walk the line between the new and old with such grace in future iterations.
I cant tell lol.
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