This is what Nintendo mobile games should be like. It's a full Zelda game, just simplified to the point that you only need touch controls.

The game is a great experiment. If its only goal was to make a Zelda title work without buttons, it's a success. But I don't think that sort of simplicity is what DS-owning Zelda fans were hoping for, especially after seeing what Super Mario 64 DS pulled off.

It's a serviceable Zelda title, nothing is horribly wrong with it. But it doesn't do anything exceptionally well either, and I think that's largely due to how overly basic the controls are. (There's also the repetitive nature of the Temple of the Ocean King, but I personally didn't mind that too much.)

Worth a try if you find it lying around or if you (like me) just want to play every Zelda game for completionist's sake.

Going into this I was not sure what to expect. With the previous titles, I had at least some idea of what the game was going to be. It being a Zelda DS game is all I knew about Phantom Hourglass. Now that I have finished the game I have to say I was mostly pleasantly surprised with it. It's a cozy cute lil LoZ adventure that at times feels a bit gimmicky with the touchscreen controls. But besides the multiple returns to the temple of the sea king, I had a decent time with this.

I really want to play The Wind Waker now, please Nintendo make it accessible.

Phantom Hourglass is a portable sequel to Wind Waker, but just about everything from that game that returns here is worse. Things that used to be simple, like digging up treasure are now made so over-complicated by Nintendo having to implement these awful touch screen controls.

The only neat part about any of the touch controls was being able to mark over your own map. The little bit of fun could be had in drawing lines from one side to the other to try to figure out exactly where treasure was, or marking your map with the names and symbols you needed for your quest, or writing down solutions for puzzles. But it just makes me wish that it could be in a much better game.

And that's because the game is such a boring slog. Boring quests, boring bosses, boring overworld, and an awful AWFUL control scheme. If the d-pad romhack did not exist I would not have had the patience to finally finish this game. The only thing I outright liked was the grappling hook. That thing had so much utility, they could have built a whole game around it, and they should have. Instead, all that utility gets relegated to pretty much one dungeon. Yippee...

Then there's the Temple of the Ocean King. Oh man. I was not prepared. This is one that I heard so many people talk about how bad it was, and I still was not prepared. Believe me, it's as bad as everyone makes it sound. It is so FUCKING repetitive having to go through the same puzzles all over again every time. And having it be timed added NO tension at all, just annoyance. Especially when having to stealth, or getting killed by phantoms and having time be deducted from your hourglass.

The characters in the story were extremely bland. Your fairy companion is sassy, but less so than Tatl, Linebeck is the typical cowardly companion, and the final boss is so boring, you barely hear about him before someone tells you, go fight him. Nobody makes any significant impact. I seriously doubt that I would be able to name any of the new characters from this game 1 month from now.

The only bright spot is that it can only get better from here.

Esse jogo me deixa triste, principalmente tendo Zelda como minha franquia de jogos favorita.
Ele tinha tudo pra ser incrível, mas foi muito prejudicado por escolhas idiotas da Nintendo.
Eu entendo querer usar as mecânicas únicas do console, mas a Nintendo extrapolou no nível que isso aqui virou praticamente um jogo de celular. Nenhum botão é usado pra nada, é tudo no touch.
Isso estraga muito a gameplay do jogo. Andar é UMA MERDA, atacar é UMA MERDA, interagir com o ambiente e com elementos plataforma é UMA MERDA, navegar é UMA MERDA.
Tem várias gimmics legais usando o DS, como assoprar pra interagir com o vento, fazer barulho no microfone pra machucar certos inimigos, desenhar pra passar de portas, e etc. O jogo poderia muito bem ter se limitado a isso e fazer o resto do jogo ser UM JOGO normal, que seria um jogo incrível.

Linebeck é um bom personagem, gosto muito dele, talvez um dos melhores personagens secundários da franquia, e ele carrega o jogo nas costas.

Essa ideia de toda hora ter que repetir a Dungeon principal várias vezes é completamente horrorosa. É um saco, é tedioso, e tira totalmente a vontade de progredir.

Enfim, se fosse qualquer outra franquia, esse jogo seria horrível. Mas ainda é Zelda, e tem algumas das coisas que fazem a franquia ser o que é: a trilha sonora perfeita, a arte lindíssima, e o design bom das dungeons. Isso impede o jogo de ser um desastre.

The first video game I ever played, and it gave me an irrational fear of stealth sections. I never got further than the second visit to the Temple of the Ocean King until years later, but still found myself adoring just about everything about it except the soundtrack. Kinda crazy how the game opted to cram every single DS gimmick or feature or whatever into it and still wound up not only bareable but really cool too. There's like, a part where you have to close the DS to simulate pressing two maps together to reveal the location of some treasure, and an island that lacks a map so you use the touch screen to draw it yourself. This kinda puzzle solving just can't be done on any other console, and I really appreciate that the game managed to make intuitive puzzles that played into the DS' at the time unconventional control schemes and game interactivity. Linebeck also kinda carries, we kneel for him in this house.

I won't lie, being a huge Zelda fan I was excited to try this game out and went in very confidently based on previous experience with the series where pretty much every game has been excellent. But Phantom Hourglass ended up disappointing me and discouraging me from completing the game and trying/firing up its sequel, Spirit Tracks.

There are some very innovative things in this game that make use of the DS dual screens and other features but on the flip side, there are many head scratchers in terms of game design and overall structure. Replaying the main temple/dungeon after you finish a main area is extremely annoying and punishing...not sure how that got approved or past Nintendo's QC process.

Maybe one day I will come back to this game, but overall I felt like the experience was not up to par for being a Zelda game.

I never really hear Zelda fans talk about this game much. My impression was that it was one of the worse Zelda games. However, honestly I liked this game a lot. The elephant in the room... The control scheme. I hated it at first, but over my playtime, I slowly adjusted to it, when eventually it wasn't a bother anymore. Now that thats acknowledged. Why do I like this so much?

Honestly, this game has some of the best Zelda puzzles in the series if I'm honest. And it's thanks to the touchscreen. A lot of puzzles require you to draw on the map to solve them, like mark two locations on a map and draw a perpendicular line to find the hidden treasure. Stuff like that. These were really fleshed out, making my own notes and using the map in the puzzle solving is genius. One of my favorite puzzles required you to go to an unmarked island, DRAW THE ENTIRE ISLAND ON YOUR MAP (yes you heard me correctly), the shape of an island was a whale, then you have to go to parts of the whale to hit switches in order. That was when my mind got blown. They really didnt hold back with puzzles. The touchscreen offers a lot of other cool uses, like being able to trace out the path of a boomerang which had cool puzzle uses or tracing out the path of a bombchu. I just think the puzzles were really neat in this game. They were super engaging.

Like any Zelda game, this has a lot of polish, this looks fantastic for a DS game, the cutscenes are really well animated and have a lot of energy. The game perfectly emulates Windwakers art style on the DS, it's super charming. The sea exploration was super relaxing, it's why I like it in Sonic Rush Adventure so much (also on DS). And Linebeck is such a goat, top 2 Zelda characters if I'm honest. More Zelda games should have human companions.

My only real problem with this game is the Ocean Temple, which gets old fast. Cool idea but repeating puzzles gets old fast. And sometimes combat can feel inconsistent and not register inputs. But overall, I think this game is highly underrated. This is definitely no slouch compared to the other Zelda games.

Phantom Hourglass is a weird little game. But "weird" does not necessarily equate to "bad".

Phantom Hourglass is a sequel to The Wind Waker, but this time it's on the Nintendo DS. The story continues quite nicely, with Link, Tetra and the other pirates journeying to new seas in search of a ghost ship. It's right in line with it's predecessor's storytelling but still feels fresh.

This game, along with it's sequel, Spirit Tracks are controlled almost entirely using the touch screen on the DS. While that sounds like a nightmare, once you get used to it, it becomes a fun way to control Link, and it's definitely very accessible to the generation that has grown up with touch screens and mobile games.

The places where Phantom Hourglass falls short are its dungeons, soundtrack, and overall pacing.
The dungeons are laughably easy, and offer little to no challenge. The soundtrack reuses the same track for all it's town islands, as well as the same bland track for all of it's dungeons.

Pacing-wise, the game forces you to revisit the "Temple of the Ocean King" in between each dungeon, forcing you to complete the same floors repeatedly, and under a time limit. While it's a cool idea in concept, because you learn to clear the early floors faster and faster, it completely kills the pacing of the adventure, since you go back there 6 times throughout the game.

Even though these flaws definitely take away from the experience as a whole, I would recommend Phantom Hourglass to fans of The Wind Waker, and to anyone who wants to try Spirit Tracks, since they are basically two halves of a whole.

Fine and would have been 3.5 stars otherwise but from now on I am taking a full star off any game on the DS that makes me blow into the mic. I lost half of my day today trying to figure out which core has a button that emulates it only to find none of them work, plugging in “walk through walls” cheats when I needed to bypass it otherwise only to find you also have to blow on a map too! Why does Nintendo have to make every single console of theirs double as a fuckin bop-it? Who is asking for this shit?! I don’t want motion controls on my switch, I don’t want to blow these damn ass candles out, I don’t want to swing my Wii nunchucks around every time I want to hit a bagompagomplin with the master sword. I suppose it might all just there for anti-piracy purposes. Well, if it is, it worked! Good job, Mario inc, now no one is playing “extremely okay Wind Waker 2 on a touchscreen” in 2024, guaranteed.

Also the old man in the beginning needs to chill out. Link just got done rescuing the whole world from reincarnated Ganondorf the scourge of Hyrule himself, wielding the master sword of legend and bearing the triforce of courage to boot, just for this geezer to be like “mmMmM tHerEs MoNstErs OuT tHerE, leT mE TeaCh YoU HoW to UsE a sWorD.” Oh no, a bunch of chuchus and bats, anything but that. My man, I’m pretty sure I already know how to use a sword.

i think having using the ds in creative ways for a handful of cool moments (like notes, that one map-moment, and even drawing shapes to figure out riddles) is very cool, but instead of just having that you are also forced to jam a stick against a screen to do every action in the entire game

imagine having the a-button both be "move forward" and "attack" and "interact", while b x and y are completely untouched, and you have exactly what this game feels like once the gimmick wears off (approximately 20-35 milliseconds)

ocean travel, which in windwaker was a large part of the atmosphere, is completely gibbed by making it into a large railroad where you dont control anything live and youre constantly bombarded with random freaks to the point that it feels like being a stardust crusader

some cool dungeons though, if only they werent completely neutered because they couldnt add any depth to combat whatsoever due to forcing everything to be the newest nintendo branded gimmick and if only half of them werent the same dungeon which is also by far the worst dungeon

ruined by shitty controls and repetition? if you think this game was "good" you directly caused and deserved skyward sword

Ese último deseo de Linebeck. La expresión de su cara (reservada al jugador, secreta para los personajes) antes de desvanecerse para siempre. Revelan la naturaleza de su carácter: le costaba abrir su corazón, eso es todo. La redención se hace de rogar y por eso es tan conmovedora. Y llega justo en la antesala de su (negada) despedida, tiñendo de tristeza la separación.

Y ese avistamiendo final con el que cierra el juego, su última imagen antes de los créditos. Se levanta la música, nos asomamos por la borda y se nos llena el corazón. Como en Link's Awakening, plano final apuntando al cielo incluido, pero mejor. Ese adjetivo que la saga ha sabido exprimir tan bien en varias de sus entregas: agridulce.

Zelda podía llegar a sentirse así a veces, podía generar arrebato en uno, llegarle a la patata. Y por eso me engañó durante tanto tiempo, haciéndome creer las mentiras de aventura y descubrimiento que sus premisas y puesta en escena contaban pero que su acomodaticio, tedioso y conservador diseño contradecía. Pasados los años, el tiempo ha conseguido que el hechizo ya no tenga efecto en mí. La mayoría de Zeldas, varios de los más célebres inclusive, son en realidad mentiras mal contadas adornadas de grandes momentos y edulcorantes melodías. Suficiente para dar el pego superficialmente, no lo bastante como para soportar una mirada crítica. No la mía, al menos.

Phantom Hourglass es terrible. ¿Cómo puede algo pretenderse leyenda o aventura y sentirse así de domesticado, tedioso, conservador, soso, insustancial? Y yo recordaba el juego como una experiencia sencilla pero decente. Por el tramposo recuerdo que deja su final, asumo.

Zelda Phantom Hourglass é um jogo visivelmente limitado ao ser comparado com outros da franquia, já que seu console não é dos mais potentes, porém isso não o impede de ser um bom jogo, pois foi muito bem pensado e produzido.
É incrível como o game tenta extrair o máximo possível das mecânicas e funcionalidades do DS, sendo com sons, fechar e abrir o console, desenhar e coisas do tipo.
É um jogo excelente no que se propõe, e muito bom pra matar o tempo em um portátil, porém ainda sim tem alguns problemas chatinhos, como a navegação, que continua muito cansativa, assim como no Wind Waker, pois por mais que tenha mecânicas de personalização no barco, ainda sim não consegue deixar a navegação divertida; E também o templo da ampulheta, que é muito repetitivo, e frustrante caso falhe.
Então por mais que tenha alguns pequenos problemas, ainda é um ótimo jogo que cumpre muito o seu papel e com certeza irá divertir qualquer um!

When I saw a friend of mine playing Spirit Tracks I remember thinking it should so bad to play. Controlling Link like that seemed wrong but as soon as you start playing you realize that it is very well designed and pretty fun.

Phantom Hourglass is a short, casual adventure that compensates the duration with cute cutscenes and fun gimmicks such as the grappling hook and the hammer. The developers used all their creativity while making this game. Sometimes, though, it feels like some of the stuff was made just to show what the DS could do and end up being pointless.

The games tones down the exploration that is characteristic of the franchise to make more puzzle oriented dungeons. You don't need dungeon maps, all the dungeons are mapped out so you only need to get to the boss. The boss fights are amazing and creative but not difficult. It takes a minute or two to figure them out and by doing so you easily beat them.

While it nails some aspects, others may miss the mark. All in all it's a worthwhile experience

After hearing so many negative thoughts, this game surprised me with how much I enjoyed it. It's your typical but enjoyable Zelda adventure but just controlled in a different way. I wasn't sure how big of a fan I'd be of the touchscreen controls, but I rarely found them to be a nuisance, outside of trying to use or switch between items quickly. Instead, they actually allowed for some unique and satisfying puzzles. The Temple of the Ocean King was a little tedious due to how many times you visit it, but luckily you can speed up certain parts as you obtain more items. In the end this was a pleasant, but somewhat flawed, adventure that I'm glad I played.