Beating every Zelda in timeline order 9/20:

It's been a decade since the last time I played Phantom Hourglass, and my memories of it were always pretty hazy. I went into this game hoping to be pleasantly surprised since its reputation is that of one of the "lesser" Zelda titles. Unfortunately, I was not pleasantly surprised, and the game is, in fact, one of the lesser Zeldas. It's still fun to play, of course, but it comes up short in pretty much every area. The dungeons all end up feeling quite bland, linear and uncreative. Most of the bosses I forget immediately after beating them. The overworld feels held back by its island concept rather than bolstered, like in Wind Waker. The story is a smaller one with your tasks feeling more like, well, tasks, than part of the progression of the story. Although Linebeck does get a shoutout for being one of my favorite characters in a Zelda game. Sometimes the DS is used in very creative and fun ways. Pretty much anytime the two screens are utilized is fun. I especially enjoy when you have to close the DS to imprint a marking onto the other screen. But most of the time, it feels held back by the touch screen being used for movement, attacking, item usage and menu naviation. (I especially hated when it made me yell into the microphone, I played most of this on a plane so people around me weren't very happy) It all verges on gimmicky and is a tad imprecise, especially during combat. But despite getting hit constantly because of this, I was able to breeze through the game easily. And the Temple of the Ocean King is pretty much as bad as everyone says it is. It's not particularly fun to play through the first time and there's not enough substantial sequence breaking with later items to make it interesting on multiple playthroughs.

It's pretty clear why my memories were foggy about the details of this game. It's a relatively forgettable Zelda experience. Much like the world of the Ocean King, now that I'm finished playing, it's already fading from memory.

This is the dawn of the dark age of Zelda. And oh what a dark dawn it is.

In a parallel universe, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is a normal Zelda game. It plays with button controls like a normal video game just like every Zelda game that came before it. And in that parallel universe, it is still one of the weakest Zelda games.

Unfortunately, we live in hell and we got the version of Phantom Hourglass that’s worse in every way. The Phantom Hourglass that was made to justify the existence of the Nintendo DS.

Even if Phantom Hourglass was the perfect Zelda game, with an emotional story, soaring music, and iconic boss battles, your enjoyment of it will be through the sickening malaise of the controls. Every action is performed with the touchscreen, making it at the very least abysmally annoying to play on anything but a DS, with which it is only mildly annoying to play on.

Since the DS has a stylus, a lot of actions and theming of the game are made with charting maps in mind. It’s a cute idea that elaborates on the sea chart of the game it’s a sequel of: The Wind Waker. Watching Link scribble on his little map at the same time as you is very cute and funny and also a great bit of synchronicity, further strengthening that he is the Link between You and The Game.

The map charting is a Cute premise but it backfires in a terrible way. There are two or three exceptions to this, but the vast majority of the “puzzles” in Phantom Hourglass involve writing the order in which you have to push a switch on your map.

This game made me question what a Zelda puzzle even is. You might find yourself wanting to write a quick note down about the hint you found (as though you possibly could forget “Dodongo Dislikes Smoke” or “23 is number 1”), but the puzzle isn’t the act of writing the hint down.

Having played it twice before my most recent playthrough, my memories of Phantom Hourglass were pretty positive, despite the controls. I remember Linebeck being a contender for the best Zelda Companion of all time. Imagine my shock when on my most recent playthrough, he wound up an abject disappointment. He’s alright, but he’s not making it past B Tier. He’s not nearly as funny or charming as I remember, and that’s probably because you’re rarely ever interacting with him. It’s mostly just him and your incessantly annoying fairy companion Ceila bickering with each other.

This is one of the meanest and most incorrect thing to say about a video game, but i had a moment of weakness and thought that maybe it’s a good thing that this game is hard to preserve, because it’s so bad. But the children must know of the past. They must learn from the mistakes of those who came before them. Phantom Hourglass deserves to be saved from time’s callous embrace just as much as Action 52 does.

I want to like Phantom Hourglass, and that’s very hard to do. Nevertheless, I am a man who rises to any challenge and I found something enjoyable here. It was not very hard to find.

The Temple of the Ocean King is the most interesting and thoughtful part of Phantom Hourglass. If Twilight Princess’ Snowpeak Ruins was the clever mix of the Zelda Dungeon and the Zelda Village, then The Temple of the Ocean King is a clever mix of the Zelda Dungeon and the Zelda Overworld.

The Temple of the Ocean King is your constant. For half of the game, every completed dungeon has you going back to the Temple to delve a little deeper. And each time you delve deeper, you’re finding shortcuts to make your next trip a quicker time. And you need every second you can get; the Temple is cursed and slowly kills you. The Temple is the most Metroid-like Zelda has gotten in a long time, and I think the two styles really work together, so I would love to see more refined attempts at combining them.

One other thing I like about Phantom Hourglass, and this is tenuous appreciation, is the customizability of your steamboat, the SS Linebeck. There are 72 different ship parts in the game, for 9 different unique ship styles, allowing for seemingly endless customization. This endless customization does come to an end though when you can't find enough matching parts to really do anything. It also doesn't help that certain ship styles award more defense for your already very frail ship, funneling you into searching for the rarer parts, rather than what you like your boat to look like.

It's also a shame that these ship parts are so hard to come across. It takes a lot of grinding in a game that is not fun or comfortable to play.

I have beaten The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass three times, but i haven't 100% completed it once. This game is sick, there's too many things wrong with it. Getting every ship part is a months-long grind. Getting every heart piece requires you to have a device that tells time properly, yet another difficulty of preserving this game or any game like it.

Phantom Hourglass is Fine. But I do not recommend this game to anyone, not even Zelda Freaks. The lovable adventure you expect from Zelda is buried under a pile of fetid gimmicks. Linebeck isn't worth it.

My first Zelda game. Probably not the best one to start on typically, but it led Zelda to become my favorite franchise. And I still think Phantom Hourglass is a lot of fun!

The temple of the Ocean King gets a lot of hate, but I've always enjoyed it. The time limit is forgiving and coming back with new items to do things more effectively scratches that metroidvania itch.

Really solid use of the DS hardware, and it was really fun to trade ship parts with friends back in the day. I think you had to grow up with this one to fully appreciate it, as looking back it is a simple and nonessential Zelda experience.

I played Phantom Hourglass back in the day and I remember being really surprised to find out that this game was considered bad by a lot of people. I would have preferred to use the d-pad to control Link, but I eventually got used to the controls and really enjoyed everything the game had to offer. I actually really enjoyed the repeat visits to the Ocean Temple, because there were lots of secrets and shortcuts to find to get through it faster on each revisit. I liked the ship customization, the sailing, the dungeons, the towns you visit, pretty much everything the game had to offer. This was a fully-featured Zelda adventure and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I'm not the type of guy that loves to complain about dumb gimmicks like motion controls or whatever, I usually don't care about that stuff as long as the game is good.

But this one is just a little bit too much. I really tried to get into this game, but I simply was not a fan of the way you have to use the touch screen to do pretty much anything; it just feels unnecessary, tedious and ended fucking up my Nintendo DS touch screen even faster.

Maybe I will play the WiiU version someday, hopefully that one is better than this one...But I don't know if I ever will.

Phantom hourglass içinde barındırdığı ilginç mekanikleriyle oyuncusunun kendisini denemesi için güzel bir şans veriyor fakat sisteminin tamamen gimmick üzerine kurulu oluşu durumunu bir süreden sonra ağızda kötü tat bırakan çereze dönüştürüveriyor. Kontroller en az skyward sword kadar kötü, şöyle oyuna dalayım, saatlerce oynayayım gibi bir imkan söz konusu değil. Oyun, ona odaklanmanıza izin vermiyor, sürekli bir teknoloji demosu içindeyiz gibi hissettiriyor. Belki dönemin touchscreen teknolojisini tanıtması açısından güzel bir demodur ama günümüz için oynaması oldukça zor. Hayatımızdaki bazı teknolojiler biraz hızlı normalleşiyor. Phantom hourglass'da o karmaşa girdabı içinde kaybolup giden yapımlardan.