I might not finish this game in time for TotK, which sucks because it's only one of two single player Zeldas that I haven't beat. So this score isn't final or anything, but I at least want to give my thoughts on the gameplay.
This game was definitely ahead of it's time for being entirely touchscreen based. But while the idea is really stretched to its limits, because it's so central to the experience, they really had to simplify things like the dungeons and boat traversal to the point where it's too easy and uninvolved for me. I can see a lot of appeal in a chill, half pay attention kind of game, but I don't think I'd come back to this game. But that's not at all the reason why. The actual reason is that the Temple of the Ocean King sucks. Idc how many shortcuts you give me. The fact you have to replay the dungeon from the beginning every single time is stupid.

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.

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.

Since the Wii, Nintendo have been releasing consoles with gimmicks, more often than not they are motion based. Each time Nintendo brings out a console with a new gimmick you are guaranteed that Mario and Zelda’s next games will fully utilise these new features. This time around it’s the Nintendo DS with its dual screen console with a touchscreen & stylus. For The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass the bottom screen and stylus are pretty much your only way of controlling Link. When I was getting used to the controls I thought to myself “I bet the final boss will be a right pain with these controls”. I was right. Single attacks are fine but when chaining together strokes to achieve a string of movements it was very frustrating. It wasn’t all bad though, using the stylus to guide your boomerang, bow or the bombchus was a nice touch and made it easier than if it was done with the usual button control scheme. I would have really appreciated it if there was an option to do touch screen controls and buttons so the player can find their playstyle but Nintendo love forcing their gimmicky controls on the players.

The game uses other features of the DS such as the mic and the screen folding mechanism to reveal a map. The mic can be used to blow out candles or to scare off noise sensitive enemies, these however only feature once each in the game. Being able to draw notes for yourself on the map with the stylus is a fantastic touch and something which would be a fantastic feature to have on modern game consoles but they don’t use touch screen controls like the DS sadly.

The core theme of this game is Link sailing a boat between the different islands, much like in Wind Waker or Spirit Tracks with the train. The sailing isn’t really that enjoyable though as every 30 seconds you’re being attacked or need to avoid obstacles. This means you cannot kick back and enjoy the open ocean or just sail around in peace until your heart's content. As is the case with a lot of games nowadays, there are fast travel points, and as always, thank god for them. You can customise your boat with ship parts but at the end of the day they don’t really do much and you can easily make your way through the game without them. To me it wasn’t worth the hassle of finding the ship parts. One of the ways you can find ship parts and other treasures is by doing a claw mini game just like in the arcade. Unlike the arcade you don’t physically hold onto the controls to guide the claw. As it’s all done on touchscreen you can easily lose control of the claw and damage it. Once you damage it 4 times you need to go back to the shipyard to have it fixed before you go treasure hunting again. This was enough for me to abandon it altogether, thankfully you don’t need any of this treasure to beat the game.

The usual LoZ items reappear in this game, the bow, hammer, shovel etc. They can be fun to use with the stylus but what is frustrating is that some of them stay equipped after use and some do not. It can be very footery when trying to use the items when you’re up against enemies or a time limit on a puzzle. The item lives in the top right of the screen and if you miss the button with the stylus Link thinks you want him to go in that direction which in most cases will be off the edge of a cliff or something similar.

This was a fun game to play, fun enough to keep me playing to the end. Unfortunately though for me it’s a one and done. Rather than being a fully fleshed out Zelda game, most of the game’s focus is on the controls with the touchpad. With this it brings nice quirks but also limitations. If you enjoyed Wind Waker like myself you will enjoy this as it’s based off Wind Waker and is a kind of sequel, sequel or not, like all LoZ games you don’t need to have played any of the previous games to understand the story. If you’re looking for a fun game to play on the go then go for this but I wouldn’t pick it over any of the bigger Zelda games.

I think adding in the ability to draw and take notes on maps is one of the coolest innovations to ever happen in a Zelda game. I would kill to play a version of BOTW or TOTK with it.

The temple of the ocean king was really boring with the backtracking and too stressful with the time limit for me to fall into a relaxing rhythm with it. Exploring the sea was pretty great though. It's not as fun as wind waker, where you have full direct control, but going around, finding new islands, and making notes about special places was really fun. I remember the puzzles being pretty fun in the dungeons and islands too.

Nintendo loves their gimmicks. Whether it be making you waggle the Wiimote in order to make Donkey Kong blow a dandelion or shake to make Mario spin attack, Nintendo has an infamous habit of forcing their players to play their way and none else. This is the case with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass which forces the player to play the entire game using only the stylus for the Nintendo DS.

At first I got sick to my stomach when I realized the d-pad did nothing but change menu positions. Slowly I put the stylus to the screen and the little Toon Link started moving and I immediately quit out to the main menu to see if there was an option I missed to make Link move like he had in any other game prior, but my heart sank to find out that Nintendo, of course, being the innovative and cutting edge company that they are, were going to force me to play this entire game with only the stylus.

Fortunately, after a few hours of playing, I got used to the stylus control. Basically, touching anywhere on the screen will guide your little fairy friend to that spot and Link will instantly follow. The further away in a direction you touch the faster Link runs. Many of the areas in the game are simple enough for this to not be much of a big deal but when trying to out maneuver a quick enemy or cut corners in a race against time, the stylus movement becomes just too approximate to be a proper replacement for the d-pad. Not to mention rolling seldom works whenever you need it to work. The game tells you to draw little circles at the edge of the screen in the direction you want to roll but I found that NEVER works. I end up just banging the stylus on the edge of the screen for a more accurate input. It’s not ideal but it’s a gameplay work around for something that should be much simpler to input.

But this isn’t to say that the stylus play doesn’t have its benefits. Touching the screen allows for pinpoint accuracy when utilizing some of the iconic weapons you’ll find along the journey. Nothing like precision arrow shooting, bomb throwing, grappling hooking and sword fighting. Just touching an enemy and having Link instantly slash it to pieces is an incredibly satisfying experience. Sometimes trying to side slash something or spin attack can be a little difficult for the game to register at times with their own unique stylus swipes but I’ve found just poking an enemy to death will get the job done.

At any given time, Link can only have one item at the ready because the game only allows one input for anything at a time and that’s the stylus so changing out items can be a little tedious especially in the heat of battle. Let’s say you’re in the middle of battle trying to run away. You need to attack his back with your boomerang but you have your grappling hook selected. You’re going to have to take the stylus off of the playing field which makes Link stop moving entirely allowing the enemy to get closer as you scramble through the bottom menu, select the boomer, select the boomerang in the top right corner and then finally get back to the action. Odds are though you’ll take a few unnecessary hearts of damage because of this. The game does offer a slight work around as the shoulder buttons will instantly ready the item to be used but that still doesn’t help with all of the hurried menu navigation.

Okay, that’s really all the gripes I have with the stylus play. If you ignore some of its pesky quirks, you’re in for a pretty light-hearted and classic style Zelda game. Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to The Wind Waker and because of that there’s a ton of ocean navigation to be had. In fact, Link and Tetra find themselves sailin away from the Great Sea after their triumphant defeat of Ganondorf only be succumbed by an eerie ghost ship sailing through their waters. Tetra finds herself the reluctant damsel in distress and Link is lost in an unknown ocean with the goal of getting back to his own ship and saving Tetra from the cursed ship.

Luckily for Link the exact island he lands on has everything he needs and all the information he needs to know in order to start his adventure. He meets a clever little fairy named Ciela with the same voice as Navi and her grandpa who guide him toward the Temple of the Ocean King which will give him the key to finding the ghost ship that holds Tetra captive. With so much ocean out there as well, Link is giong to need a ship and sure enough a treasure seeking, smoothing talking rapscallion name Linebeck is all for letting Link and Ciela use his ship if it means he partakes in the booty.

The Temple of the Ocean King on the starting island of Mercay acts as the centerpiece for the entire game. Link will continually return to this temple as he finds more gadgets and techniques in order to delve deeper in hopes of finding more sea charts that will allow him to continue his quest. The trick here is that there is a time limit and that’s where the Phantom Hourglass comes into play. The more time you spend figuring out the puzzles and battling through the floors, the more sand trickles down the hourglass and once there is no sand left the curse begins and Link will begin taking constant damage until he is dead.

But there is a silver lining within this temple as there are safe zones throughout every floor where time stops counting down and enemies no longer pursue you. So for those of you who get anxiety at a ticking clock rest easy, this is the only temple that does this and there are plenty of reprieves to be had to settle down and think about your next move. And you’ll need those reprieves to scout how to dodge some of the intimidating guards that roam the halls because they find you and slice you, not only will you take damage but you will lose a good 30 seconds off the hourglass as well. So planning here is everything.

While the idea of constantly returning to the same temple multiple times throughout the game might seem repetitive, gathering new items allows for new paths to be explored. I found that trying to come back and speedrun through each floor satisfying and is a testament to how well you understand the mechanics of your weapons and the dungeon itself. You start off with 10 minutes in the hourglass but as you beat more temples and explore the ocean you can eventually bring that number up to a whopping 25 minutes. I was able to get my temple completion time to about 22 minutes remaining (3 minutes used up) with the help of safe zones and time replenishments but I looked online to see how I compared to other players and OF COURSE there are people who beat the temple with NO time lost and I immediately closed the tab.

The rest of the temples are pretty straight forward for a Zelda game. Complete puzzles gather keys, collect the special weapon then collect the boss key. The cute thing about this one is that Link has to literally carry the boss key from the treasure chest he found it and take it to the lock while avoiding all the obstacles because it makes him slower. But overall it might be because I’m a galaxy brain I found the temples to be fairly simple and straightforward with very few puzzles that I thought were stumpers.

The bosses are classic tests to prove you know how to use the temple’s weapon and never really got beyond that in complexity which made them fairly simple to defeat. But knowing the weapons is vital in fighting the final boss which gives you the freedom of utilizing what you need in order to defeat it.

Speaking of items, those too are classic Zelda mainstays that you’ll recognize from throughout the series. You got the arrows, bombs, bombchus, grappling hook and hammer. The bombchus allow the player to draw a path with the stylus to its destination for precise utilization. Precision is really the name of the game with Phantom Hourglass items, being able to draw exactly where you want the boomerang to go or snipe with the arrows is some of the most satisfying uses of these items that a Zeda game has achieved. My favorite item though is the grappling hook. Not only does it grapple you to certain areas (and not have an annoying cutscene play everytime like in Wind Waker) but you can also tie your hook between two poles and tight rope walk. This comes in handy when you need to shoot an arrow in a hard to reach place. Not only that you can have Link catapult himself off a tethered rope while on the ground and launch him up to a higher plane. So at least the game brings some new ideas to at least a few of these classic weapons.

One of the brilliant ideas brought to the table is that now you can leave notes on the maps of the dungeons. You can mark where you’ve been, combinations to puzzles, pathways through mazes and so many other notes that makes navigation a ton more convenient. And this works with any map from temples, to islands to even maps on the sea charts, write down whatever you need. This works particularly well with the Temple of the Ocean King because with repeat visits having notes on where to go and shortcuts is so useful. Hell, I had to call to make an appointment to get a vaccine dose and used one of the sea charts to write down my appointment number because I had no pen and paper in my car! The Phantom Hourglass has made my life that much more convenient!

On the subject of sea charts, there is a lot of sea and you’re going to be using it to navigate to each of these temples on each of the islands spread throughout the World of the Ocean King. Unlike the Wind Waker where you had to constantly stop and bring out the Waker to change the direction of the wind, Linebeck’s steam powered boat (lovingly named the SS Linebeck, of course) just needs you to draw a line on a map and go along for the ride. Sailing the seas turns into a custom made on-rail shooter where you can shoot enemies with a simple touch of the screen and shooting a canon is satisfyingly precise. There isn’t a ton of enemy variety but from time to time they’ll give you something to shoot or jump over. In fact, the cannon shooting is so accurate it’s almost too easy to defeat enemies or sea bosses. Even though it is easy, battling bosses gives you the opportunity to not only fire at will but to constantly navigate around a boss to avoid damage and find its weak spot.

For the most part, the maps will have major islands already marked on your map so you can just draw a path to the port and go on your way. But something that I loved about Wind Waker, was finding each of the islands out at sea and Phantom Hourglass has a few unmarked islands on your map that you’ll to just have to do voyaging in over to discover which adds a bit more intrigue in exploring. Not that the world is huge like Wind Waker’s but it’s nice to know there’s a little extra to discover.

But not only can you explore the seas you can also explore the ocean floor as well. Wind Waker allowed you to use a crane to grab treasure chests on the seabed but these are usually depicted with short cutscenes. Phantom Hourglass fleshes this process out as a mini game where you must guide the crane down while avoiding octorok bombs by guiding it left and right as well as making it speed up or slow down. Then once you grab you gotta bring it back up but watch out because five hits and the crane is gone. You can get it repaired at the ship shop on Mercay island for a fee but sometimes I’ll forget and go to consecutive treasure sites and forget that my crane only has like one or two hits before exploding which makes me get on the edge of my seat when playing these minigames. While the game isn’t chock of full extra minigames or sidequests, just seeing the extra input put into this aspect of Wind Waker that was rather bare.

As with Wind Waker, sailing overall became tedious and time consuming and as well as Phantom Hourglass does to fix a lot of Wind Waker’s sailing problems it will eventually get repetitive and feel like a time sink. Luckily, there are golden frogs to find and blast out of the ocean and they will be so amazed by your aim that they will give you a special symbol to draw with on your Cyclone Slate given to you by the big boss of the golden frogs. Draw that slate anywhere in the ocean and you immediately be cycloned over to that area. The only down side is that the song that plays isn’t the Ballad of Gales song but rather just the enemy encounter song for some reason.

The music is very familiar to Wind Waker with a few standouts. You’ll be hearing the same song playing for every island, temple, enemy encounter. I mean, it’s got that Zelda magic but overall the soundtrack is underwhelming.

I have a very nostalgic bias towards the bright and cel-shaded art direction of Wind Waker and I love that they pixelated it all down to fit the constraints of the DS. The top-down perspective also keeps with tradition of old-school/handheld Zelda titles and is a time-mending blend of old and (then) new. Although there are a handful of moments where the camera will go behind Link which gives the game an odd vantage point for control but neat to see nonetheless.

Seeing the islands pop up along the horizon as you sail the SS Linebeck across the sea is always a treat. The islands are a cartoony representation of what actually appears on the island because when you get on the island everything is understandably pretty flat due to the perspective. Like the Isle of Ember, on the seas it looks like a big raging volcano but when you’re off the boat, it’s all just three not-so-high levels of flat land with a lava pool in the middle and it’s pretty funny to see how it scales down.

My time with Phantom Hourglass was simply delightful. I usually play Zelda games when they first come out but for whatever reason I missed out on the DS ones despite owning a DS. It was like embarking on an adventure in a time in Zelda’s history where Nintendo was aiming on a transition. You get a bit of a the classic with a little but of the gimmicky style of Nintendo that would dominate the next decade and a half. If you love Wind Waker, just imagine a miniature and streamlined version of that game that acts as a continuation of its story as well as fixes its sailing. It’s definitely worth it to seek it out whether you can find it from a game shop or emulator.

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

Hace unos años abandoné este juego por sus gimmicks, la verdad me lastimaban mucho las manos. Decidí darle otro chance y no me arrepiento. Me encantó este juego con sus cinemáticas graciosas con Linebeck me hacen reir jsjs. Entiendo porque no es del agrado de los demás el Templo del Rey del Mar, porque a mi parecer, flaquean en el aspecto de dungeons y algunos personajes que parecían intersantes caen en el olvido. Sin embargo, una maravilla como las gimmicks fueron implementadas; me encantó y es un Zelda que no recomendaría que fuese el primero sino uno que cuando estés acostumbrado a la formula de la saga, le podría hechar una probada.