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.
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.