Vital Stats

Genre: Action/Adventure
Players: 1-2
Online: Wifi gameplay and trading

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: E
Release Date: 10/1/2007

Platforms

• DS

Phantom Hourglass is the direct successor to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, picking up the narrative where Wind Waker left off with the same characters, art style, music, and many gameplay elements. While it sometimes feels like the apple falls so near the tree as to be overshadowed, the game provides a classic Zelda experience with the occasional novel twist.

Classic Kinda Means Derivative
As a general rule, Zelda games have consistent enough gameplay that they’re virtually a genre to themselves*, and Phantom Hourglass is no exception. Most of the gameplay consists of exploration interrupted by action set pieces and spatial puzzles. There’s usually a few NPCs with whom to interact, but they’re mostly just chatty enough to give directions and tutorials. Most of the game’s narrative comes in cutscenes where everyone talks around the mute hero and then you’re ushered back into the flow of gameplay. In Phantom Hourglass, you’ll sail the seas in search of a (mostly) linearly available series of dungeons, plumb their depths, obtain an item you can use to solve some of the obstructing puzzles, and ultimately use it to defeat a boss at the bottom. Increase life meter, rinse, repeat. It’s a time-tested gameplay formula that has served the franchise through over 10 installations, and Phantom Hourglass has inherited these strengths.

One particularly nice element in the exploration is the navigation by sea charts. Essential locations are marked on your sea charts, so you’re never really lost. However, there are a variety of interesting islands just waiting out there to be discovered, each of which is added to your chart when you’re close enough to see its dock. While all of them are completely optional, each has its own interesting few minutes of gameplay and they’re a pleasure to discover.

Everything Old is New Again
Of course, what’s interesting about Phantom Hourglass is the stuff that distinguishes it from the core formula. This is Link’s first DS outing, so some effort was made by the design team to show off the role of the DS’s functionality in the land of Hyrule. Especially during the first half of the game, about the only part of your DS you won’t be fiddling with in the name of gameplay is the volume slider.

One of the big features introduced with this game is the ability to draw on maps. While the map is normally placed on the top screen, a touch of the stylus brings it down so you can make a cartographic contribution. This is a welcome feature that the DS has been aching for since its inception. Ideally, this allows players to note interesting landmarks, prospective puzzle elements, and impassible terrain that looks like it might be more navigable later. Imagine having this kind of functionality in a game like Silent Hill 2, where most of the game’s levels are designed with 20-40 rooms, only 10 of which are accessible, and then maybe 5 are particularly relevant. The ability to mark puzzle locations, locked doors, and the solutions to distant puzzles would streamline a non-linear exploration process considerably, cutting down on confused running around and helping focus your play time on play.

In Phantom Hourglass, however, this scribbling is something of a mixed bag. Most of the maps provided by the game are already complete enough to obviate any player cartography. When something is omitted from a map (like a safe route through unseen traps or the order in which switches must be pulled), there is invariably a map hanging nearby that you’re expected to copy. While this mechanic works well as a tutorial, puzzles relying on the cartography mechanic only occasionally exceed this level of depth. On the bright side, the game remembers every pixel of your contribution until you remove it, and notes you make to investigate those weird poles you saw on the first island will still be there when you finally get the item that lets you use them.

Of course, cartography isn’t the only purpose of the touch screen, and Phantom Hourglass virtually shuns the face buttons on the DS in favor of the touch interface. Your avatar, Link is now guided around by holding down the point of the stylus in the direction you’d like to travel, you engage enemies by tapping on them, and you even guide some of the weapons you collect (like the boomerang and bombchu) by drawing a path for them to follow. The touch interface even provides for a few interesting new takes on the switch puzzles that have been a series staple since the SNES days as well as tremendous fine control when the items are used for combat. It’ll take series veterans some time to learn the new control scheme, but it’s generally as precise as the old scheme–just different.

The other features of the DS are on showcase here as well. The top screen is normally reserved for the standard map, but occasionally it is used to present the viewpoint of other characters to expand the space offered by the stuffy confines of an individual DS screen. The mic also gets a healthy workout during the first half of the game, as you’ll get to provide the wind to snuff candles, power windmills, and yell at obstinate hagglers. There’s even some creative use of the clamshell design of the DS that can’t really be further described without spoiling the puzzle involved. There’s also wifi competitive multiplayer and item trading. If you go through the DS manual and make check marks next to every feature, that about covers the lot.

The graphics and sound manage to recapture the feel of Wind Waker quite well. Characters are a bit blockier, but still lovingly rendered in that cell-shaded style. The game plays smoothly with no trace of slowdown, and, while the big characters occupy considerable screen real estate, most of your ranged weaponry allows you to pan away from your standing location for uncluttered sniping. The game directly inherits a few tunes from Wind Waker, and the new music is composed in the same style. Phantom Hourglass is visually competent and well-scored.

Shiny, But Scuffed
While this all makes Phantom Hourglass a fine tech demo, is it a good game? Unfortunately, that depends somewhat on your previous experience with Zelda titles. While the interface tweaks make for some fun new gameplay, much of the game simply retreads old Zelda territory–in fact series fans will probably recognize most of the game at a glance. It’s no less polished and well-designed for this fact, but it’s tough to shake the feeling that it’s 1992 when you play tennis with an evil apparition who flings deadly balls of magic energy. Again.

The game isn’t overly friendly to the casual player, either. The game will require 15-20 hours for an initial playthrough, which isn’t a trivial commitment. Saving anywhere in a dungeon will record the exact degree of your progress into completing the dungeons and NPCs will generally point you in the direction of your next nebulous goal, but it still takes a few minutes to bring yourself back up to speed. If you play 10-minute sessions every few days, the initial cost of trying to reorient yourself is sure to detract from the experience.

This is a shame, because the difficulty curve in Phantom Hourglass is really tuned more toward casual players for the most part. The learning curve is very reasonable and players are rarely thrust into a challenge with insufficient preparation. Unfortunately, this gentle curve never brings the game to the level of complexity and depth present in previous Zelda titles. This makes the game feel like it is a little oversimplified for hardcore players and a little too time-demanding for casual players. It really raises the question of who Nintendo had in mind when designing the game.

There’s one exception to the gentle difficulty curve that manifests itself as a very large timed dungeon. Unfortunately, instead of simply adding depth, this dungeon comes off as mostly annoying; every time you leave, all the puzzles reset and you’re required to start fresh from the top. Of course, you can’t make it all in one go; you’ll be expected to run to varying levels of the dungeon at least 5 times before you successfully compete the game. There’s a variety of alternate routes that can be taken through the temple to improve your time and presumably liven up the repetitive levels a bit, but you run through the same scenery so many times that it eventually starts to feel like padding.

While Phantom Hourglass is essentially derivative with a few excursions into interesting new gameplay, the game looks good, plays smoothly, and is ultimately solid. Zelda fans will be generally pleased, if somewhat unsatisfied with the experience. Casual gamers are warned that this game may ask more of your time and patience than you want to give. Phantom Hourglass is probably best enjoyed by a budding hardcore gamer with little Zelda experience and would make a fine gateway game into the Zelda franchise.

What It Costs: $34.99

What It’s Worth:

• To The Hardcore: $25 (Nothing unusually interesting here)
• To The Genre Fan: $30 (Solid but formulaic)
• To The Casual: $15 (Not entirely friendly to short play sessions)

*No really, back before Twilight Princess, game reviewers were calling Okami, “Zelda with a wolf,” though I guess that’s no longer as distinctive as it was.

Too long/short? Think I’m too harsh? Think somebody shoulda said it sooner? Discuss!