Blog Main Page -> Too much sailing…

I’ve recently was fortunate enough to get my hands on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS.  After playing it, I’ve come to one conclusion!  It’s a good but not great game.

Now a little about the game. The game’s plot revolves a young Link who is sailing the seas with a girl named Tetra.  Tetra’s ship suddenly encounters a ghost ship.  So Tetra gets the bright idea of jumping onto the ghost ship to find some treasure, but she gets kidnapped by some msysterious force.  Link has to team up with a fairy, and a treasure hunter to save her.  Now the story isn’t going to win any awards (typical for a Zelda game), but I found the presentation of the story to be very entertaining.  It was almost as if I was watching a funny Saturday morning cartoon.  Likewise, the graphics and sound are a treat.

However, the main appeal of this game is the utilization of the Nintendo DS stylus.  Every action in the game requires the stylus.  From moving around to slashing your sword, you need to use the stylus.  For example, if you want to throw Link’s iconic boomerang, you need to draw its path first.  I found this gimmick to be annoying at first, but I eventually got to used to the controls within 5-15 minutes (and I eventually had grown attached to the controls).

But for me, the most annoying parts of the game were sailing and the Ocean King Temple.  Sailing is incredibly dull, but it’s required for traveling.  The reason why it’s dull is because there is little to do other than to kill an occasional sea monster.  The other thing that was most annoying was the Ocean King Temple.  This was a dungeon that the game required you to come back 5-7 times (until you beat the game).  Each time you returned to this temple, new areas would be opened for you to advance the storyline.  Since you have to return to this temple again and again, it was a major bore to redo many of the dungeon’s puzzles (although many new items allowed you to skip certain puzzles).

I think the worst aspect is the difficulty and length of the game.  The dungeons and puzzles were generally easy and linear, compared to the complex puzzles of older Zelda games.  And I beat this game within less than a week.  But as a side note, all the dungeon boss fights were awesome.  They were extremely epic, and some required a good few minutes of thinking before I figured out how to defeat them.

I enjoyed the game from the beginning to the end, but I just can’t get over the sailing.  Wait…I think I’m going to be seasick.

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