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The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass Review
Score 9.6/10

It has been a good few weeks now since I started playing this fabulous game and I still haven’t completed it yet. As you can probably tell from my first sentence I am very pleased with how this game has turned out. Initially I was really concerned that the method of controlling our hero Link, by use of the stylus would ruin this game, however I find that if anything it has improved it considerably.

Most gamers are familiar with the Zelda story lines so I will spare you the history lesson, less to say that the Zelda franchise has taken many incarnations since 1986 and the majority of these games are based around the idea of saving a princess named Zelda. More recent games tended to have a particular theme. Majora’s mask is about a mask, the Ocarina of times is themed around an instrument, and this game has an hourglass. The hourglass is used to preserve your health whilst in the Temple of the Ocean King. A simple concept, but there is much more to the game than that.

At first I thought this version of Zelda was going to be a quick one to conquest. After all I have completed The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past many times over the years and I am familiar with the way Zelda games work. I soon realised that this game was holding back, it was just revealing part of what it had to offer, and it is a much bigger game than I first imagined. The storyline is engaging and the puzzles are rewarding and this game feels fresh.

I really didn’t like the last Zelda game I played from start to finish, The Twilight Princess on the Gamecube. It bored me and somehow the childish graphics were a let-down. At first the graphics on the Phantom Hourglass seemed to be imitating this older game, but there is something more, something more refined, something I have seen before. In the late 19th century artists like Surat developed a technique of painting called Pointillism. Many tiny dots of colour were used to represent an image, a bit like pixels are today on computers, and artists developed a far greater comprehension of colour. One of the many special techniques artists of the time employed was the use of contrasting colours and tone next to the edge of an object. For example, a light red apple would have the edge of its compliment or opposite, dark green. The end result would be a much sharper and clearer image. The developers of this DS game seem to have done a similar thing. Edges to polygons seem to have been given additional contrast by some clever use of colour and tone. Glorious 3D graphics are enhanced by several tricks and techniques that are hard to define, but one thing is clear – these are some of the best graphics the DS has made, ever.

One thing in particular that let down the Twilight Princess was that travelling by ship became a chore and it took ages. On this new DS game however, journeys by sea are much quicker and you are engaged by enemies and the occasional friend too. Your ship can also be upgraded with different cannons and various other parts to increase its effectiveness. Another great feature is the ability to write notes using your stylus. For example, if you find out the location of a chest, you can draw a cross so that you will remember it later on. This is also very useful for levels where there is a set path that you must follow to reach the end. One small point, I did find the pen a bit clumsy for very accurate note taking, but it does the job.

The multilayer battle mode is another thing that makes this game great. Again at first I underestimated the depth of this multilayer option. You take turns either being Link and picking up bits of tri-force or being the bad guys trying to stop him. Well that’s all I thought of it at first. In reality, there is much strategy to this. The bigger the piece of tri-force, the heavy and therefore slower you can move. There are also various power ups that enhance your speed and strength. There is even one that makes a clone of you. Needless to say its a lot of fun.

Ok, now for the negatives. This game is near perfect, but there are always a couple of things in a game that could be improved. For a start off, I get a little bit bored going back to the Temple of the Ocean King all the time. There are over a dozen floors you have to go though each time you complete a mission, and although there is a warp point on level 6, as you build up a better arsenal of weapons you realise that you need to do them again to save valuable time in the Phantom Hourglass. After the 5th of 6th time of doing this level it gets a bit boring, you feel like its a job not a game. However, when you finally arrive victorious, you feel is if it was all worth it in the end. You can’t help but think about the next time though…

Another tiny little problem I had was with one element of the controls. Occasionally you need to make Link do a roll, for example he could roll into a tree and some rupees could fall out, or you could roll out of an attack. The process of actually creating a circle in the corner of the touch screen at the same times as controlling the direction Link is facing is not an easy one. Personally I would have rather just used a button for that move.

Don’t let my tiny criticisms of this game stop you from buying it. It really is a fantastic game, probably my favourite one to date – at least as good as Mario Kart anyway. You would be a fool not to get a copy of this amazing piece of gaming history.