The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS)
Rated “E” for “Everyone”
The sequel to “The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker” jumps from your cube to a dual screen. In Link’s latest outing, you take to the seas again for adventure. Starting after the events of Wind Waker, you take on the role of Link as you and Tetra go sailing for pirate adventure. But like every journey Link takes, trouble brews. You come across a Ghost Ship and lose Tetra. Link is woken up by a fairy and you meet her Grandpa. One event leads to another and you find a sword, which means you are now entitled to do stuff. So it is once again time to rescue your damsel in distress and restore greatness to the world.
So what is the same about this Zelda adventure? Since it is a Wind Waker sequel, it shares the same cell-shaded art style that football headed Link had on the Gamecube. Along with that comes a bit of humor to go along with the light-hearted world-saving theme. Your standard array of Zelda items are here like always (boomerang, bombs, etc). Item collecting, treasure finding, sea sailing, and sword fighting is all here. Sounds good.
So what is new? This game is on the DS so as much of the DS’s functionality is incorporated (even the microphone is used a few times). Link, as well as everything else, is controlled fully by the stylus. It will take a little getting used to, but after some time with it you will appreciate how easy it is. A few buttons and the d-pad can be used to open menus, but everything can be done with the stylus. Sword play has been simplified to easy strokes and pokes of the stylus. Nothing gets rid of evil like a poke-of-doom.
Your items also are stylus…ized as you can draw paths with your boomerang and guide bomb-chus down dungeon paths. Ship sailing is also simplified as you just draw your ship’s path to sail and then take down sea evil with your cannon.
The top screen serves mainly for maps. That is actually a lot more useful now as you can draw on any and all maps you have. You found a crack in the wall and you are out of bombs, mark it and come back later. Find hints in dungeons that sound important to remember, write it down. Someone tells you a telephone number while you are in the middle of dungeon crawling, just write down 867-5309 and call Jenny back later.
There will be occasional activity from time to time. Zelda always delivered on boss battles that required you to utilize your items in various ways. This leads to great design and fights that you might not thought imaginable for your DS.
You can customize your ship as you find various ship parts all over the world. Putting certain sets together gives your ship more hearts to last longer. You most likely will not be able to find all ship parts that exist, but that is where trading with other DS players comes in. Not only that, but there is a multiplayer mode that plays out like certain parts of the game pitting one player as Link and 3 others as Phantoms.
The story is your normal Zelda affair. Fans will enjoy it. This game packs plenty of sea-faring adventure and fun for Link and the rest on the little DS. While it might not be as long as standard console Zelda titles, you will have little to complain about with this one. It has all your familiar parts of Zelda and a few alterations that keep a franchise like this alive and fresh.
5 out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment