Nintendo DS - The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass Review

Alright, baby! The famous Nintendo cash cow the Legend of Zelda finally makes the big jump to the DS here in this Phantom Hourglass game and it just so happens to be the sequel to the Gamecube title: The Wind Waker. Yeah, if you are usually looking for a huge quest to save some stupid chick you can't go wrong with a Zelda game (upset those abysmal CDi titles of course) but let's see if the new touch screen controls and smaller dungeons hurt this edition, eh?

After the events of The Wind Waker the young hero dude of the last game (Link) in on a grand voyage with Tetra (a.k.a. Princess Zelda) and her band of pirates. Things seemed to be going well until they discover a strange ghost ship and since Tetra thinks there's tons of treasure on there she foolishly jumps aboard and gets kidnapped (again!). Link tries to save her but he misses the chance and gets washed ashore and that's where your long adventure begins.

If you are new to this whole Zelda stuff then here's a quick run down. These games are insanely addictive action/adventure title where you control a young elf warrior on a quest to save princesses and crap like that. This edition here doesn't change that formula too much but the big new feature is you control Link with the touch screen instead of the crosspad. It feels a little weird at first and I hated doing the roll attack with it but after a few minutes you get use to it and you can even use the touch option to draw on maps and throw weapons like boomerangs from funny angles.

Now I loved that GC game much like a lot of other gamers did but it did get some negative backlash for having this strange cartoon style to it. Yeah, sadly it's back here too but for a DS game the graphics are still pretty sharp with plenty of detail and bright colours plus the fact old Nintendo was able to port these visuals on the go is cool. The game isn't quite perfect since the overall length isn't that long as other Zelda's like Twilight Princess but all the new touch screen features and classic game play make this a great buy.

The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass overall rating: 81/100

For 1 to 4 players
Rated (E) for Everyone
graphics: 9/10
sound: 8/10
gameplay: 8/10
replay: 9/10

-StarSoldier1 2008
(Ryan Genno)