A fun and captivating hand-held adventure- for the most part.
The Phantom Hourglass is supposed to serve as a sequel to The Wind Waker, but it is not what you'd expect. In truth, the only connection it has to The Wind Waker is the characters, and the Ghost Ship. There's no Wind Waker, no King of Red Lions, and so on. It's vastly different from The Wind Waker. It doesn't serve well as a sequel for The Wind Waker, but that doesn't change the fact that The Phantom Hourglass is still a great game.
The storyline of this game revolves around Link and Tetra after the events of The Wind Waker and they come across The Ghost Ship, and those who have played Wind Waker will be familiar with The Ghost Ship. Anyways, after coming across The Ghost Ship, Tetra is captured and now Link must rescue her. The story appears thin and shallow at first, but as you get into the game the plot thickens and it becomes more interesting.
The graphics of this game are visually appealing and somewhat retains the graphical style of The Wind Waker. I can't say much more there. The sound of this game was decent, but then again I can't say much about the sound because I general keep the sound off when playing my DS because I find most DS game music obnoxious.
Another good thing about this game is that it has good controls. Good use is made of the DS features.The controls add new features to the Zelda series that prove to be fun, creative, and at times helpful.
Although this game is good, it suffers from one major problem, and that's the Temple fo the Ocean King segments. Every time you beat a temple, you have to go back to the Temple of the Ocean King and go through large numbers of tedious quests. It gets old fast, and it also gets frustrating. That's one of the major problems of this game.
Another problem of this game is that it's not very challenging. It's easy that you can plow through it within a weekend with hardly any problems at all. There were very few challenging moments, and those only occurred seldomly in dungeons. The boss fights were also rather easy. It wasn't very hard to figure out how to beat the bosses. Even the final bosses weren't that hard. If you're someone who likes easy games though, this will suit you well.
Another issue I had with this game is that it's not very lengthy and can be beaten in one weekend.
All in all, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is fun and captivating, but it's not very challenging and it can get tedious at times. Definitely worth playing though.
So to sum it up:
Pros
- Good storyline
- Good graphics
- Fun to play/addicting
- Good controls
Cons
- The Temple of the Ocean King segments are boring and tedious
- Not very challenging
- A little too short.