Ladies and gentlemen! THE CAUSE OF ARTHRITIS!
Story: 4/10
As a sequel to WindWaker, I was thrilled for all the wrong reasons. It deels with some wierd Octopus that kidnaps Tetra (good lord zelda doesn't catch a break [/spoiler]) and it's up to link to save her...in a nutshell. He joins up with some jackass sailor and go on a quest to find 4 stones I think, and to save tetra and defeat that squid! The story is that bad.
Music/Sound: 1/10
Sweet jesus, the horrible music is reused for every dungeon.
Gamplay: 5/10
For god knows reason, and I mean this, nintendo decided to be innovative to the point where they become too smart by half, and configure EVERY control to the stylus. Ever since the harrowing events of Metroid Prime Hunters, i've hated the stylus. Every use of it pisses me off. And this game taunts me in every wake of the word. You have to do EVERYTHING with the damn stylus! WTF!? I think nintendo is trying to hard to live up to their rep of most innovative bastards in the industry. You have to hold it in a direction to walk, slash across the screen or tap an enemy to attack them, talk to people, and use weapons with it. Though the weapon usage is pretty neat for the first ten minutes. walking with the stylus is the worst idea. Nobody should have to play a game where you have to walk without the use of the FRIGGIN D-PAD IN HAND! Not only that but just walking will do random crap all over the screen. You attack randomly or just roll when you don't want to, adding insult to injury. This makes combat hellish as trying to avoid attacks is handicapped because your damn hand takes up half the screen TRYING to avoid attacks! Jumping platforms isn't any easier. The standard zelda gameplay is crippled by these horrible controls. Speaking of which, the gameplay hasn't changed (not that i'd want it to anymore, seeing this game now) you still have to go through dungeons, searching for weapons, and killing the boss. But now you have a temple of the ocean king which is THE WORST PART OF THE GAME! First off, the place is poisoned. You have to use the phantom Hour glass in order to survive it, but you have a limited time until you perish (yes, thats the hour glass, a friggin time limit) Not only that, but the temple itself is retard difficult. Through out the temple lies safe zones and phantom knights who can decrease the amount of time you have by FIVE OR SIX MINUTES! Along with the fact that they are hard to avoid (thank you you stupid stylus!) and have gimmicks that set you up JUST to be captured by the enemies, AND some puzzles require you place 3 tri stones and picking one up SLOWS YOU DOWN, means that this place was needlessly hard as hell. And these are transition levels that you have to go through SIX #$%@ING TIMES?! That you have to START FROM THE BEGGINING ALL THE TIME!? What the hell was nintendo thinking!? I swear, it's like they got pissed at the people who said zelda games were too easy or some ish and made this game tedious as hell. Plus the sailing parts in this game are stupid. You have to use a screen button to move and stop, plus having to draw lines just to TURN. This makes avoiding enemies at sea hard as hell, and defeating them harder, because even if you tap the enemies, chances are you will miss plenty of friggin shots! Then they have the fog parts, where you can't see a damn thing, then having to redraw your own path to get back on track. This is stupid as hell! Speaking of drawing, you have to draw a lot of things to memorize spots on maps, and then you have parts where you have to scream at the screen like an ass just to get to your next destination. Only two bottles and enemies that hardly give you health? What the hell? There's also some weird multiplayer mode that no one plays on.
Replay Value: 0/10
There is NOTHING you can do after the game. No ending bonus are anything. Oh you can get ship parts, if you actually give a damn to waste your time with it.
Overall
Good god...I have never been frustrated with a zelda title as much as Minish Cap. Honestly, stick to the Orcale series for portable Zelda action. These new games are crap. Period. Phantom Hourglass is NOT the true sequel to windwaker that we've been waiting for. Instead, it's a piss poor game with horrible controls, stupid gimmicks, and cheap and tedious difficulty because of the horrible controls. This is junk!