Its Zelda, what did you expect? A terrible game?
The game takes place after The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker for the Gamcube.
Story: After fending off the great evil, the pirate Tetra and Link set out on an adventure to search for new land.
During their journey they heard rumors of a pirate ghost ship that strikes terror on the sea.
One foggy night they stumbled upon a giant ghost ship, Tetra entered the ship in hopes of finding treasure, but was pulled in by an evil force and was sucked in the ship, Link tried to save her but ended up falling in the sea.
Link wakes up on a beach of an island and meets a fairy by the name of Ciela.
Being kind in nature Ciala decided to aid Link on his quest to save Tetra and unravel the mystery of this ghost ship once and for all.
Game design: Being a sequel to Wind Waker the game sports back the cel shaded graphics.
Like every Zelda games there are dungeons, puzzles to solve and bosses to fight. Phantom hourglass is a huge game, and that's saying a lot considering this is a hand held.
Like its prequel you will be traveling the ocean with a ship. However this time you will use a steam powered ship so don't worry about changing wind direction.
You will come across this pirate captain named Lineback (who sports a Jack Sparrowish character) who will let you ride his ship. You will use the stylus to draw a root for the ship to take and the ship will sail according to the course.
The ship will also come with upgrades and expansions.
The story in the game is interesting and you will meet lots of interesting characters along the way and will often help those in need. There are also lots of side quests.
Game play: This is where this game is probably far different than any other Zelda or DS game out there.
The game is completely stylus dependent. You will almost never use any buttons, its just the touch screen and pen.
From moving Link to opening chests, everything will be handled with the stylus.
Though you might think its gimmicky it actually works really well, you will hardly get frustrated and the learning curve is almost about a few minutes.
The game also include a multi-player mode using Wi-fi, but its no where near the same as Four Swords, its just a bunch of little party games that hold no reward or meaning.
Sound: The music unfortunately isn't very varied. Some islands you visit will have the same music and Characters will sprout out a little voice as usual, apart from sound effects there is nothing special in the sound department.
The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass is what you would expect from Zelda, great game play, puzzles that will make you scratch your head and awesome story.
Although the stylus scheme worked out well it would have been nice if they also added functions to the buttons just incase it might get annoying for those who prefer normal buttons.
Also the multi-player is pretty useless and they should have concentrated more on adding extra stuff for the Adventure mode, also it would have been nice if they used the fairy as a guider (similar to Navi and Midna) because sometimes you might forget what to do or where to go and having nobody to give you a hint it can get sticky.
Otherwise I strongly recommend this game for both DS owners and fans alike. This is a must have.