Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS)

Today we're going to review the highly anticipated Zelda DS that we've been waiting for since forever it seems. Let's see how it stacks up.

Story: Shortly after the events in Wind Waker, you and Zelda, aka Tetra, are out sailing and run into a mysterious ghost ship. Tetra, being very impulsive, decides she wants to investigate and immediately disappears into the fog with a scream. Link, being the good hero goes after her, and falls into the water. he then washes onto land and meets his fairy companion who is very reminiscent of Navi from Ocarina of Time. On this island you meet and elder who doesn't help you, then find a boat and begin to explore in hopes of finding and saving Tetra. Helping you on your journey, and by helping I mean he hides in a corner and claims you're the coward, is Linebeck, ship captain. The story is your standard Zelda tale. Princess needs rescuing, you need to find certain treasures to rescue her. You rescue her. Nothing exciting. 3/5

Audio: The music was similar to Wind Waker. Nice and light and fitting with the atmosphere. Nothign to write home about though. 3/5

Graphics: Again, in the same style as Wind Waker. It works. 4/5

Gameplay: The game is on the DS, and as such Nintendo tried their best to incorporate everything the DS had to offer, whether this is a good thing or not. The primary issue, everything is done by stylus: movement, attacking, attacking while moving. There are a number of times when you'll want to attack and run around instead. Or talk to a person and slash at them. Targetting is supposed to be easy, just click on the monster and you'll slash at it. I've had a number of times where I'll do this and instead roll right into the monster's waiting mouth. Of course there are benefits to this too, the most cited being the boomerang. Now you can draw the path of the boomerang to where you want it to go. Another is that you can pull up the map and mark answers to puzzles you might have found or information that might come in handy later. The downside to this being you have to write small and be able to read your writing later. Besides making use of the touch screen, the game also asks that you blow or speak into the microphone. For all it's faults, it is an interesting way to handle the game. I think it would be better with D-pad use, but it's certainly not as bad as I feared it would be. Everything else is standard Zelda fare, solving puzzles in dungeons, fighting bosses with whatever new tool you found, and becoming the hero you already were. 4/5

Replay: I don't think there's any real value to replay. 2/5

Overall: For as long as we waited for it, I think that things could have been improved. While I'm glad they are taking advantage of the DS's unique features, I don't think it was necessary to limit us to them. So, for average plot, average aesthetics, and haphazard gameplay, I'm going to give this an average rating. 3/5