Being a lover of all things Zelda I picked this up the other day for the DS.
I have to say for the first several minutes playing I had this “been there, done that” feeling as I started to play.
Boy was I wrong.
The “all” touchscreen controls for the game make it a complete original and they varied up the typical storyline.
Being able to take notes, draw sketches, mark locations on the maps is just great. Same with drawing a line to mark your boat route or boomerang path.
Even blowing out candles via microphone is cool.
And the graphics, animations, and sound are highly polished just as you’d expect from a Zelda game.
They really pushed the DS to it’s limits with this title. I’d say hands down the best game yet for the DS.
I picked it up too, and I agree on almost all counts (I don’t like blowing on my DS, but I can deal). It indeed looks great visually, and the controls are top notch. The gameplay changes (like the titular Phantom Hourglass) make for a fun new experience too.
The multiplayer is actually pretty good too. Kind of a pac-man type capture the flag game.
Man, I can’t wait to play this one. I’m still playing through Luminous Arc and Heroes of Mana though, so I’ll probably wait to pick up Phantom Hourglass until I’m finished with those.
I’d say my “only” tiny annoyance with it is that because it is stylus controlled (and I’m right-handed) if there is something requiring me to touch the left part of the screen my hand covers a lot of the screen.
When I first read about the all-touchscreen interface, it was a dealbreaker for me. It sounded like they were going to turn out an unplayable, broken game by trying to graft the touchscreen experience interface onto a tried-and-true formula.
But all of the reviews that I’ve read have explained that it’s truly a game designed for the DS’s unique interface - everything about it is purposefully built around using the touchscreen and microphone rather than it being a traditional zelda game that just happens to use those things. Having read that I’m completely sold on it and am going to pick it up tonight.
This is the type of mentality that more developers need to take toward the DS - and quite frankly, what *most * DS games have failed at.
My roommate picked up the game last night and was really quite impressed. I was leery of the control scheme since Metroid Prime: Hunters was quite awkward to play, but that involved manipulating the controls in addition to the stylus.
The Wi-Fi multiplayer game is a Capture the Flag variant that only requires one game cart, so we played a bit, and even in that 10 minutes I tried it, the controls already seemed to be quite intuitive and easy to use.
My parents wouldn’t let us have a nintendo or any game system for the longest time and I didn’t even get a gameboy until 1995. I only got to play the others over at friend’s houses so we usually played Mario or Sonic.
I’d buy a system now, but most of the games don’t interest me. Maybe I’ll break down and buy a Wii, eventually. I love my DS though.
Well, all the ones for the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, and one last one for both the N64 and the GameCube. That list would be:
Link’s Awakening
The Oracle of Ages
The Oracle of Seasons
The Minnish Cap
Majora’s Mask
Four Swords Adventures (Or maybe it’s Legend of the Four Swords? One of those two was a small add-on to the GBA port of Link to the Past, the other was an original GameCube title.)
But yeah, just by getting a Wii, you’re allowing yourself to play every non-gameboy/DS version of Zelda, except Majora’s Mask, which I don’t think is on the Virtual Console yet (but i’s not nearly as good as it’s predecessor, Ocarina of Time.)
Of course, we’ll just pretend the Phillips CD-i Zelda’s never existed…
Unless you can scrounge up the ‘Zelda collection’ GameCube disc, which contained Majora’s Mask, along with Ocarina and the two NES games. It was packaged with the console for a time, and I think you could also get it as a bonus for buying Wind Waker.
