The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

By DrunknMunky
in Nintendo

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

The Teej

Posted
Posted

Having completed both OoT, TP, and WW I'm definitely ready to play the next installment of the timeline :)

(It's just a shame I haven't completed MM :()

It's the first Nintendo-made handheld title since Link's awakening, which was the best handheld Zelda to date. Lets hope this is another Link's Awakening :)

Grand Master

DrunknMunky Veteran

Posted
  • Author
  • Veteran
Posted

For hardcore Zelda fans I think most will find it a bit too easy, I know I do. At the same time though, it's still enjoyable and the puzzles so far have been fun. I love using the boomerang and drawing the path out for it to follow :D It's so cool

Grand Master

DrunknMunky Veteran

Posted
  • Author
  • Veteran
Posted
Nothing has ever been hard about Zelda. Its always been about playing an enjoyable, fun series.

Back in the day, the water temple drove me nuts in OOT. And I meant hard, as far as Zelda games go, not compaing it to other series :p

Grand Master

Danrarbc

Posted
Posted
Back in the day, the water temple drove me nuts in OOT. And I meant hard, as far as Zelda games go, not compaing it to other series :p

Well the OoT water temple is just plain bad design that made it confusing, much like 'Cortana' in Halo 3.

Veteran

QuantumTrickery

Posted
Posted

Well, having finished the game, I come out a happy man. The game ended up being a little short for my liking, but it was definitely refreshing, and very much worth it. As for the difficulty of the game, I only got caught at one point, and it made me absolutely insane: You find yourself having to transfer the sea chart pretty early on. So here I am, tapping all over the screen for like 15 minutes. Nothing. Tap some more, scribble, nothing. Nothing nothing nothing! So I close my DS and walk away completely frustrated. One beer, and 15 minutes later I open my DS back up and hear the puzzle chime, the puzzle successfully imprinted by smooching the two halves together. You ######.

Genius Nintendo. Pure genius. You knew I'd close the damn thing aggravated, and knew how happy I'd be upon opening it back up.

Grand Master

Shadrack

Posted
Posted

Picked this one up last night and have played it for about an hour. So far I think the touch screen interface is so unnecessary. Just because the DS has a touch screen doesn't mean every game needs it. Touch screen game play has the following benefits:

* Its a novelty that is not available on other systems.

* It works with the puzzles that use it.

* Drawing on the map is a nice features.

But what I don't like about it is:

* Games that exclusively use the touch screen scratch it up.

* It becomes uncomfortable after so long and I can't play the game as long as I'd like because my hand cramps up.

* Slower response when needing to switch directions to avoid obstacles or enemies.

* My stylus and hand blocks 10-30% of the screen most of the time. Limiting my enjoyment of the visuals.

I dunno. Seems pretty pointless to me. The gameplay from Zelda: Link to the Past was far superior to this...they should have just used classic Zelda gameplay. Kinda like how lame Starfox DS was...that game would have been so much better if they went with classic Starfox gameplay rather than the crappy touch screen interface.

So far I'm pretty disappointed with the game due to the touch screen.

Veteran

QuantumTrickery

Posted
Posted

The touch screen was the best feature of this Zelda title. I don't know what you are doing to scratch your screen, but mine has long term usage, with no wear at all. Nor do I understand how you are covering up so much of the screen, never mind any of it at all.

Slow response? Not even remotely. Perhaps you just have no idea what you are doing, or your DS is broken in some fashion.

And calling the touch screen a novelty? How ignorant.

Grand Master

Shadrack

Posted
Posted
The touch screen was the best feature of this Zelda title. I don't know what you are doing to scratch your screen, but mine has long term usage, with no wear at all. Nor do I understand how you are covering up so much of the screen, never mind any of it at all.

Slow response? Not even remotely. Perhaps you just have no idea what you are doing, or your DS is broken in some fashion.

And calling the touch screen a novelty? How ignorant.

Heh...well it is all just my opinion. Maybe my hands are large compared to yours. I just find it irritating that they left behind classic perfected gameplay that the DS is capable of for an exclusively touch screen interface. No need to go into immature name calling over an opinion.

Experienced

Michael Lacey

Posted
Posted

I just finished the game yesterday. Have to say it was an excellent adventure, and the controls were fine, except for my hand cramping every once in a while due to excessive stylus use. They were brilliantly designed though, I must say.

Lots of improvement over Wind Waker, and an interesting continuation of the story. Some say the temple of the Ocean King is tedious and reptitive; however I found it to be fine because each time you go in, you have new items that make the trip shorter.

Bosses were great as well. Anybody with a DS should pick this game up right away. Even if you haven't played Wind Waker, the game tells the story in the introduction, and it's refreshing for those who have completed the game.

  • 2 months later...
Grand Master

Piggy

Posted
Posted

This game is really something else. I just got it and I'm an old school Zelda fan. I loved Link to the past on the SNES and this is just as enjoyable for me.

No reviews can really capture the gameplay in this title. It's really quite enjoyable.

Mentor

The Gunslinger

Posted
Posted
Kinda like how lame Starfox DS was...that game would have been so much better if they went with classic Starfox gameplay rather than the crappy touch screen interface.

The only thing I agree with you on...

Veteran

Smashing Pumpkin

Posted
Posted

Just got this game for xmas, bloody love it, though in one day I'd gotten into the North Western Sea, I hope that's not a qurter of the game done already or it's sooo short.

Makes brilliant use of all the DS's special features :D

Rich

xxx

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • Secure Boot

      By cork1958 · Posted

      Simple answer is yes, you will still get the Windows updates and as long as browser is up to date, you will be good. Only thing secure boot does is protect you against boot level threats and make it harder to install other OS's. I've been looking into this pretty thoroughly lately myself as wifes computer has secure boot disabled plus my other, older computers that run Linux, don't have secure boot enabled. Have seen all kinds of questions about this on the Linux Mint and MX Linux forums. Just don't suddenly enable secure boot now.
    • Ford execs say they made a mistake when they replaced human engineers with AI

      By TsarNikky · Posted

      How many other companies will follow Ford's lead? Or, have they already gotten lazy and become enslaved to AI--and now can't figure out how to get out of that mess.
    • The Trump administration doesn't want you to use OpenAI's GPT-5.6 without its approval

      By TsarNikky · Posted

      Why would any self-respecting intelligent person follow any recommendation by Donald's GOP administration? With almost two years of fabrications, deceit, and blatantly illegal behavior, why believe them now? They had best be gone after the November 2026 election, so we'll wait and see.
    • AltSendme 0.4.1

      By Copernic · Posted

      AltSendme 0.4.1 by Razvan Serea AltSendme is a minimal, cross-platform application designed for fast, secure, and private peer-to-peer file transfers. It allows users to send files or entire directories directly between devices without relying on cloud servers, accounts, or any personal information. Everything is encrypted end-to-end using modern protocols like QUIC and TLS 1.3, ensuring both strong security and low-latency performance. Transfers are verified with BLAKE3 for data integrity, and interrupted downloads automatically resume, making the experience reliable even on unstable connections. You can transfer anything—images, videos, documents, and more. Integrity checks are performed on both ends, so your files are automatically verified for correctness during both sending and receiving. AltSendme works seamlessly across local networks or long-distance links, capable of saturating multi-gigabit connections for extremely fast delivery. With built-in NAT traversal and encrypted relay fallback, it connects devices almost anywhere. The app integrates with the Sendme CLI and will soon support mobile and web platforms. Fully free and open-source, AltSendme offers a lightweight, privacy-first alternative to traditional cloud-based services, removing size limits, upload costs, and unnecessary data exposure. AltSendme 0.4.1 changelog: Release Highlights Self-hosted relays: Run your own iroh relay so transfers don't rely on public infrastructure. Includes a full deployment template in deploy/relay/ with Docker Compose for a VPS and configuration examples for production use. Fly.io support: One-click deploy template for Fly.io, including a quick-start config (fly.dev.toml) for testing without a custom domain, plus production setup with Let's Encrypt and your own hostname. Relay settings UI: New Settings → Network panel to choose how AltSendme connects: automatic public relays, custom self-hosted URLs (with optional auth token), or disabled. Test connections, verify latency, and see live relay status in the footer. Disable relays: Turn off relay servers entirely when you only need same-network transfers (e.g. LAN). Direct connections only. No relay hop required when devices can reach each other. Android graduates from beta: Android is now part of the regular release cycle alongside desktop. APKs ship with each version (universal, arm64, and armv7). Other improvements Private relay access control via shared auth token Relay fallback notifications when a custom relay is unreachable Broadcast mode toggle in sharing settings Android release build fixes (split-per-ABI APKs, universal APK preservation) UI polish: mobile safe-area insets, dropzone layout, transfer progress animation Bug fixes for minification-related serialization issues and system tray icon loading What's Changed feat(relay): add relay status functionality and settings UI (a120cdf) feat(relay): implement custom relay server configuration and verification (51276c7) feat(relay): add configuration for private relay access and enhance observability features (48fbabf) feat(relay): enhance relay URL validation, display connection status (d4fffa0) feat(relay): add RelayChangeGuard component and enhance relay-related translations (16ba514) feat(broadcast): add toggle setting for broadcast mode in sharing UI (ca6d977) fix(relay): correct QUIC discovery port, pin image, templatize fly.dev (52a2ba5) fix: More broken serialization due to minification (67491a9) fix(android): preserve true universal APK across per-ABI builds (e9f256f) fix(ui): conditional safe-area insets padding on mobile (1182f0e) refactor(transfer): CircularRing component animation fix (944572b) chore(android): drop x86 and x86_64 release APKs, keep universal+arm64+armv7 (34ada0b) Download: AltSendme 0.4.1 | ARM64 | ~9.0 MB (Open Source) Download: AltSendme for MacOS | Android Links: AltSendme Home Page | GitHub | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Why Delta Chat is the best decentralized messenger you have probably never tried

      By zikalify · Posted

      You are mostly right about the ephemeral nature of it. As I mention in the article, if you dont add a second device or take a backup of your account before uninstalling it, then yes you will lose access to your account. That said, in terms of actual user experience when you sync multiple devices your message history carries across and there's also a Saved Messages chat like there is on Telegram to send messages and attachments between your installs. But yh, what you point out are correct and its not trying to emulate Messenger or Telegram.

  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      495
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      225
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      149
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!