Hello and welcome to Under the Super Scope where we take a look at some of the most famous
games of all time and try to work out if they still hold up today, and this week we’re
looking at the sequel to Wind Waker - The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
Wind Waker ended with unlimited possibilities, all remnants of Zelda’s story were basically
torn away.
No Ganon, no Hyrule, no Master Sword.
They could go anywhere and do anything with this follow up.
Then there’s the DS a whole new platform that didn’t handle like anything that came
before, this is a Zelda game you play entirely with the touch screen for every single action.
Phantom Hourglass could have been one of the most fresh entries in the series packed with
new ideas and a setting to rival Termina but instead what we ended up with was something
a little safe, derivative and packed with glaring design decisions.
Phantom Hourglass is not a good sequel to Wind Waker and in fact, it might just be the
worst Zelda game.
But let’s find out why: While the series was thriving in 3D, Phantom
Hourglass took things back to the overhead view and with it introduced level designs
more comparable to that of 2D entries.
The controls this view enabled are what’s really important though.
Throughout the entire game Link and all of his interactions are handled with the touch
screen.
If you want to move, drag the Stylus around, want to hit an enemy, touch them, want to
talk to someone, simply tap them.
It’s an innovative solution and one that works remarkably better than you may expect.
Items like the boomerang and grapple were given new life with the precision of touch
and the result is a solid foundation that would go on to see a much more deserving use
– in the Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.
Phantom Hourglass’s greatest problem comes from its puzzle design.
This was actually the first game I ever imported from Japan and I feel this highlighted its
underlying issues.
The vast majority of puzzle elements in this game come down to reading a far too helpful
hint and simply taking notes.
You can take notes at any time by writing on the map which could have had brilliant
effects but when stones simply tell you an order to press switch’s in or the order
to enter rooms or the order to insert blocks – it becomes mindless.
One could even argue that by definition, these aren’t puzzles.
A puzzle is a game or toy in which you have to fit separate pieces together, or a problem
or question that you have to answer by using your skill or knowledge:
When playing in Japanese of course I only had numbers to go on and I couldn’t read
a lot of the text and that’s not really a problem with puzzle design in other Zelda
games.
Each one relies on visual design to aid the player – to just tell them the solution
is hardly a puzzle.
In fact most dungeons don’t have any text at all, they use environmental hints, patterns
and items to help the player work out what to do.
Even some of the more clever puzzles are completely spoilt by the game.
To open up the path to the first dungeon, you have to cleverly break the forth wall
by blowing on these candles.
If the game reinforced the blowing mechanic earlier with a different context, this would
have been a brilliant revelation for the player to work out.
When you have a stone around the corner telling you to blow though, there’s not a single
inkling of challenge.
One way they could have taught this was with the rescue of Astrid earlier on the island.
If they had a cut scene where it shows her blowing out torches to open a door, the player
would then try to replicate that themselves.
Of course the microphone isn’t a usual input for the DS and to get players using it they
could implement the Pols voice enemy earlier on in the game – where just like in the
famicom version of Zelda 1, he doesn’t like loud noises.
There’s only one puzzle in the game that I feel the game doesn’t go out of its way
to spoil for the player and that’s this one right here.
Your instruction is to get both sides of the map to touch which sounds impossible – that
is until it clicks with you to close your DS.
Some players may even work this out by accident when putting their DS on standby to come back
to the puzzle later.
It’s an extremely clever way of breaking the forth wall and one of the rare cases where
Phantom Hourglass trusts you to work something out yourself.
There’s a lot of derivative aspects to both puzzle and level design like how practically
every dungeon opens with a small area of puzzle solving that can last anywhere from 20 seconds
to a minute and then bypasses the whole segment with a shortcut back to the lobby.
With it being a portable game, there’s certainly aspects to be built around the interest of
time but these kind of shortcuts make segments feel utterly pointless.
In fact puzzle solving basically never requires you visit different rooms.
It’s all self contained in its respective area and then goes onto something completely
separate in the next room.
The only exception to this was the Ice Temple where the lobby shortcut was mildly incorporated
for puzzle with a Switch in the centre that you utilise twice.
One you open a shortcut and use a bombchu to flick the switch from the other side of
the coloured blocks, the other you simply hit the Switch before going down the stairs
as your path would be blocked otherwise.
It’s incredibly basic compared to previous Zeldas and with this being about as involved
as puzzles get, this really showcases how weak of a game this is.
But obviously you’ve been waiting for me to talk about the temple of the ocean king.
This is one of the worst ideas to enter The Legend of Zelda.
Let’s start with the basics.
The Temple of the Ocean King is a timed labyrinth where you need to solve the puzzle of each
room before continuing to the next.
There are guards manning each floor and if they see you and hit you, you lose 30 seconds
of time.
As a one off dungeon, it’s not that bad.
The problem is you come back here after the first dungeon, after the second dungeon, after
the third dungeon, after the forth dungeon and finally after the 8th dungeon.
That’s 5 times and each time you start from scratch again with more rooms gradually getting
introduced.
Sure you have new items which can bypass some of the elements but you’re still replaying
the same rooms again and again and again.
What’s worse is at the start of the game core temples last between 10 to 15 minutes
meaning it can literally take about half an hour before you’re back doing the same rooms
again at the temple of the ocean king.
It doesn’t help that they’re visually some of the most boring rooms to ever touch
a Zelda game.
Want to be surrounded by the same generic grey walls five times that drag on for too
long?
This is the place for you.
The pacing of Phantom Hourglass is so poor and predictable and even the story doesn’t
tie together.
Outside of Linebeck, who is legitimately a fantastic character with a brilliant theme
to boot, Phantom Hourglass’ plot comes down to: Tetra is now a generic damsel, go save
her by collecting these items.
It has the mid game finales seen in other Zeldas where you’re encouraged to keep going
after a three dungeon payoff – apart from there’s no payoff.
Most games will grant you the Master Sword after the initial three dungeon hurdle but
you don’t get the Phantom Sword until right at the end of the game.
You’re motivation to keep going is simply – oh here’s three more dungeons.
Sailing to each island isn’t exactly fun either.
Sure, there’s an argument to be made that it wasn’t fun in Wind Waker but it still
had a vibe.
When sailing through the seas and watching the time of day shift as the music adjusts
accordingly, there’s a very relaxing feeling to Wind Waker.
In Phantom Hourglass though not only is everything static but every few seconds an enemy appear
so you can’t relax.
You’re forced to sit there and watch the world go by as you tap on things every 10
seconds.
Sailings faster than Wind Waker and the world is smaller so you don’t do as often but
it’s not what I would call better.
Even the world map is tedious to navigate.
If you try entering the top right portion from the top left portion, you’re met with
these annoying rocks preventing you from going anywhere.
So you have to go back to the top right, go down to the bottom right, go to the bottom
left and then finally up to the top left.
Phew – that’s far too many steps just to get to one island.
This split overworld would later be used for Spirit Tracks and Skyward Sword but in all
those instances it feels far too artificial in any of these examples.
At least neither of those games make you play through the same dungeon repeatedly to expand
the world.
There’s a lot of bad in Phantom Hourglass but there are good parts hiding within.
The progression of item tutorials I feel are always really clever.
The formula is basically: Get item, get locked in a room and work out what the item does,
fight an enemy with that item – iterate upon a puzzle and then continually expand
until it culminates with a boss fight utilising the core mechanics of the item and sometimes
the dungeon.
The progression of the bomb puzzle is pretty interesting too.
You need to throw a bomb which cause a chain reaction with all the other bombs thus hitting
a switch – later we see a similar idea only there’s an element of timing to it and then
lastly we see the final evolution which requires two precise bomb throws.
This dungeon is really clever with bombs.
Much like A Link to the Past, you can often see other rooms just in the corner of the
one you’re in which gives you indications of hidden walls to bomb.
Finding this solution rewards me with a satisfying 100 ruppees.
There is a problem with these rewards sometimes though and that’s that they sometimes are
undeserved.
One puzzle gives me an X to dig but I ended up digging in this spot without even paying
attention to where I am on the map because there’s an obvious spot to dig.
So there’s a random 100 rupees.
The Ice Dungeon gives you two doses of 200 rupees as part of the dungeon’s natural
progression – they aren’t even rewards.
Guess where I am in the game with this rupee count?
The second dungeon.
You can pretty much buy everything and still be loaded.
Another area that falls flats is the Goron Temple.
The bombchu item has more use than Ocarina of Time but it introduces an element where
you can Switch between Link and a Goron but this segment lasts 2 minutes and then isn’t
brought up again until the bossfight.
Said bossfight does incorporate both the bombchus and the goron which I like a lot but the Goron
element feels undercooked – it’s not even used with another character like it is in
Wind Waker.
Maybe that’s why it came back as a mini game.
This boss fight is really awesome though – as are a chunk of them.
Basically no matter who you’re facing you’re going to want to look at both screens.
Some span them for a neat looking vertical aspect ratio and other simply use icons that
are outside of your peripheral vision.
The first boss cleverly have indicators showing what order to hit them and the goron boss
let’s you keep an eye on both players – really cool uses.
The latter is also used in the Temple of the Ocean King to always keep an eye on where
the Phantoms are and I think it works very well.
Might be the only thing I like about that place.
Well I like this little bit here too where it teaches you that you can get a phantoms
attention by hitting a wall when you make a noise hitting this Switch.
Cool double objective there.
And that’s the thing, everything I have to say about the foundation of Phantom Hourglass
is nothing but solid.
The controls work well, the use of dual screens is great and dungeons have their moments of
being clever – that is when they aren’t telling you exactly what to do.
It’s the core design around everything else that brings it screeching to a halt though.
There’s hardly any personality in this game.
Most islands look like this, most characters don’t have character and some of the music
is simply dreadful, listen to this!
Yeah that’s it.
Even its better moments come fumbling down.
The third boss only seems to have one phase even though it feels like he should have the
usual three, the clever invisible floor puzzle is reused from A Link to the Past with the
beetle intact – only there’s a map showing you exactly where the floor is and you now
carry boss keys around as gigantic items, only they’re always like 10 seconds from
the door and there’s never any intercepting challenge…so why are we carrying them?
Spirit Tracks would also address this in some cases.
That’s not to say that taking notes is a bad concept though.
The scenario where you have to follow a direct path through the fog is well executed and
I like the dungeon that has an overall pattern of Up – Down – Right - Left – even if
it’s not used as much as it initially suggests.
It’s great for taking notes of items you can’t work out how to obtain, solutions
for Temple of the Ocean King to speed up repeat playthroughs or overworld spots that you expect
require a later item.
Phantom Hourglass is unfortunately just one of the most poorly paced Zeldas to be released
by Nintendo and while they could have gone anywhere with the setting, they just kinda
took another stab at Wind Waker’s world but without the same sense of adventure.
Next week we’ll be taking a look at The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks to see just
how it took one of the worst Zeldas and elevated it out of mediocrity – but until then, Phantom
Hourglass certainly does not hold up.
They translated Zelda excellently to the DS but the underlying designs just aren’t good
enough to remain fun and The Temple of the Ocean King just has about everything going
against it.
Repeat playthroughs, a timer, you have to play slowly, tons of invisible enemies – it
just isn’t much fun one time, it’s especially not fun 6 times.
But what do you think oh Phantom Hourglass?
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from Under the Super Scope and other things gaming too.
Until next time,bye!