Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS)

cholden

Who's playing?

I picked this up Tuesday, and am having trouble putting it down.

The graphic style is very similar to Wind Waker, and includes the ocean travel.

All the controls are performed with the stylus (with the occasional button pressing). I was worried I'd get killed in combat at first, but have quickly found it's targeting incredibly responsive.

There is some very unique puzzle solving that takes advantage of all those wacky DS features, such as drawing on maps, blowing in the mic to put out candles and literally yelling at people (the louder I yelled at this one guy the lower he'd sale stuff). There's other things you do with the DS to solve puzzles, but I don't want to get too far into the spoiler zone.

I'm still very early into the game, and having a great time. Anybody else pick this one up?

Matabus

Yeah I'm in the same boat as you (no pun intended) wherein I can't seem to put the damn game down. I luvr it. It's incredibly intuitive. The game never really TELLS you exactly what to do but you end up figuring out you need to blow into the mic or yell at people right away.

Awesome game.

Jeff Parrott

Great game, haven't had much time to play it. I really enjoy the building interiors the most I have to say. The art on those are great. All in all so far it's a great game.

Luxury

I only have 2 gripes with it so far. 1) I hate running left because my hand covers the entire right half the screen when I do so. 2) My hands get all cramped after not much playing time. This is the first DS game I own that uses the stylus and that the DS isn't held sideways. Makes for some uncomfortable wrists, fingers, thumbs.

animatr

i absolutley love this game. only need 1 more metal! the ocean king temple gets so damn tough though.

Panupat

I picked it up the first day it came off. Soooooo much more addictive than Twilight Princess o.O;; Maybe I had too high hopes for TP...

pliang

Read all about it, but need DS first.

Nostradamus

Just completed, in 2 days no less(yea i know i play too much)...
was an absolute blast!
cant say i relate to the sor wrist/thumb stuff, but i've been playing ds for a fair while as well.
quite different from usual console zelda's, but in it's own ways a lot, lot better.

Panupat

I wish they added normal controlling feature >.> running and do everything with the stylus gets tiring really quick.

bounchfx

I'm only about two hours in, but I agree, I'm enjoying this WAY more than TP.

arshlevon

really digging it so far. only gripe, the rolling mechanaic is not so easy to execute consistantly. other than that i love it, i think the controls work good for zelda, making notes on the map is also awesome.

hawken

just got it today. Fantastic stuff!

I agree that rolling is hard to pull off, and sometimes the battles are hard to control considering my hand is over the screen, although for me, thats the beauty - too many easy games out there.

After a good 2hr session, I came away feeling like I'd been playing the gamecube version.

They manage to get a very rich amount of detail on the screen, quite impressive

Nostradamus

dont understand why ppl think rolling is hard, you just take your stylus to the edge of the touch screen and tap it into the edge, and voila, you roll!

arshlevon

ahhh cool, i think people think its hard because when they tell you how to roll they dont say,"tap the edge of the screen" they tell you to make small circles in the corner, so i have been drawing circles of various sizes hoping to pull off the right size small cirle, only rolling half of the time. if they would of told me to just tap the edge of the screen, it might of made things a bit easier.

kakikukeko

yup same as above, I have to try that "tap on the side"; the circles are too damn hard...
didn't go very far yet, but I love the texturing of the indoor environments!
very addictive game..

hawken

actually I'm still having trouble rolling... the game is very intuitive, though it has it's faults.

next LPC? Zelda DS character?

hobodactyl

I don't see how people are getting cramped hands or anything from this, my hands get cramped from holding the DS normally since it's so tiny, but with this game I can just cradle the DS in my hand since it only uses the stylus.

This is the first game in a while that I'm actually playing all the way through because it's just fun to play. I love that it's stylus only, and all the stuff like blowing out candles and whatnot is fun. Finally a good game that doesn't just feel like a gimmick but still uses all the DS's functionality!

Slash

For those of you who get cramped hands, i'm sure most of you have wacom tablets. When i play this at home i just use the intuos 3 pen, it feels awesome.

If you wanna roll just draw a tiny circle on the edge of your screen.

The game itself is a blast. Worthy of entering the halls of its forefathers.

steady

definitely a quality game, shorter than most zelda games though.
now if they could turn it into an mmo like animal crossing!!!