Swords, Shields, and...Fairies?

The Legend of Zelda series has given us some of the greatest games of all time. With Ocarina of Time on the N64, Wind Waker on the Gamecube (Hey! I liked that game so back off!), and Twilight Princess on the Wii. Now, Link will get shrunken down to handheld proportions once again in his first adventure on the Nintendo DS, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

Phantom Hourglass is set to release in the fourth quarter of 2007 and is a direct sequel to Wind Waker, complete with cell shaded graphics. Now I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "Oh man, Wind Waker was too cartoonish. Not that again." Well, shut it. It's time people stopped looking at games with less "realistic" graphics (I've never seen anyone with the body proportions of Marcus Fenix in real life) as lower quality. But that's a whole other argument. The point is, Wind Waker turned out to be a great game, and that's how Phantom Hourglass is looking, too.

The game takes place a few months after the events of Wind Waker, but there are some changes this time around. Many of the areas that were either tedious or just not fun in Wind Waker are different or gone altogether. For example, the annoying task of sailing for hours from island to island, and then having to drop anchor everytime you had to fight an enemy, is luckily gone. There is still a boat in Link's newest romp through Hyrule, but it's now steam powered. W00t for technology. That means now you can plot out your course ahead of time, so you can pay more attention to fighting seaborn enemies.

Another new twist is that the gameplay in Phantom Hourglass is entirely controlled almost entirely by the touch screen and stylus. You can move Link around by tapping locations on the screen, swing your sword by sweeping the stylus in a circle, and even write notes and useful information on the in game maps, allowing you to easily recall a hint given earlier in a dungeon. An on-screen fairy will act as the point for your stylus, but unlike the Wii version of Twilight Princess, it will actually have a part in the story. This immersion in the DS software is something that we haven't really seen from other games quite yet, with most titles using the second screen for nothing more than a title screen, or often having no touch capabilities. Finally, a developer is using the DS for what it was made for.

My only fear is that fans will be turned away from the game because of its Gamecube-esque graphics, without even trying to enjoy the new gameplay elements that will likely be copied by multiple future DS titles.

The moral of the story: Solid, fun gameplay is more important than shiny graphics and a lot of explosions.