The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is a 2007 action-adventure title for the Nintendo DS, built by Nintendo EAD and issued by Nintendo. Metacritic shows a Metascore of 90, and Wikipedia describes it as the direct sequel to The Wind Waker.

Overview

It is the fourteenth main game in the series. Link and Tetra are sailing the Great Sea when they meet a ghost ship, Tetra is taken aboard, and Link washes up on Mercay Island. He then teams up with a treasure hunter named Captain Linebeck and a fairy named Ciela to rescue her from Bellum, an enemy that feeds on life.

Development began in May 2004. Wikipedia says the early plan resembled Four Swords Adventures, and the same team that made that game worked on this one. Eiji Aonuma produced it and Daiki Iwamoto directed. Hidemaro Fujibayashi wrote the story.

How it plays

The whole game is driven by the stylus. Link walks toward the point the player touches, attacks by pointing at an enemy and uses the boomerang, bow and bombs the same way. At sea, the player draws a route on the chart and the paddle steamer S.S. Linebeck follows it, with a cannon for ships that attack. The map can be pulled from the top screen to the touch screen and annotated, which several puzzles require.

Wikipedia notes an early prototype put the action on the top screen with a flat map below, but the developers felt this left the player too detached from the action and swapped the screens.

The central place is the Temple of the Ocean King, which Link has to revisit. A curse drains his life inside it, and the Phantom Hourglass, once obtained, gives him limited time to explore unharmed. Phantoms are nearly invincible, so stealth and the “safe zones” scattered through the temple matter. The temple resets when Link leaves, though shortcuts unlock as he gains items.

The battle mode is a one-on-one contest in an arena. One player moves Link to carry a Force Gem to his base; the other steers three Phantom Guardians to catch him. Each match has three rounds, roles swap, and the longest possible match runs twelve minutes. It worked locally, through Download Play and online over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, and it was the third Zelda game with any multiplayer after Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures.

Release and credits

Japan received the game on 23 June 2007 and the rest of the world in October 2007, with South Korea following on 3 April 2008. Metacritic prints 1 October 2007 as the date, which is how the two sources differ. Nintendo launched a gold Zelda-themed DS bundle on 23 November 2007 alongside it. Both Wikipedia and Metacritic name Nintendo EAD and Nintendo as developer and publisher.

The Wii U Virtual Console version appeared in PAL regions in November 2015, in North America in May 2016 and in Japan in August 2016.

Reception

Metacritic’s score rests on 57 critic reviews. Computer and Video Games called it one of the few masterpieces on the DS. IGN felt it was more casual than it would have liked yet still a true Zelda adventure, and Hyper’s Jonti Davies praised the controls and dungeon design while criticising a length of about 30 hours. Empire gave it a perfect five stars. The online features drew criticism for being too simple.

GameSpot, GameSpy and IGN each named it their Nintendo DS Game of the Year. Sales were 302,887 copies in Japan during June 2007 and 262,800 in the United States during October, with 4.13 million worldwide by March 2008.

Can you still play it?

A retail card works in the DS, DS Lite and DSi, and the 3DS family runs it in DS mode. The Wii U and the Switch cannot read DS cards. Since it is not a DSi-only release, Wikipedia’s region lock page implies that a card from any region will start on any of those handhelds.

Single-player is fully intact. Online battles are not: the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection closed on 20 May 2014, so only the local wireless and Download Play versions of the battle mode remain. The Wii U Virtual Console release vanished from sale when the Wii U and 3DS eShop closed on 27 March 2023.