nintendo_fanboy said:
You can't seriously tell me that Phantom Hourglass was on par with games like A Link To The Past, Link's Awakening, The Minish Cap or The Wind Waker, can you? And I'm really not saying this because of this one dungeon, believe me. Of course, this wasn't the best idea in game design, but we have seen worse things in Zelda games. It isn't because of the controls either. I had absolutely no problem with them and thought they worked fine. I don't really see an improvement either, but since it didn't hurt me and was probably a plus for some, it is a good thing overall. But the game was just not as good as any of the other Zelda games. The dungeons were fine, but they were at the lower end of the scale I'd say. Still, they were classic Zelda gameplay that made good usage of the DS controls, so I can't really complain about those. What made the game sub-par were the things that happened outside the dungeons. It is quite difficult to describe for me, since simply calling it "the overworld" or "the story" would be wrong. It is more something like "the way the action progresses". Others have said it already, the game doesn't feel as epic as it should. This comes a bit from the characters, and it comes from the story. Both felt a bit too simple for a Zelda game. And as I said, the events between the dungeons were the huge letdown. It was hardly much more than going from A to B, the islands looked all generic, there was no fun in accessing the dungeons and absolutely no "epic feel". I think that is the best way I can currently write this down. I hope you get my points. |
Wind Waker was ok, and honestly I liked Phantom Hourglass so much more. Both suffered from the same overworld lots of traveling problem. I think Phantom Hourglass handeled it slightly better. I do happen to like A Link to The Past better, but never got into Link's Awakening (beat it, but didn't go crazy over it)
What really made Phantom Hourglass stand apart was the fresh gameplay. I've beat Zelda with the same classic puzzles over and over again (i've easily beat all the zeldas I've played more than 100 times in total). Phantom Hourglass is one of the few Zelda games where I just absolutely fell in love with it because the puzzles and gameplay were so new. They took advantage of every aspect of the system too (microphone, case, ability to draw on the map, and so on). Sure the game wasn't as epic, but all the other games were just a reskin of the previous games and all used similar tricks. I'm not complaining about the other games and I loved them, but PH did truely new stuff.
