Is your collection reflective of your experience?

You (Khuutra) asked me in another thread about why I didn't like Phantom Hourglass, and I've been asked that by someone else as well.

I didn't really like PH. The game itself was decent enough, but that horrible temple you had to go back to all the time was just... horrible.

The game had tons of problems

- It was very short for a Zelda... Just 10-12 hours long. 12-15 hours if you do mostly everything.

- It was linear. One of WW's charms was that you could just sail around and fill the World map and such. In PH, it wasn't like that. It was a dungeoun crawler. Go from Island A to B, get told what to do, do that, go to Island C, and do a duneoun there. Sure, there are a few "new islands", but their content is really just something ala a fetch quest.

- The temple of the Sea. The only part of the game that wasn't a piece of cake, was also bloody annoying. There's an effing timer! Zelda games shall not have timers! It's ok if you do it like Big-goron sword in OoT, but this is just one hell of annoying. You also have to do the same things several times (I know, later you can teleport a bit in).

- The stylus. What the stylus generally does, is leave you in complete control of how you move.  But in Zelda, you usually have that. So how on earth did a series that you always have had full control in, mix up with something that should add more to that, and make you lose a lot of control? "Follow the pointer" gets dull pretty quickly, and you have far, far less control than you would have had using the D-pad.

- The items. Using the items feels like a chore. First, swap to the item you want to use, then tap the window box, and then you can finally start using the item. God forbid if you have to use an item in a fight. But hey, do you? No, not really. Apart from the bosses, the combat is almost 100% sword fight, and the sword fighting isn't exactly good in this game. The items also leave for almost no real puzzling. "Use the bombchu and draw a line from you to the item you need to hit". Wow, that's hard!

- The puzzles. All old Zelda-style puzzles are gone. Instead, you have 2 new things. One, you get a combination, so you have to write it down on your map, and then hit the switches in that way (3-8-5-4-7-6-1-2 for example). The other, is blowing on the DS to blow out fires,  closing it to stamp a map and such. The 2nd one is kinda nice, but it's used in like 4 puzzles before it gets obvious. In the next 10, you know exactly what to do.

It is by far the worst Zelda ever. I was never a big fan of the 2D Zeldas, but they were still top of the line on their respective machines. Phantom Hourglass isn't.

Now, I know I've been very negative here, but the question I was asked was "why I didn't like it".

Edit: But I see I have different tastes than you - I really liked Adventure of Link (I never finished it though).

I think we can agree to disagree on these points.

Particularly the puzzles!

I'd put it in the "childeren's" timeline after Ocarina of time. Link and Zelda tell the king of Ganon's intentions and he is sentenced to death or something by the sages years later. That is where the backstory of TP sets in. It also sort of explains Ganon's desire of the trident after seeing Midna use it in this timeline, but Ganon's love of dual swords (windwaker) in the adult timeline.

@Cheebee: I think you misinterpretated the developers. They have claimed to have a mastersdocument of the Zelda chronicles, but that they indeed do not look into this book only after development has started. When they are busy developing, they will determine where it will sit in the timeline. 

GT timeline is trash. Just warning people not to bother with it.

TP is in the childrens timeline. link goes back in time, ganon never gets his wish granted by the triforce, he tries to overtake hyrule by force, he fails, he is imprisoned and some centuries later BAM twilight princess happen.

TP is in the childrens timeline. link goes back in time, ganon never gets his wish granted by the triforce, he tries to overtake hyrule by force, he fails, he is imprisoned and some centuries later BAM twilight princess happen.

Link's Awakening, eh?

Eh. I never liked it that much, though the story was quite good for it's time.

Phantom Hourglass was a sort of spiritual sequel to LA I suppose - though it's also a spiritual sequel to LoZ and TMC and an actual sequel to TWW. Anyway, I really should play that game again - I loved the way the narrative tied itself to the gameplay, and the plot was both focused and dynamic - as were the characters and their relationships, for that matter. The way the game contrasts the heroic persona of Link - on his personal quest to save his "girl" - and Linebeck was great. That made the story much more emotially powerful than, say, Twilight Princess was, despite the much simpler plot. I also liked the fact that the game had a genuine sense of humor and didn't take itself too seriously. Also, Oshu might well be the first "guardian" character in the series that didn't just sit around on his ass waiting for Link to defeat the villain and actually took action against his foe.

The general gameplay was good, if not perfect. I did not have a problem with the Ocean King's Temple as many other people did, and the stylus controlls worked well for the most part. However, I did not appreciate the empty "dead" island-overworld and it's derivative music. The dungeons were also extremely linear and predictable - the puzzles were good, but the "fight rooms" were pointless and boring. Combat was definitelly a weak point of the game. On the bright side, as I mentioned before, I really liked the way events of the story had a real impact on how you played the game. Stuff like the Spirits being able to power up your sword, or more importantly, the Phantom Sword enabling you to defeat the Phantoms - that was the first time that I felt the need for a new weapon to defeat the villain, let alone experienced a real effect on how I played the game - was great.

All in all, I really liked the game and I hope they learn from it when they make Zelda Wii. That rumored patent wouldn't exactly be un-welcome, either.

Oh yeah...

The whole timeline idea has gotten too messed up to work. There are some vague ideas and theories about how all the games tie together, and yes, Miyamoto said (years and years ago) that there were supposedly 2 timelines. However, with each and every new Zelda that comes out, it's gotten more and more impossible to fit all the pieces together, and now it's just one big horrific mess...

Actually, Aonuma said that - after Twilight Princess came out! It hasn't really had a lot of time to change. Now, I'm not going to argue about the timeline - I've done enough of that! - but it would be better if people actually researched these things before comitting themeselves. So much confusion about the Zelda chronology stems from ignorance of simple facts and plots, it's ridicolous.

There is no Zelda chronology. Not to a large extent anyway. And there sure s heck isn't a 'Zelda-master document' that explains the whole timeline. :p

Combat in Phantom Hourglass served primarily as a way to break the tension of constantly solving puzzles, for me.

That does not reflect on the boss fights, though, which were largely fantastic (the Scourge of Courage in particular).