I love how this game made u do things that were unheard at the time, like blowing the candles, talking to the DS, closing the fucking case, it felt innovative and fresh.
@@renofheavens8347 a recycled mechanic that could only be used on a japanese system, in one game, and in exactly one or two instances. So no, it's an amplified mechanic
Linebeck and his accompanying theme are one of my favorite parts of this game. Though Link doesn't speak in the traditional sense, he has some sass to give to Linebeck in the dialogue options.
Something you didn't mention was the map. I really loved in DS games being able to draw on a map to take notes and highlight things. Stuff like BOTW stamps works a bit, but freely drawing always felt better.
i agree. The map was for me one of the most creative things - because your future self's success depends on the notes made by your past self. Many people get annoyed at it because they simply ignore its utility or they fail at making useful notes. :)
@@puline397 honestly without the map i feel like young me would have had no chance. i remember on i think it was whale island? the island where the map doesnt display, i tried to manually chart the whole thing. it was honestly great
A lot of people hate this game, but it was my introduction to Zelda. I loved it, I loved the controls, and didn't have a problem with it at all. It wasn't until I got into the online Zelda community that I found out everyone hated the DS games. 😞 I loved the stylus controls because I'd been playing crappy platforming games on the GBA which needed pixel perfect jumps. PH felt a lot more chill. I also liked the temple of the ocean king more than the tower of spirits in Spirit Tracks, because it was really fun to figure out the secret passages to get to the bottom more quickly. I really agree with most of what Linkus says - so much of this game is really unique, as well as its sequel. Sadly, these were Toon Link's last real game. I fear that Toon Zelda is a dying Nintendo franchise...
I honestly came to this game after playing a few in the series and was kinda surprised when people complained about the temple of the ocean king, glad to see I'm not the only one. I mean you get a warp point halfway through so you only repeat the first and 3rd section 1 time which is half of the dungeon. Not to mention on top of the extra treasure and tools allowing you to get shortcuts, you kinda need to find the shortcuts because you're still timed for both sections. I always felt like it did a good job getting dungeon fundamentals down where the item you got recontextualizes everything, but its with the items you got from other dungeons.
@@ninjacell2999 I hope so... but Nintendo is forgetting about him. And judging by the way people react when I pick him in Smash, other people are forgetting about him too...
i dont see what is wrong with the 2 DS games, i thought they were pretty fun. phantom hour glass was easy, but i havent been able to beat spirit tracks yet.
I LOVE the design of the Temple of the Ocean King. I know it doesn't do anything but finishing it with a full 25:00 left in the Phantom Hourglass was so much fun. The final boss theme is also one of my favorites in the series, possibly even my absolute favorite.
Lots of people judge this game so hard, but it really is just an ambitious and charming game targeted towards kids. I got this game as a kid and replayed it multiple times in my 20s still, I enjoyed your positive take on it 😊
I know - I've always tried to be an apologist for this game. I don't think any Zelda game deserves tons of hate. When you compare the series to other franchises, it's incredible just how high quality they are.
I was stuck on it forever, too. Got frustrated and decided to close my DS and get back to it when I had finished eating or something. Came back to open my DS only to see it solved and felt pretty stupid that I didn't think of that sooner.
@Aaron - oh yeah, I also remember, though personally I never got to play Phantom Houglass as a kid, I remember loving Spirit tracks though, I recently actually played Phantom Hourglass... and to be completely honest, it felt a little underwhelming compared to the incredible joy childhood me experienced riding a train... Well uuh, back on track, Layton, hell yeah.
I didn't even know you could close the DS and put it in standby like that, I always just turned it off when I was done so I had to ask some other kid how to do it. Good memories...
I really agree with the ending. To 10 year old me, the Bellum boss fight was one of the greatest things I'd ever seen in games. And I agree - I love the DS games more than Link to the Past and Link's Awakening. I think it's great that other people love those, and they're great games, but the DS games are my favorite 2D Zeldas too.
Thank you for showing some love for the Temple of the Ocean King! It's criminally underrated, in my opinion. It was basically baby's first speedrun for me, and I had a lot of fun trying to find better routes with new items and improving my time.
So glad you found the Temple of the Ocean King enjoyable. I totally agree that most people overlook the shortcuts when they complain about it being repetitive. It's such a brilliantly put together dungeon due to having early and late game content. As a kid I literally would beat all the floors from start to finish just for fun. Plus you get those bonus ship parts at the end.
I'm so glad you highlighted the good things over the bad things. So many videos these days talking about old games completely ignore the good things and just criticize everything. It's nice to see someone actually appreciating an old game for what it's worth with the limitations of the time in mind.
I'm so glad to hear you bring up and talk about the TotOK like this. It was one of my favorite things and I like hearing someone appreciate the diverse range of solutions it offers as you progress. Thr touch screen mechanics were also so unique and allowed for awesome puzzles and mechanics you can't get with other traditionally controlled Zelda games. Overall, this is a review I largely agree with on pretty much all fronts.
@@armchairrocketscientist4934 Wow, that's amazing! It's realy fascinating, how games were designed back then in comparisson to nowadays. I thought I'd make games all day long but then electronics got me xD
Same here! My dad bought it for me when i was around 6-7 years old It holds a really special place in my heart because at that time my parents were divorced and i was living with my mom, it had been more than a year since i last saw my dad but he sometimes sent me gifts and this was one of them I really admired Link, although he was a kid he saved his friend and helped the Ocean King and Ciela in the way and me as a young kid wanted to be like him, he is so cool And although i didn’t finished it at first and it took me a while, it really made me feel better and i still have it there with the rest of my zelda games 🥺
Watching this made me so happy, I never see people truely appreciate the Ocean Temple but you hit the nail on the head. Going back and exploring different ways, finding new shortcuts and going as fast as possible was just so much fun. Absolutely love this Zelda and pretty much agree with everything you said. Now I'm gonna go and replay it again :)
This was my first Zelda game and it holds some of my fondest gaming memories from when I was a kid. I remember playing it in the summer holidays of 2009 and taking like 3 weeks to beat it.
This game is actually what got me into the Legend of Zelda series. I played it right at the start of 2020, like in January, and I fell in love with the game instantly.
Spirit Tracks was my introduction to Zelda, and other than the overworld travel, I think it really was a good game. The dungeons were fun and definitely not easy, ‘least when I was a kid. The towns were pretty memorable, the stylus interface was certainly weird but worked pretty well. Zelda’s phantom mechanic was unique and entertaining. The music is _fantastic,_ really, I was listening to some of it recently and it’s got some really cool music- like, the Chancellor’s leitmotif, and the opening music? _Excellent_
I love the music from ST too. "In the fields" is one of my personal favorites. When I found out about ST, I was like - "Zelda AND trains? Two of my favorite things??" It did not disappoint. 😁
The Spirit tracks ost is top notch stuff, although I do have a lot of nostalgia for that game so maybe I'm not the best person to judge that. I wouldn't say the game was awfully easy either, (especially if you were too young to have learnt English yet. The water dungeon took me a _looong_ time). There are other Zelda dungeons in the series that are easier at least.
As someone who recently just played through Spirit Tracks as well, something you should've talked about is how revolutionary in my opinion taking notes on the map was. I played this and was able to keep track of everything with notes, but then afterwards tried playing twilight princess and it was pretty difficult to remember spots I needed to revisit later on, however I do understand one is 2d and the other is 3d it was just a great mechanic that I hope comes back one day
I still remember, the first time I ever played a Zelda game, I walked into a GameStop and PH was on a DS for demoing there. I spent the whole time in the store playing it while my brother and mom were looking at other things. A few months later when it was my birthday, I got lucky and got a shiny new DS Lite and this was my first game for it. Simpler times those were...
This was my first Zelda game, and I loved it. The thing that really stuck with me though, was the ending. When you wake up on the ship, wondering if everything was a dream... and then you see Linebeck's ship on the horizon! Probably one of the best endings to a Zelda game ever :)
I always kind of imagined it as Toon Link's Majora's Mask - there's darker elements, it feels dreamlike... but he and Tetra both know they experienced it. I feel like there's potential to bring Link and Tetra closer... Gosh I want a game about the founding of New Hyrule. Link and Tetra could both be playable. You could give it a mechanic of building up the new kingdom... gosh, I really want Nintendo to make this game.
I played this back when it came out and I loved it. Had great characters, the story was fairly decent and Stylus gameplay was no issue; but I'm a skyward sword apologist, so mileage may vary :P One of the wildest things this game did IMO was an asymmetrical versus multiplayer mode, with online play. One player is link, the other controls the Phantom guardians. It was actually very fun, as I remember it. I played it a TON; had nearly all of the title unlocks and I believe a full golden ship, mainly from wifi battles.
My only complaint with this game is that drawing the hourglass shape in the final battle was too fiddly. it took to many damn tries to make it work and it was inconsistent af.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! I never got how people disliked it so much. The stylus controls weren't an issue for me and the Temple of the Ocean King was actually something I found incredibly creative and wished for in future games. And I 100% agress about the climax, it has some great bosses that I loved fighting so much that after found out that you can't fight the 1st phase again if you save after it, I went and completed the entire game again just to get a save point in front of it.
I actually really enjoyed the warp system as a kid. it made me feel like I jad been taught a magic symbol that I had to use rather than being done by the character
you just made my day. its not often i see people saying phantom hourglass is their favorite 2d zelda game. im in the same boat, phantom hourglass is extremely good and has lots of good puzzles and mechanics
Thank you for streaming this game, I love watching people experience it for the first time. It's so cool to see all the people in the comments that had this as their first Zelda game as a kid. For nostalgia alone I will always love Phantom Hourglass to pieces, but as I grew up I realized that's not the only reason. The game is absolutely bursting with charming characters, secrets and adventure despite the limits of the ds. In defense to the warping problems you brought up, I agree the touch screen can be a bit finicky about the symbols, but the great thing about Phantom Hourglass is the overworld's miniature size makes traveling very brief. Everything is close together, and there's plenty to see and do between islands. Aside from that, it's still a lot quicker than playing the wind waker and being forced to listen to the song every time you want to move around. I know the game gets plenty of hate for reasons that aren't entirely false, but the overall game is so wonderful to play that I personally wouldn't change anything significant if there was a remaster. The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass will always hold a special place in my heart as the game that brought into a sprawling series of games about puzzles, adventures, and toon boys in green that never talk.
Eh hem.. The hero of Winds has no DIALOGUE, but that does not necessarily mean he does not TALK. One of my favorite things about Wind Waker and the DS games is Link's dialogue options. In Wind Waker he had lines like "I'm an ally of justice!" In PH he gives Linebeck a lot of sass sometimes 😄 Sorry if I sound SUPER annoying - I just do all I can to set the record straight - Link ain't no mute.
I remember having a bunch of fun with the final boss after unlocking all of the fairy upgrades and the great spin attack. It really felt like they were actually useful without trivializing everything which tends to be a sweet spot that a lot of Zelda optimal content tends to fail to hit
I don't know why people dislike these graphics. Retro low-poly 3D is hip right now. While link's model could be better, the graphics are cute and colourful, with wonderfully detailed textures.
It's not the graphics or the cel shading for me, but the character designs. They all look like bobble heads and it heavily detracts from any seriousness built up in the story. I liked aspects of WW, ST and PH but the artsyle definitely wasn't among them. I'm not particularly fond of BotW's artsyle either, like the Toon Link games it looks like an unfinished side project instead of a Triple-A Zelda game.
I know - a lot of people hate on it, but I actually enjoyed it way more than the tower of spirits. I loved that feeling of progression, of going deeper into the darkness of the temple, until I reached that final door... The tower of spirits just didn't capture the same feeling...
I'm fully with you. Looking at the same dungeon through a new lens every time you visited it and trying to find a new "optimal" path through it was such a cool feature. It's really too bad that people hated on it so much and they didn't expand on the concept in future titles. Spirit Tracks didn't do it for me even though I loved this game.
I didn't mind the Temple of the Ocean King during the main quest. However, where I really grew to hate it was in the postgame, doing it over and over again as a daily quest for new random boat parts. Same with the Lost at Sea Station in Spirit Tracks. On the other hand, I did appreciate visiting it with new items during the main quest, seeing new shortcuts open every time.
I'm so happy you played and liked this game, it's honestly one of my favourite Zelda games of all time, right up there with Wind Waker. It makes me sad that so many people have never played it or even heard of it.
I absolutely loved this game when I played it. Spirit tracks too. My sisters and I all played it and shared secrets we found in the game together, and it was fun seeing what each other put on our maps
Now that video sent me on a nostalgic trip. Such a fun game that actually uses the DS's possibilities in a really clever way. When I played it for the first time as a kid it took me months to get through the game but I only have good memories to it. Your review just confirmed my memories. Also I agree to the comparison between HG and BotW Endgame. In general this has been a great video and I really look forward to the review of Spirit Tracks :)
Yeah, I just played BotW for the first time, and it felt kind of anticlimactic compared to PH. In PH, I chiseled slowly away at the challenge of the temple of the ocean king, and then, I finally saw that last door to Bellum. Then, the viewpoint did the dramatic shift to full 3D, and after an ominous climb up the stairs, I saw Bellum in his grotesque fulness. You must realize, Phantom Hourglass, other than Roller Coaster Tycoon, was the first really good game I played. Predictably, Wind Waker dethroned PH as my favorite when I played it, but nothing can replace that initial finale.
awesome astronaut I love to hear those first experiences, they have a level of magic to it that I feel so barely nowadays. It‘s crazy how the first games can coin a person
Yup, I remember playing this game a lot back then. I even remember watching my dad playing this game and struggling so hard finishing the third dungeon. I really liked the Temple of the Ocean King because of the treasures opening up on each floor when you finally have the phantom sword to defeat phantoms. I did this so many times to get all of the ship parts with rng involved (there were so many duplicates I tell ya). Speedrunning through the entire temple was pretty fun as well, trying to aim that I have a full hourglass at the end. Not entirely sure if there's a point to it, but it was satisfying to me as a kid.
I really want another Toon Link game. Give us a game set at the founding of New Hyrule. Make Link and Tetra playable. I don't need anything on the level of Breath of the Wild; I just want a decent sized game. If Nintendo makes this game, I can die with my Zelda cravings satisfied.
@@Alejandroitier Spirit Tracks is set a century after New Hyrule is founded. Tetra is not present in the game. And by medium sized, I mean that it's the scope of the original Wind Waker.
@@ZipplyZane This is a Virtual Console game, not a remake. From what little I know, that means the Wii U is imitating a DS using software. Because it goes through that imitation DS, the game can't possibly pick up on the gamepad being rotated unless there was some analogue for that on the DS.
@Otacon464 I was under the impression the Wii U Gamepad had gyro controls, and thus could detect movement. The rest is just designing the emulator for that one particular game to interpret that as turning sleep mode on and off.
@Otacon464 Gyro controls don't tend to fire unnecessarily in other Wii U titles, so why would that be a problem here? Plus, as I said, it would register as a sleep followed by a wakeup--a momentary screen flicker. Plus one of the ideas I had was to turn the screen over, which you wouldn't do otherwise.
Phantom hourglass was my first Zelda game and it holds a very dear place in my heart. It's such a great game that makes full use of everything the DS had to offer in terms of clever mechanics
I loved pretty much everything that utilised the ability to draw and take notes. Charting your own map of the whale island, making notes of things you didn't have the required items for in dungeons, the warp symbols in the overworld, noting the optimal paths in the Temple of the Ocean King, etc. I also loved the Temple of the Ocean King itself, just for the core idea of a dungeon you can't beat on your first visit, and just keep revisiting and eking ever further forward as you unlock new equipment. I do wish it had more useful but optional side content within it though, rather than just being a mandatory chore between new dungeons. Exploring old areas in a new context is one of the strengths of the Zelda franchise, and that's what TotOK did.
Phantom Hourglass was the first Zelda game i've beaten and 100%ed, it holds a very special place in my heart despite it's flaws and i was SO afraid you're going to dislike it or have a lot of complains it actually makes me overjoyed to know you genuinely enjoyed it! Thank you so much for giving this game a chance :)
One thing to point out is that the DS games were designed around the touch controls. If you were trying to play a traditional Zelda with these controls, it would likely be a frustrating experience, however PH/ST's level and enemy design was built around this concept, making it much more functional than it may initially appear.
Can’t wait to see the Spirit Tracks review, one of my favourite games from my childhood , good gameplay for a DS game and brilliant music and final boss
During the fight you'll eventually be able to stop time (I think it involves drawing a shape with the stylus?) and you have to do that when Bellum's eye is open in order to successfully do damage.
Agreed, i feel like it made the third phase of the boss revolve around an easy gimmick that they throw on you last second when it could have been a fun reaction based segment
the only part that I needed to search on the internet when I was a kid, was the part where you need to make an impression of a carving onto paper and it wants you to close the lid of your DS. I had never and still have never seen another game actually require you to close you DS for a second in order to progress and I never forgot it either.
Its funny that you went thru these games. I literally just played and beat spirit tracks and phantom hour glass back in march for the first time. I loved them too. Probably my favorite thing that still sticks with me after the couple of months that went by is spirit tracks music. The song for taking off in your train is so catchy.
I was legit stuck on that one part where you walk across the invisible floor in the Temple for like 6 years. I was so pissed when I got it on my first try after booting it up after that long
For a small game in which everything is doable with only touch control, they did an impressive job. Like Linkus said, the weakest point is the music, there aren't a lot, but when they slap, they slap. That was my first LOZ, I got it at 7, and even though my first playthrough was a mess (and a whole story), I loved it so much! Temple of the Ocean King, just such a great idea, ST didn't succeed with Tower of Spirits where this game mastered.
The only things I remembered from PH when I played it at ~10yo (spoilers): puzzles were 3hard5me, I cried when linebeck got possessed, and there was some door i had to open with the stylus with a puzzle and it was sooo simple like connecting the dots with one line, but my small brain self couldn't open that door :(
I agree with the point about the stylus and motion controls in SkySw. Many Zelda games have pretty lackluster combat mechanics, but the ones in these games are far more interesting.
I totally agree on the soundtrack, it could have been drastically improved, although I really don't see a problem in either the graphics nor the teleport system. The latter is quite fun actually, I think it adds on the personality of the game
You have to unlock it on the 2nd quadrant, it’s hidden, locked behind a puzzle, you have to find the frogs in very specific locations and HIT them, draw the symbol, then do it the right way. It’s just too much.
I haven't touched phantom hourglass in years i cant even remember how many and i also didnt remember whether i liked it or not. What i do know: it didnt make me buy spirit tracks Seeing you play through it on stream made me think: "why not play through it yourself again?" And i did, and i loved it! The puzzles, the item creativity you mentioned aswell, the music (which i did actually enjoy), in short: one of the most fun video game playthroughs i've had recently. So much so, that i bought spirit tracks a few days after starting PH so i could play that one right after! (Which i am currently doing, just finished the fight against the hookshot arm guy) What all this has done is not only remind me that i had some cool games sitting idly in my room, but it also took me out of the competitive aspect of video games. When i play league or speedrun banjo, the focus and commitment are exciting, but at times it can feel like it adds more not-so-careless aspects to life, as opposed to taking me out of them like video games used to do. What i want to say is: thank you linkus. Not only for your entertaining streams, not only for your highly informative videos, but also for taking me back to what i didnt know i have been missing for so long
[EDIT: this turned into a full blown review of the game lol] honestly, i'm glad this game is getting some love. i played some of it as a kid (mainly the minigames, not even the main campaign) and recently got a second-hand copy. i was dreading playing it because i remembered the controls feeling finnicky, as well as the general opinion towards this game made me hesitant about trying it. but i did play it and damn, am i glad i did. honestly, i have no idea why people dislike this game (and spirit tracks, which i played before PH lol), and i hope that, just like gen 5 in pokemon in recent years, people will rediscover this game and appreciate just how ahead of its time it was. the controls felt great to me, i never struggled with them except in cases where i was rushing, which was entirely my fault. i'm not a fan of how rolling was implemented (drawing a circle at the very edge of the screen), it rarely worked for me so i didn't use it. fortunately, they fixed that in ST by double tapping the screen. other than that, the controls felt great. the items were honestly brilliant. i've known this game since 2007, so i never really thought about how clever the boomerang, grappling hook, or even the bombchus are actually implemented. using the grappling hook as a human-sized slingshot, being able to accurately draw out the boomerang and bombchu trajectories, that's such fun stuff that i have never seen before or since in a zelda game (and i know it is because of the stylus, but i feel like i haven't seen more creative ways of implementing classic items in a long time). another underrated aspect of this game is that you actually use all of your items consistently, from the moment you get them until the end of the game, anywhere in the overworld, sidequests, minigames, and dungeons. they are all equally important, not just one-off gimick items that you get in a dungeon and never use again. i also enjoyed the travelling. it's a bit annoying to not be able to control the ship itself, but drawing the trajectory using the stylus still felt interactive, and i definitely prefer it over travelling in ST, where you are restricted to the tracks and can't deviate from the set path. you could find treasure charts in various places, and then chart a course to the locations using the stylus, which i felt made the mostly empty sea feel a lot more engaging. the fast travel was a bit slow though, you had to jump between multiple menus to see what symbol corresponds to what frog, open the slate and draw the symbol. i also wish there was fast travel to individual islands, reaching some of them could take a while. story and music are about the same to me, passable but nothing groundbreaking. it's the classic zelda formula of retrieving x amount of mcguffins from dungeons and then fight a big bad at the end. a lot of the npcs were pretty interchangeable, and few of them are memorable. ST i think did much better on both aspects. dungeons and bosses were fun. like i said, you consistently use all of the obtained items throughout the game, and even though there are a fair bit of recycled puzzles (hitting eyes with arrows, hitting switches in a specific order with the boomerang, etc.), they get shuffled around and mechanics get expanded upon, so they are fun to solve and you are almost never at a point where you are stuck. the dungeons aren't the hardest, but for what they are, they were enjoyable. same goes for the bosses, and later ones even have multiple phases. sidequests and minigames are great and there is a lot to do. minigames are a staple of the franchise as well, and these ones don't disappoint. there are numerous uncharted islands that have minigames on them, and they are all fun and not too impossible, though some are more tedious than others. collectables are fine, although they sometimes feel pointless with the way they are implemented. treasures especially were pointless other than selling them for rupees, and there was no consistent way of getting ship parts other than grinding them on pirate ships (shoot pirate ships in the overworld and salvage the loot they drop), which even then wouldn't ensure you got the part you wanted. again they fixed this in ST, where you actually use treasures to craft the train part you want, which felt a lot more organic and tied those collectables together. honestly, the only thing i still can't bring myself to like about the game is the temple of the ocean king. even with the shortcuts, the temple was painful to traverse every time, it was tedious and repetitive, but the worst thing to me is the time limit. i understand you can recover time with the golden pots, you have more time than you need, there are shortcuts, safezones, etc., but to me, just the idea of a timer (that has already forced me to restart numerous times early on) ruins it for me. long stretches of gameplay go by between temple visits, and if you don't play the game in a row, real life days or weeks can pass in-between, and you are going to forget things. having to slog through early floors you have already traversed, while trying to remember what you did, but feeling pressured to hurry because of the timer, really was a mix that i didn't enjoy. which is a shame, because the temple itself is fine, the puzzles are fun and it doesn't drag out, it's really the time limit and restarting it every time that makes it tedious. the tower of spirits in ST fixed a lot of these issues, by not having to redo earlier floors, and removing the timer. overall (this is so much longer than i had anticipated lol), i think this game is great, it definitely falls under the "underrated" category, and its issues aren't any more severe than issues in bigger console zelda titles. it's marred by an undeserved reputation and i hope that more people will appreciate all the good that it did
One point Linkus, the output is scaled to 1080p, but the internal resolution is still low, it looking pixelated has nothing to do with the models being low-poly, it's just outputting low resolution onto high resolution
same thing happened to me! half the fun of zelda games was getting stuck and tying to figure out what your missing, something that i feel botw is sorely lacking
The part that confounded me the most as a kid was a very particular portion where you're support to do a paper rubbing of sorts to mark a temple on your map. It took me three days to figure out you're supposed to CLOSE THE DS AND REOPEN IT to stamp the map and the stone together. Looking back, that was some ingenuity.
This video makes me happy :) The fact that you loved this amazing game makes me happy. That i could watch you enjoy it makes me happy. And that others that didn't know this game could learn to enjoy it thanks to your streams also makes me happy. ^^ i could not join in with the chat, but i loved watching your streams, staying up till 2 or 3 am, due to also being in European time zone because i simply couldn't pass this opportunity!^^ (gee, why did you have to play until so late, i was dead the next days!xD) Overall, i'm just so happy to see this game (and ST) get the recognition it deserves! And from one of my favourite streamers as well! Only a shame you didn't enjoy ST as much (it was so difficult to watch you struggle, i'm so sorry for what happened during your playthrough of it!), but hey, at least you learned some new English words?:D (gotta find some positives, right?) And yes, in PH, there are so many brilliant things, the boomerang, the grappling hook, the end game, Linebeck, the TotOK (though you kept calling it 'tower' instead of 'temple' :P), i wholeheartedly agree with you! And a great review at that. Good job beating the game! :) Thank you for playing it and making this review. ^v^ (as for golden frogs, i think they have a specific area in which they spawn, and they respawn after reloading the zone, so you must've missed them by millimeters. But i do like the idea of being able to warp only to the locations you've been to before - i think WW might've been the only one in that regard of being able to warp anywhere just after getting the Ballad of Gales, because in other Zelda games you first have to unlock the warp point:))
About the stylus movement, there is a D-pad patch for people who can't stand the touch screen, works on console as well, it cuts out 70% of the touch screen usement.
I really wish I got the Wii U virtual console for ph before the eshop closed, I had no clue this game was on it, I plan on buying a copy for my 2DS soon thought they do be kinda expensive though
I very much agree that the graphics don't hold up, anymore than Ocarina of Time's hold up today - but I am probably one of the few people who want a remake. If they did remake it, they'd probably strip it of its stylus controls just satiate people who hated them.
This A.) Being my first full Zelda game I played (I was like 12 when it came out) and B.) The DS Lite being my first gaming device (besides my friends' having consoles), so the stylus controls made sense within 5 minutes or less, ...meant that: *This Zelda cannot be beat for me.* The nostalgia is 10/10.
It's nice to hear a positive opinion on Phantom Hourglass. While I wouldn't say it's my favorite 2D Zelda, it's still up there. Definitely an underrated gem.
I just beat this for the first time on Twilight++ and it was amazing. It has so much style and character. The graphics were very good for being a 2007 ds game and the music was actually really good in my opinion. One of my favorite aspects is how alive the characters are and how silly things can be at times.
The game holds up pretty well in 2020, especially when emulated in HD! I'm enjoying replaying it on my Switch, using a Flip Grip to hold the Switch versically while the controllers are attached to a little grip. It's great.
I love how this game made u do things that were unheard at the time, like blowing the candles, talking to the DS, closing the fucking case, it felt innovative and fresh.
@@renofheavens8347 What a pretencious take on player experience. You must be fun at parties.
Honestly that stuff put a big smile on my face.
@@renofheavens8347 a recycled mechanic that could only be used on a japanese system, in one game, and in exactly one or two instances. So no, it's an amplified mechanic
@@Mqstodon still a recicled mechanic. And a very gimmicky action that could not be used and the game would be just as good without it.
@@Mqstodon Tbf, that's how those features are here: you only close the device once and blowing is only in one or two places
The thing I love about the final boss is that you can hear Linebeck’s theme
Linebeck and his accompanying theme are one of my favorite parts of this game. Though Link doesn't speak in the traditional sense, he has some sass to give to Linebeck in the dialogue options.
The soundtrack is so good
Welcome to leitmotifs, my guy
Something you didn't mention was the map.
I really loved in DS games being able to draw on a map to take notes and highlight things. Stuff like BOTW stamps works a bit, but freely drawing always felt better.
i agree. The map was for me one of the most creative things - because your future self's success depends on the notes made by your past self. Many people get annoyed at it because they simply ignore its utility or they fail at making useful notes. :)
That was such an awesome feature.
@@puline397 honestly without the map i feel like young me would have had no chance. i remember on i think it was whale island? the island where the map doesnt display, i tried to manually chart the whole thing. it was honestly great
That was intended
A lot of people hate this game, but it was my introduction to Zelda. I loved it, I loved the controls, and didn't have a problem with it at all.
It wasn't until I got into the online Zelda community that I found out everyone hated the DS games. 😞
I loved the stylus controls because I'd been playing crappy platforming games on the GBA which needed pixel perfect jumps.
PH felt a lot more chill.
I also liked the temple of the ocean king more than the tower of spirits in Spirit Tracks, because it was really fun to figure out the secret passages to get to the bottom more quickly.
I really agree with most of what Linkus says - so much of this game is really unique, as well as its sequel.
Sadly, these were Toon Link's last real game. I fear that Toon Zelda is a dying Nintendo franchise...
He's in smash so hes some what safe
I honestly came to this game after playing a few in the series and was kinda surprised when people complained about the temple of the ocean king, glad to see I'm not the only one.
I mean you get a warp point halfway through so you only repeat the first and 3rd section 1 time which is half of the dungeon. Not to mention on top of the extra treasure and tools allowing you to get shortcuts, you kinda need to find the shortcuts because you're still timed for both sections. I always felt like it did a good job getting dungeon fundamentals down where the item you got recontextualizes everything, but its with the items you got from other dungeons.
@@ninjacell2999 I hope so... but Nintendo is forgetting about him. And judging by the way people react when I pick him in Smash, other people are forgetting about him too...
i dont see what is wrong with the 2 DS games, i thought they were pretty fun. phantom hour glass was easy, but i havent been able to beat spirit tracks yet.
@@ninjacell2999 toon link is my favorite character in ssbu
I LOVE the design of the Temple of the Ocean King. I know it doesn't do anything but finishing it with a full 25:00 left in the Phantom Hourglass was so much fun.
The final boss theme is also one of my favorites in the series, possibly even my absolute favorite.
Lots of people judge this game so hard, but it really is just an ambitious and charming game targeted towards kids. I got this game as a kid and replayed it multiple times in my 20s still, I enjoyed your positive take on it 😊
I know - I've always tried to be an apologist for this game. I don't think any Zelda game deserves tons of hate. When you compare the series to other franchises, it's incredible just how high quality they are.
Right? Like Phantom Hour Glass is suuuuch an underrated game that I would play again any day of the week
@@idk_n_idc0_0 Ocean king temple? Fuck me up. Ambush by jolene? Any day
I almost cried at the ending. One of the best TLOZ ever made surely.
I really hope that "Toon" Link gets another game someday.
Yes my favorite link of all of them!
It would be really awesome
Yeah I agree. I don't particularly like the newer "adult" link in tbotw
I think he will probably come back someday,
Same he's in wind waker, spirit tracks, phantom hourglass, four swords, minish cap, and tri force hero's if u wanna play another toon link game :')
i was stuck on that one puzzle where you had to close the ds lol
I was stuck on it forever, too. Got frustrated and decided to close my DS and get back to it when I had finished eating or something. Came back to open my DS only to see it solved and felt pretty stupid that I didn't think of that sooner.
I used my 2ds and it kinda broke the immersion when I realised the solution lol
@@loreleihillard5078 man how do you solve it then? do you just flip the ds over
@Aaron - oh yeah, I also remember, though personally I never got to play Phantom Houglass as a kid, I remember loving Spirit tracks though, I recently actually played Phantom Hourglass... and to be completely honest, it felt a little underwhelming compared to the incredible joy childhood me experienced riding a train...
Well uuh, back on track, Layton, hell yeah.
I didn't even know you could close the DS and put it in standby like that, I always just turned it off when I was done so I had to ask some other kid how to do it. Good memories...
I really agree with the ending. To 10 year old me, the Bellum boss fight was one of the greatest things I'd ever seen in games.
And I agree - I love the DS games more than Link to the Past and Link's Awakening.
I think it's great that other people love those, and they're great games, but the DS games are my favorite 2D Zeldas too.
Thank you for showing some love for the Temple of the Ocean King! It's criminally underrated, in my opinion. It was basically baby's first speedrun for me, and I had a lot of fun trying to find better routes with new items and improving my time.
So glad you found the Temple of the Ocean King enjoyable. I totally agree that most people overlook the shortcuts when they complain about it being repetitive. It's such a brilliantly put together dungeon due to having early and late game content.
As a kid I literally would beat all the floors from start to finish just for fun. Plus you get those bonus ship parts at the end.
Yeah, I loved the challenge of getting to the bottom of the temple. That final door seemed so ominous the first time I saw it...
It's not repetitive during the quest. It's repetitive when you have to do it every day for the ship parts.
@@Link-ho8yq You don't HAVE to do it every day, so that's not a valid excuse.
I'm so glad you highlighted the good things over the bad things. So many videos these days talking about old games completely ignore the good things and just criticize everything. It's nice to see someone actually appreciating an old game for what it's worth with the limitations of the time in mind.
I'm so glad to hear you bring up and talk about the TotOK like this. It was one of my favorite things and I like hearing someone appreciate the diverse range of solutions it offers as you progress. Thr touch screen mechanics were also so unique and allowed for awesome puzzles and mechanics you can't get with other traditionally controlled Zelda games. Overall, this is a review I largely agree with on pretty much all fronts.
PH was actualy my first Zelda xD
Mine too. It's the reason I got into games really, and now I'm pursuing a game design career.
@@armchairrocketscientist4934 Wow, that's amazing! It's realy fascinating, how games were designed back then in comparisson to nowadays. I thought I'd make games all day long but then electronics got me xD
Same.
Same 🤣 my childhood
Same here! My dad bought it for me when i was around 6-7 years old
It holds a really special place in my heart because at that time my parents were divorced and i was living with my mom, it had been more than a year since i last saw my dad but he sometimes sent me gifts and this was one of them
I really admired Link, although he was a kid he saved his friend and helped the Ocean King and Ciela in the way and me as a young kid wanted to be like him, he is so cool
And although i didn’t finished it at first and it took me a while, it really made me feel better and i still have it there with the rest of my zelda games 🥺
Watching this made me so happy, I never see people truely appreciate the Ocean Temple but you hit the nail on the head. Going back and exploring different ways, finding new shortcuts and going as fast as possible was just so much fun. Absolutely love this Zelda and pretty much agree with everything you said. Now I'm gonna go and replay it again :)
This was my first Zelda game and it holds some of my fondest gaming memories from when I was a kid. I remember playing it in the summer holidays of 2009 and taking like 3 weeks to beat it.
This game is actually what got me into the Legend of Zelda series. I played it right at the start of 2020, like in January, and I fell in love with the game instantly.
9:22 I never knew you could do that! Such a time saver!
😄 I know, I saw that, and I was like....
"I thought I knew this game...."
Spirit Tracks was my introduction to Zelda, and other than the overworld travel, I think it really was a good game. The dungeons were fun and definitely not easy, ‘least when I was a kid. The towns were pretty memorable, the stylus interface was certainly weird but worked pretty well. Zelda’s phantom mechanic was unique and entertaining. The music is _fantastic,_ really, I was listening to some of it recently and it’s got some really cool music- like, the Chancellor’s leitmotif, and the opening music? _Excellent_
I love the music from ST too. "In the fields" is one of my personal favorites.
When I found out about ST, I was like -
"Zelda AND trains? Two of my favorite things??"
It did not disappoint. 😁
agreed. Goodness, i love Chancellor's theme
The Spirit tracks ost is top notch stuff, although I do have a lot of nostalgia for that game so maybe I'm not the best person to judge that.
I wouldn't say the game was awfully easy either, (especially if you were too young to have learnt English yet. The water dungeon took me a _looong_ time). There are other Zelda dungeons in the series that are easier at least.
My favorite part of st is collecting different type of train part and this games has the best soundtrack and Zelda.
As someone who recently just played through Spirit Tracks as well, something you should've talked about is how revolutionary in my opinion taking notes on the map was. I played this and was able to keep track of everything with notes, but then afterwards tried playing twilight princess and it was pretty difficult to remember spots I needed to revisit later on, however I do understand one is 2d and the other is 3d it was just a great mechanic that I hope comes back one day
I still remember, the first time I ever played a Zelda game, I walked into a GameStop and PH was on a DS for demoing there. I spent the whole time in the store playing it while my brother and mom were looking at other things. A few months later when it was my birthday, I got lucky and got a shiny new DS Lite and this was my first game for it. Simpler times those were...
One of my favorite things in this game is the developer letter you get if you miss the heart piece from the sisters fight
This was my first Zelda game, and I loved it. The thing that really stuck with me though, was the ending. When you wake up on the ship, wondering if everything was a dream... and then you see Linebeck's ship on the horizon! Probably one of the best endings to a Zelda game ever :)
I always kind of imagined it as Toon Link's Majora's Mask - there's darker elements, it feels dreamlike...
but he and Tetra both know they experienced it. I feel like there's potential to bring Link and Tetra closer... Gosh I want a game about the founding of New Hyrule. Link and Tetra could both be playable. You could give it a mechanic of building up the new kingdom... gosh, I really want Nintendo to make this game.
I played this back when it came out and I loved it. Had great characters, the story was fairly decent and Stylus gameplay was no issue; but I'm a skyward sword apologist, so mileage may vary :P
One of the wildest things this game did IMO was an asymmetrical versus multiplayer mode, with online play.
One player is link, the other controls the Phantom guardians. It was actually very fun, as I remember it. I played it a TON; had nearly all of the title unlocks and I believe a full golden ship, mainly from wifi battles.
Yeah, my family loved playing the multi-player.
That multiplayer online was awesome indeed
My only complaint with this game is that drawing the hourglass shape in the final battle was too fiddly. it took to many damn tries to make it work and it was inconsistent af.
You need to draw 8.
^ it works if you know how to draw an 8
I spent like over an hour failing to draw the hourglass before finally figuring it out mostly I hated that mechanic
I'm glad you enjoyed it! I never got how people disliked it so much. The stylus controls weren't an issue for me and the Temple of the Ocean King was actually something I found incredibly creative and wished for in future games. And I 100% agress about the climax, it has some great bosses that I loved fighting so much that after found out that you can't fight the 1st phase again if you save after it, I went and completed the entire game again just to get a save point in front of it.
this is the next zelda game i have to play. ive watched it get shit on for so long, but it looks fun to me.
It's definitely a fun game. I agree with Linkus, I like it more than Link to the Past.
@@WasatchWind it's so much fun! I highly recommend it
The story is fantastic
I actually really enjoyed the warp system as a kid. it made me feel like I jad been taught a magic symbol that I had to use rather than being done by the character
you just made my day. its not often i see people saying phantom hourglass is their favorite 2d zelda game. im in the same boat, phantom hourglass is extremely good and has lots of good puzzles and mechanics
Oh buddy, it’s never been forgotten.
This has been a staple and piece of my childhood since I was 4.
I'm so glad Phantom Hourglass is getting some love, excited for the Spirit Tracks one!
Thank you for streaming this game, I love watching people experience it for the first time. It's so cool to see all the people in the comments that had this as their first Zelda game as a kid.
For nostalgia alone I will always love Phantom Hourglass to pieces, but as I grew up I realized that's not the only reason. The game is absolutely bursting with charming characters, secrets and adventure despite the limits of the ds.
In defense to the warping problems you brought up, I agree the touch screen can be a bit finicky about the symbols, but the great thing about Phantom Hourglass is the overworld's miniature size makes traveling very brief. Everything is close together, and there's plenty to see and do between islands. Aside from that, it's still a lot quicker than playing the wind waker and being forced to listen to the song every time you want to move around.
I know the game gets plenty of hate for reasons that aren't entirely false, but the overall game is so wonderful to play that I personally wouldn't change anything significant if there was a remaster.
The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass will always hold a special place in my heart as the game that brought into a sprawling series of games about puzzles, adventures, and toon boys in green that never talk.
Eh hem..
The hero of Winds has no DIALOGUE, but that does not necessarily mean he does not TALK.
One of my favorite things about Wind Waker and the DS games is Link's dialogue options.
In Wind Waker he had lines like "I'm an ally of justice!" In PH he gives Linebeck a lot of sass sometimes 😄
Sorry if I sound SUPER annoying - I just do all I can to set the record straight - Link ain't no mute.
I remember having a bunch of fun with the final boss after unlocking all of the fairy upgrades and the great spin attack. It really felt like they were actually useful without trivializing everything which tends to be a sweet spot that a lot of Zelda optimal content tends to fail to hit
I don't know why people dislike these graphics. Retro low-poly 3D is hip right now. While link's model could be better, the graphics are cute and colourful, with wonderfully detailed textures.
The game actually looks pretty good on the DS Lite's puny screen.
It's not the graphics or the cel shading for me, but the character designs. They all look like bobble heads and it heavily detracts from any seriousness built up in the story. I liked aspects of WW, ST and PH but the artsyle definitely wasn't among them.
I'm not particularly fond of BotW's artsyle either, like the Toon Link games it looks like an unfinished side project instead of a Triple-A Zelda game.
@@TheScienceguy77 Dude, nobody asked, and nobody cares.
The temple of the ocean king was always my favorite part about this game.
I know - a lot of people hate on it, but I actually enjoyed it way more than the tower of spirits.
I loved that feeling of progression, of going deeper into the darkness of the temple, until I reached that final door...
The tower of spirits just didn't capture the same feeling...
@@armchairrocketscientist4934 Yeah I agree!
this is unfortunately such an unpopular opinion, but i so agree with you guys! i'm happy to see like-minded people :)
I'm fully with you. Looking at the same dungeon through a new lens every time you visited it and trying to find a new "optimal" path through it was such a cool feature. It's really too bad that people hated on it so much and they didn't expand on the concept in future titles. Spirit Tracks didn't do it for me even though I loved this game.
I didn't mind the Temple of the Ocean King during the main quest. However, where I really grew to hate it was in the postgame, doing it over and over again as a daily quest for new random boat parts. Same with the Lost at Sea Station in Spirit Tracks.
On the other hand, I did appreciate visiting it with new items during the main quest, seeing new shortcuts open every time.
It’s cool how the tower actually has a Metroidvania vibe
Thanks for your comments on the Temple of the Ocean King. You echoed the thoughts I've always had about this dungeon.
I'm so happy you played and liked this game, it's honestly one of my favourite Zelda games of all time, right up there with Wind Waker. It makes me sad that so many people have never played it or even heard of it.
I still have both this one and spirit tracks. Both are just so iconic and still fun to play.
I absolutely loved this game when I played it. Spirit tracks too. My sisters and I all played it and shared secrets we found in the game together, and it was fun seeing what each other put on our maps
Now that video sent me on a nostalgic trip. Such a fun game that actually uses the DS's possibilities in a really clever way. When I played it for the first time as a kid it took me months to get through the game but I only have good memories to it.
Your review just confirmed my memories. Also I agree to the comparison between HG and BotW Endgame.
In general this has been a great video and I really look forward to the review of Spirit Tracks :)
Yeah, I just played BotW for the first time, and it felt kind of anticlimactic compared to PH.
In PH, I chiseled slowly away at the challenge of the temple of the ocean king, and then, I finally saw that last door to Bellum.
Then, the viewpoint did the dramatic shift to full 3D, and after an ominous climb up the stairs, I saw Bellum in his grotesque fulness.
You must realize, Phantom Hourglass, other than Roller Coaster Tycoon, was the first really good game I played.
Predictably, Wind Waker dethroned PH as my favorite when I played it, but nothing can replace that initial finale.
awesome astronaut I love to hear those first experiences, they have a level of magic to it that I feel so barely nowadays. It‘s crazy how the first games can coin a person
Yup, I remember playing this game a lot back then. I even remember watching my dad playing this game and struggling so hard finishing the third dungeon. I really liked the Temple of the Ocean King because of the treasures opening up on each floor when you finally have the phantom sword to defeat phantoms. I did this so many times to get all of the ship parts with rng involved (there were so many duplicates I tell ya). Speedrunning through the entire temple was pretty fun as well, trying to aim that I have a full hourglass at the end. Not entirely sure if there's a point to it, but it was satisfying to me as a kid.
I really want another Toon Link game. Give us a game set at the founding of New Hyrule. Make Link and Tetra playable.
I don't need anything on the level of Breath of the Wild; I just want a decent sized game. If Nintendo makes this game, I can die with my Zelda cravings satisfied.
That’s what spirit tracks is
@@Alejandroitier Spirit Tracks is set a century after New Hyrule is founded. Tetra is not present in the game. And by medium sized, I mean that it's the scope of the original Wind Waker.
How does that one puzzle that requires you to close the DS in order to stamp your map with the other map work on WiiU?
Missed opportunity not to make it based on rotation.
@@ZipplyZane This is a Virtual Console game, not a remake. From what little I know, that means the Wii U is imitating a DS using software. Because it goes through that imitation DS, the game can't possibly pick up on the gamepad being rotated unless there was some analogue for that on the DS.
@Otacon464 I was under the impression the Wii U Gamepad had gyro controls, and thus could detect movement.
The rest is just designing the emulator for that one particular game to interpret that as turning sleep mode on and off.
@Otacon464 Gyro controls don't tend to fire unnecessarily in other Wii U titles, so why would that be a problem here? Plus, as I said, it would register as a sleep followed by a wakeup--a momentary screen flicker.
Plus one of the ideas I had was to turn the screen over, which you wouldn't do otherwise.
Phantom hourglass was my first Zelda game and it holds a very dear place in my heart.
It's such a great game that makes full use of everything the DS had to offer in terms of clever mechanics
This Game is half of my Childhood
I loved pretty much everything that utilised the ability to draw and take notes. Charting your own map of the whale island, making notes of things you didn't have the required items for in dungeons, the warp symbols in the overworld, noting the optimal paths in the Temple of the Ocean King, etc.
I also loved the Temple of the Ocean King itself, just for the core idea of a dungeon you can't beat on your first visit, and just keep revisiting and eking ever further forward as you unlock new equipment. I do wish it had more useful but optional side content within it though, rather than just being a mandatory chore between new dungeons. Exploring old areas in a new context is one of the strengths of the Zelda franchise, and that's what TotOK did.
Phantom Hourglass was the first Zelda game i've beaten and 100%ed, it holds a very special place in my heart despite it's flaws and i was SO afraid you're going to dislike it or have a lot of complains it actually makes me overjoyed to know you genuinely enjoyed it! Thank you so much for giving this game a chance :)
One thing to point out is that the DS games were designed around the touch controls. If you were trying to play a traditional Zelda with these controls, it would likely be a frustrating experience, however PH/ST's level and enemy design was built around this concept, making it much more functional than it may initially appear.
Glad to see someone else with these opinions on this game.
I recently found my DS Lite and this is all I've been playing. A Permadeath of this game after a playthrough is really easy
“You have to write it in the exact way”
Japanese people:笑笑 *laughs in kanji*
The tower with invisible spots etc was my favorite part of the game I am crossing my fingers they remaster this game and spirit tracks as well
Allright Linkus. You made me do something I had never expected to do ever in my life again. I'm buying a ds game in 2020.
Can’t wait to see the Spirit Tracks review, one of my favourite games from my childhood , good gameplay for a DS game and brilliant music and final boss
I remember being 8 and I couldn't figure out how to beat the final boss and I still don't know how
During the fight you'll eventually be able to stop time (I think it involves drawing a shape with the stylus?) and you have to do that when Bellum's eye is open in order to successfully do damage.
I also was very young playing this game and literally struggleing for Hours to kill the Final Boss
yeah you gotta like draw a figure 8 or smth
you have to draw the hourglass
Heh, 8 lol
This was my favorite game on my ds and one of my favorite games of all time - I’ve replayed it tons of times and it never loses its magic!
I really liked this game, one of my most favourite zelda games, the only problem I had with it was the mechanic that was used for the final boss
i hate the hourglass drawing thing too, i could never beat phase 3(?) of the final boss bc of it
Agreed, i feel like it made the third phase of the boss revolve around an easy gimmick that they throw on you last second when it could have been a fun reaction based segment
the only part that I needed to search on the internet when I was a kid, was the part where you need to make an impression of a carving onto paper and it wants you to close the lid of your DS. I had never and still have never seen another game actually require you to close you DS for a second in order to progress and I never forgot it either.
Its funny that you went thru these games. I literally just played and beat spirit tracks and phantom hour glass back in march for the first time. I loved them too. Probably my favorite thing that still sticks with me after the couple of months that went by is spirit tracks music. The song for taking off in your train is so catchy.
That one lever puzzle tho........... I was stuck for 8 years
I was legit stuck on that one part where you walk across the invisible floor in the Temple for like 6 years. I was so pissed when I got it on my first try after booting it up after that long
For a small game in which everything is doable with only touch control, they did an impressive job.
Like Linkus said, the weakest point is the music, there aren't a lot, but when they slap, they slap.
That was my first LOZ, I got it at 7, and even though my first playthrough was a mess (and a whole story), I loved it so much!
Temple of the Ocean King, just such a great idea, ST didn't succeed with Tower of Spirits where this game mastered.
First video game i ever got, it was incredible, and it is still.
I got a lot of games before this, but this was the first REAL game (other than Roller Coaster Tycoon) I ever played.
The only things I remembered from PH when I played it at ~10yo (spoilers):
puzzles were 3hard5me, I cried when linebeck got possessed, and there was some door i had to open with the stylus with a puzzle and it was sooo simple like connecting the dots with one line, but my small brain self couldn't open that door :(
I love this game and it’s puzzles. Thanks for making a video
I loved how you put a spoiler warning right after you showed oshus's identity on screen lol
Right lmao
This is by far the best memory of any games that i ever played as a kid
While the music wasn’t amazing like many zelda games, I love Linebeck’s theme.
I agree with the point about the stylus and motion controls in SkySw. Many Zelda games have pretty lackluster combat mechanics, but the ones in these games are far more interesting.
When I went to the old 2D Zeldas, they actually felt super rigid to me after starting with the stylus controls.
This was the first game I ever played as a kid. glad to know it's not just rose-tinted glasses that are why I have such fond memories of it :)
I totally agree on the soundtrack, it could have been drastically improved, although I really don't see a problem in either the graphics nor the teleport system. The latter is quite fun actually, I think it adds on the personality of the game
ToTOK theme plays in every main dungeon + some caves. Very repetitive
You have to unlock it on the 2nd quadrant, it’s hidden, locked behind a puzzle, you have to find the frogs in very specific locations and HIT them, draw the symbol, then do it the right way.
It’s just too much.
I haven't touched phantom hourglass in years i cant even remember how many and i also didnt remember whether i liked it or not. What i do know: it didnt make me buy spirit tracks
Seeing you play through it on stream made me think: "why not play through it yourself again?"
And i did, and i loved it! The puzzles, the item creativity you mentioned aswell, the music (which i did actually enjoy), in short: one of the most fun video game playthroughs i've had recently.
So much so, that i bought spirit tracks a few days after starting PH so i could play that one right after! (Which i am currently doing, just finished the fight against the hookshot arm guy)
What all this has done is not only remind me that i had some cool games sitting idly in my room, but it also took me out of the competitive aspect of video games.
When i play league or speedrun banjo, the focus and commitment are exciting, but at times it can feel like it adds more not-so-careless aspects to life, as opposed to taking me out of them like video games used to do.
What i want to say is: thank you linkus. Not only for your entertaining streams, not only for your highly informative videos, but also for taking me back to what i didnt know i have been missing for so long
[EDIT: this turned into a full blown review of the game lol]
honestly, i'm glad this game is getting some love.
i played some of it as a kid (mainly the minigames, not even the main campaign) and recently got a second-hand copy. i was dreading playing it because i remembered the controls feeling finnicky, as well as the general opinion towards this game made me hesitant about trying it. but i did play it and damn, am i glad i did. honestly, i have no idea why people dislike this game (and spirit tracks, which i played before PH lol), and i hope that, just like gen 5 in pokemon in recent years, people will rediscover this game and appreciate just how ahead of its time it was.
the controls felt great to me, i never struggled with them except in cases where i was rushing, which was entirely my fault. i'm not a fan of how rolling was implemented (drawing a circle at the very edge of the screen), it rarely worked for me so i didn't use it. fortunately, they fixed that in ST by double tapping the screen. other than that, the controls felt great.
the items were honestly brilliant. i've known this game since 2007, so i never really thought about how clever the boomerang, grappling hook, or even the bombchus are actually implemented. using the grappling hook as a human-sized slingshot, being able to accurately draw out the boomerang and bombchu trajectories, that's such fun stuff that i have never seen before or since in a zelda game (and i know it is because of the stylus, but i feel like i haven't seen more creative ways of implementing classic items in a long time). another underrated aspect of this game is that you actually use all of your items consistently, from the moment you get them until the end of the game, anywhere in the overworld, sidequests, minigames, and dungeons. they are all equally important, not just one-off gimick items that you get in a dungeon and never use again.
i also enjoyed the travelling. it's a bit annoying to not be able to control the ship itself, but drawing the trajectory using the stylus still felt interactive, and i definitely prefer it over travelling in ST, where you are restricted to the tracks and can't deviate from the set path. you could find treasure charts in various places, and then chart a course to the locations using the stylus, which i felt made the mostly empty sea feel a lot more engaging. the fast travel was a bit slow though, you had to jump between multiple menus to see what symbol corresponds to what frog, open the slate and draw the symbol. i also wish there was fast travel to individual islands, reaching some of them could take a while.
story and music are about the same to me, passable but nothing groundbreaking. it's the classic zelda formula of retrieving x amount of mcguffins from dungeons and then fight a big bad at the end. a lot of the npcs were pretty interchangeable, and few of them are memorable. ST i think did much better on both aspects.
dungeons and bosses were fun. like i said, you consistently use all of the obtained items throughout the game, and even though there are a fair bit of recycled puzzles (hitting eyes with arrows, hitting switches in a specific order with the boomerang, etc.), they get shuffled around and mechanics get expanded upon, so they are fun to solve and you are almost never at a point where you are stuck. the dungeons aren't the hardest, but for what they are, they were enjoyable. same goes for the bosses, and later ones even have multiple phases.
sidequests and minigames are great and there is a lot to do. minigames are a staple of the franchise as well, and these ones don't disappoint. there are numerous uncharted islands that have minigames on them, and they are all fun and not too impossible, though some are more tedious than others. collectables are fine, although they sometimes feel pointless with the way they are implemented. treasures especially were pointless other than selling them for rupees, and there was no consistent way of getting ship parts other than grinding them on pirate ships (shoot pirate ships in the overworld and salvage the loot they drop), which even then wouldn't ensure you got the part you wanted. again they fixed this in ST, where you actually use treasures to craft the train part you want, which felt a lot more organic and tied those collectables together.
honestly, the only thing i still can't bring myself to like about the game is the temple of the ocean king. even with the shortcuts, the temple was painful to traverse every time, it was tedious and repetitive, but the worst thing to me is the time limit. i understand you can recover time with the golden pots, you have more time than you need, there are shortcuts, safezones, etc., but to me, just the idea of a timer (that has already forced me to restart numerous times early on) ruins it for me. long stretches of gameplay go by between temple visits, and if you don't play the game in a row, real life days or weeks can pass in-between, and you are going to forget things. having to slog through early floors you have already traversed, while trying to remember what you did, but feeling pressured to hurry because of the timer, really was a mix that i didn't enjoy. which is a shame, because the temple itself is fine, the puzzles are fun and it doesn't drag out, it's really the time limit and restarting it every time that makes it tedious. the tower of spirits in ST fixed a lot of these issues, by not having to redo earlier floors, and removing the timer.
overall (this is so much longer than i had anticipated lol), i think this game is great, it definitely falls under the "underrated" category, and its issues aren't any more severe than issues in bigger console zelda titles. it's marred by an undeserved reputation and i hope that more people will appreciate all the good that it did
One point Linkus, the output is scaled to 1080p, but the internal resolution is still low, it looking pixelated has nothing to do with the models being low-poly, it's just outputting low resolution onto high resolution
What's the solution
With the Nintendo DS being my first ever game console and this game coming with it, it holds a nostalgic place in my childhood.
I got stuck the first time playing this game because I couldn't figure out how to blow out fire to get in the fire temple...
I remember that too 😄
same thing happened to me! half the fun of zelda games was getting stuck and tying to figure out what your missing, something that i feel botw is sorely lacking
Thanks so much for making this!
The part that confounded me the most as a kid was a very particular portion where you're support to do a paper rubbing of sorts to mark a temple on your map. It took me three days to figure out you're supposed to CLOSE THE DS AND REOPEN IT to stamp the map and the stone together. Looking back, that was some ingenuity.
i play it as kid. finished in one week and i dont remember it so well.. U motivated me to play it once again.
I’m happy somebody else likes this game it is one of my favorite Zelda games and I could never understand all of the hate it gets
This video makes me happy :) The fact that you loved this amazing game makes me happy. That i could watch you enjoy it makes me happy. And that others that didn't know this game could learn to enjoy it thanks to your streams also makes me happy. ^^
i could not join in with the chat, but i loved watching your streams, staying up till 2 or 3 am, due to also being in European time zone because i simply couldn't pass this opportunity!^^ (gee, why did you have to play until so late, i was dead the next days!xD)
Overall, i'm just so happy to see this game (and ST) get the recognition it deserves! And from one of my favourite streamers as well! Only a shame you didn't enjoy ST as much (it was so difficult to watch you struggle, i'm so sorry for what happened during your playthrough of it!), but hey, at least you learned some new English words?:D (gotta find some positives, right?)
And yes, in PH, there are so many brilliant things, the boomerang, the grappling hook, the end game, Linebeck, the TotOK (though you kept calling it 'tower' instead of 'temple' :P), i wholeheartedly agree with you! And a great review at that. Good job beating the game! :) Thank you for playing it and making this review. ^v^
(as for golden frogs, i think they have a specific area in which they spawn, and they respawn after reloading the zone, so you must've missed them by millimeters. But i do like the idea of being able to warp only to the locations you've been to before - i think WW might've been the only one in that regard of being able to warp anywhere just after getting the Ballad of Gales, because in other Zelda games you first have to unlock the warp point:))
About the stylus movement, there is a D-pad patch for people who can't stand the touch screen, works on console as well, it cuts out 70% of the touch screen usement.
I never forgot this game i love it i still got it as a cartridge for my dsi
I really wish I got the Wii U virtual console for ph before the eshop closed, I had no clue this game was on it, I plan on buying a copy for my 2DS soon thought they do be kinda expensive though
Phantom hourglass was my first zelda game :D
Ditto
i’m playing thru phantom hourglass rn, so much fun
I very much agree that the graphics don't hold up, anymore than Ocarina of Time's hold up today - but I am probably one of the few people who want a remake. If they did remake it, they'd probably strip it of its stylus controls just satiate people who hated them.
Enjoying The Content of Your Videos Keep Up The Good Work
This
A.) Being my first full Zelda game I played (I was like 12 when it came out) and
B.) The DS Lite being my first gaming device (besides my friends' having consoles), so the stylus controls made sense within 5 minutes or less,
...meant that:
*This Zelda cannot be beat for me.* The nostalgia is 10/10.
I gave up on spirit tracks because I couldn’t do the flute sections
It's nice to hear a positive opinion on Phantom Hourglass. While I wouldn't say it's my favorite 2D Zelda, it's still up there. Definitely an underrated gem.
my favorite one. maxed out two saves as a kid
I just beat this for the first time on Twilight++ and it was amazing. It has so much style and character. The graphics were very good for being a 2007 ds game and the music was actually really good in my opinion. One of my favorite aspects is how alive the characters are and how silly things can be at times.
I have just finished PH for the first time (2022) and I agree 100% with you. Spirit Tracks will be next.
Forgotten? Bro this shit was my childhood even if I get severe memory loss I would still remeber this
The game holds up pretty well in 2020, especially when emulated in HD! I'm enjoying replaying it on my Switch, using a Flip Grip to hold the Switch versically while the controllers are attached to a little grip. It's great.
Playing this with the dpad patch and circle pad patch on the 3ds is perfection
The forgotten zelda game.....me who loves the game and remembers playing it for hours and hours when I was a kid and still plays it from time to time
It holds up quite well thank you for asking. 😌👌