Stylus Trouble... Blame Producers...

Okay so ages ago I said I'd review the three games I bought for my new DS, and here's the second about a month overdue (what?).

"The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass" is a return to the controversial days of "The Wind Waker" where everyone was up in arms about the fact that the producers had moved away from the realistic Zelda world into a cartoonish land coloured in by cel-shading. Nevertheless, it made the whole experience rather unique. It was the funniest Zelda, and this promises to be the same. Once you got past the "dodgy" graphics, it was brilliant.

Basically, it's a follow-on story from "Wind Waker" and Link is sailing the high seas with his pirate friends, including Tetra. Tetra is curious about the ghost ship and so orders her crew to go and look for it - with disastrous consequences. She is abducted and Link washes up on a far away island after he falls in the sea trying to save her (he should be used to that after washing ashore on Windmill Island after being catapulted over the Forbidden Fortress by Helvinek at the beginning of "Wind Waker". What luck). So begins a massive quest to find and invade the ghostly ship.

Everything you do is controlled by the stylus and this is incredibly difficult. The reason why this game is taking me so long just to complete the second (yes, second) island is because the controls are so fiddly. I still haven't grasped how to make Link roll, although I'm quite good at killing the jelly-like ChuChus. Also, I was stuck at sea for a while when I couldn't work out how to make the ship move (major problem!).

I just think that the other buttons could have been used more to make it easier to control. I never want to buy easy games but then I don't want ones that are so hard I can't fathom for a month. I'm a master at the other Zelda games (although anyone who knows the locations of all the poes on "Twilight Princess" should alert me) so I won't let this beat me. The characters are funny, the story, though simple, is completely engaging and the world is rendered to the same quality of "Wind Waker" - don't let the stylus put you off. Just try your best. That's what I'm doing.