E3 Preview: Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

If you've ever played a 2D Zelda dungeon, you'll know what to expect from this portion of the demo. You hit switches to disable flames and raise/lower obstructions, you defeat enemies to make treasure chests appear, and you search for keys to unlock doors. While the core philosophies are largely intact, there are still quite a few new elements made possible by the Nintendo DS hardware.

Your dungeon map will play a bigger role than ever, since it's always available and readily annotatable. There are instances where if you perform a particular task, an area on the map will flash with a notification, leading you to your next destination. The map in the demo was also quite useful for quickly finding areas of "sacred ground", which are your only safe haven from the invincible darknuts that roam the dungeon. You need to be sneaky so they don't find you, as they can kill you with a single hit. The sacred ground areas render you invisible to these foes, however, and will save you if one's hot on your trail.

Other enemies present in the dungeon include varying colors of chuchus, including the yellow electric ones that will hurt you if you attack at the wrong time, along with the omnipresent keese (bats) and bubbles (flaming skulls) found in many other Zelda games. The key to defeating the bubbles is to first strike them with the boomerang -- the second item introduced in the demo. A stock item ever since the original Legend of Zelda, the boomerang this time around most resembles its leveled-up incarnation in the Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages games. If you held down the button in those games, you could use the d-pad to steer the boomerang in mid-air. You have considerably more control than that in Phantom Hourglass, however, as you have the ability to completely map out your boomerang's path with the stylus before you even let it fly from your hand. Several puzzles in the demo require mapping a boomerang path over multiple switches, and I can imagine some very complex paths being necessary later in the game.


Upon completion of the dungeon, you'll find yourself in your first fully-fledged boss encounter. Your opponent is a gigantic octorock -- one that flies around the screen in a whirlwind. The camera perspective for this fight is drastically different from the one used during the dungeon and field segments; the action spans two screens and the camera is angled only slightly off the ground. You can run around on the bottom screen, which is a large platform with three whirlwind-producing points on it, while the boss flies around above you.

The battle is fought with the third and final item found in the demo -- bombs. They can be thrown just like any other object, as mentioned on the first page of this piece, and are propelled up onto the top screen if thrown into one of the whirlwinds that are produced by the platform you're running around on. The boss will rain down death from above, and occasionally come to the bottom screen (protected by his whirlwind) and wreak havoc. The key to defeating him is to launch a bomb up onto the top screen with a whirlwind while the boss is flying directly overhead. This will stun him and make him fall onto the bottom screen, where you can hack wildly at him with your sword.


Multiplayer in Phantom Hourglass was also demoed at the show, in a one-on-one fashion. It was quite unlike the multiplayer found in the Four Swords series of games, and instead pit one player (as Link) against the other player's army of darknuts. The object of the game was to haul Force Gems from the center of the arena over to your side of the arena while avoiding darknuts that the other player put on patrol.

One player starts off as a colored Link a la Four Swords. The map on the top screen shows Link's position in the arena, along with the positions of any darknuts discovered while playing. The Force Gems in the center of the arena can be picked up by tapping them and dropped by tapping Link's head. Larger and presumably heavier Force Gems make Link walk more slowly, but are worth more points.

The other player has his screens swapped, showing the map on the touch screen with the positions of his darknuts. By drawing a line through the arena's hallways from a darknut's starting position, a path for the darknut to patrol is created. The last Darknut set on patrol will appear on the top screen. Link will appear on the map if a darknut can see him, and if a darknut catches up to him with its sword, the turn will end and the players will switch off, putting the second player's Link into the arena for his own Force-Gem-grabbing session.

The multiplayer game runs for a few turns, at which point the player with the most points (again, heavier Force Gems counting for more points) wins the match. The booth attendant at the show claimed that the multiplayer game was currently not Wi-Fi-Connection-capable, but was not sure if that would change in the future.


The Phantom Hourglass demo was a great look at what has the potential to be an amazing game. The visual style, much like in New Super Mario Bros, allows for some very smooth and engaging animation. I am a bit concerned, however, by how washed out a lot of the colors in the environments looked. It's not a result of any graphical limitations whatsoever, but rather a stylistic decision. The greens in the field didn't seem green enough, and the dungeon was awfully light-grey. That said, though, this was only a quick look at a couple of locales -- I'd imagine that the final product will have a full gamut of visual styles.

The actual control was surprisingly fluid. I was a tiny bit worried at first, thinking that things might feel as plodding as they do in Animal Crossing DS, but Link's reaction time and general speed are definitely up to par. I do wonder how you'll end up using your shield, though, as I wasn't able to figure it out in the demo. Link carries it around with him all the time, but it didn't seem to ever block any attacks -- even projectiles. Perhaps I'm just woefully incompetent.


While the control was definitely solid, I can't help but think that Phantom Hourglass won't be the revolutionary experience that was hinted at by its creators when it was first discussed. Don't get me wrong, it seems like it will be another solid entry in the Zelda series, and I'm sure I'll love it. But in the end, it's just another standard Zelda game that you happen to be controlling with the stylus. Once you get used to the new input method, things don't really feel all that different.

I was also a bit disappointed by the multiplayer mode -- Four Swords set the bar pretty high with its cooperative and competitive play based around the core Zelda mechanics. The Phantom Hourglass multiplayer mode that was demoed was pretty derivative when it comes down to it, and it's not something I can see people spending all that much time with. I'd personally rather Nintendo leave out the multiplayer mode entirely if they aren't going to put in the time to get it up to the standard set by Four Swords.

On a personal note, I really hope that this game is indeed a direct follow-up to the events from The Wind Waker, and not a Majora's Mask-esque side story. The events from the end of The Wind Waker need a definite resolution, considering that the games known to follow it chronologically rely on events that have never been chronicled. I'll be looking forward to seeing how things all play out when the game is released later this year.