What I'm Playing (Volume 72): The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is a 2D Zelda game for the Nintendo DS. Released after Wind Waker, the game keeps the cell shaded aesthetic of the Gamecube title and takes place directly after the events of that game (I've never played it). In contrast to other 2D games in the series like A Link to the Past or The Minish Cap, this game uses an entirely new control scheme revolving around the use of the DS' touch screen.

As soon as I read the sentiments of that last sentence in other descriptions of the game, I have to confess that my eyes rolled completely into the back of my head. In general, the touch screen on the DS and 3DS is used most effectively for displaying multiple portions of the game, and is typically relegated to displaying statistics or menus. Games that revolve around the touch screen for its primary interface end up being  minigame games (WarioWare or XX/XY: Feel the Magic) or frustrating real time strategy games (LostMagic, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings). But I was feeling some handheld Zelda action, and as I only had a few handheld Zelda games left to clear out before I've beaten them all, I went with the next one chronologically.

Frankly, I was absolutely blown away by this game! I am personally biased against touch controls. It's difficult to see what you're doing on screen, and generally games allow for dual modes of control with both touch and button interface options. In these cases, I can't think of a single one where I chose to predominantly use the touch screen. But this game used the touch screen creatively to create a new Zelda experience that notably improves on several areas in which the older Zelda games are lacking, or to push the franchise in directions that the old ones really couldn't have accomplished.

The beginning of the game is absolutely genius levels of teaching you about the fundamentals of the game. Knowing nothing about the game, the title screen greets you with a standard "touch here to start" message. Typically in games, you can just press the A button to bypass this screen, but here, the game does absolutely nothing! You actually have the touch the screen, and then you have to touch it again to select your file. You think this is weird, so you dive into the adventure. You're greeted with text, which you again press A to move through. Again, nothing happens, so you try your stylus out again with better results. By this point, the game's designers have made clear to you that touch is important in this game, and that buttons will get you nowhere! By the time you get to controlling your character, you're not even pressing any buttons, but are using your stylus to explore your world around you. The commands are are very fluid and they just work. Period. Link will do what you ask him to with few errors, which is one of the big problems with other touch games, which suffer for a lack of responsiveness and you'll find your character routinely doing things you did not intend. You can't control him quite as precisely as you would in the older games, but the designers of the game also give you wider windows of time to maneuver, and more plentiful hearts abound to account for the slight clumsiness you'll feel from time to time.

Sure, this is nice that the touch interface works, but why is it necessary? Didn't Link control just fine before? The answer is no, and you didn't even realize it before playing this game! Did you every get frustrated that Link could only throw bombs a fixed distance? Or shoot arrows in four directions? Or throw his boomerang only straight? Or wonder why Bombchus even exist? The touch screen enables far more precise use of all of these items, and unlocks all sorts of clever new uses for them. You can now throw your boomerang around corners, trace perfect paths for your Bombchus to reach their destination, shoot your arrows where you wish, and throw your bombs as far away or as close as you could ever want!

The touch screen also opens up way more interactions with your map than you could previously accomplish. You can now write down notes to help solve a logic puzzle you're given. Or keep track of where you need to return once you get your bombs. Or trace the outline of an island to discover its shape and unlock the secrets within. This will help you to uncover all of the little secrets in a Zelda game in ways you never really knew were possible before.

The visuals of the game are very good, and this is one element of criticism for Wind Waker that I never really got. Sure, they're more cartoony than before, but they have a certain soul that I find delightful.

The music is surprisingly drab for a Zelda game, which almost universally have great soundtracks. Color me disappointed in this one area of the game.

The dungeons are all designed very well, with lots of secrets to uncover and clever and incremental uses of the new items you're given. You'll rarely find yourself hopelessly lost, but also will be challenged by the puzzle presented within.

The game fundamentally revolves around a single dungeon. Completing a few additional floors will allow you to find more and more secrets within, unlocking new areas of the world around you. Thus, the game has a cyclical nature to it, beginning with you going as deep into the dungeon as you can, going out into the world to gain more abilities, and returning to the dungeon to go deeper, rinse and repeat. This can get pretty tiresome, to be honest, although I was grateful that they at least included a checkpoint halfway through so you didn't have to do the entire thing all over again. If it had just been three times to go through the dungeon that would have been clever and fine, but after my sixth journey through I had had enough. The game also felt needlessly long, although that may just be because so much of your time was spent slogging through the same dungeon several times.

There are times that the touch screen controls are not quite perfect, but generally they're a fresh and fun new take on the game. You can lose sight of where you are due to your massive hands hover over the screen to tap, which can get annoying. Maybe if you had smaller hands than me, this wouldn't be a problem, but it did get irritating at times. There's also a strange logic in the items, in that some of them, like the bow, will fire over and over again until you click off of them, while others, like the boomerang, with only throw once, and won't fire again until you click back on. I wasted a fair number of arrows this way, and took a lot of hits trying to run but finding myself aiming the bow instead. I got used to the peculiar rules eventually, but I would have appreciated an identical approach across all items.

In general, Phantom Hourglass was a fresh and fun approach to a game that seemingly didn't need one! Once I played it, however, I found that being willing to go across my comfort zone to a new control scheme can be accompanied by some big benefits! I definitely need a break after this game, but I'll come back to its touch cousin Spirit Tracks at some point. I'll give this one a 9.1/10. I also have no clue what I'll be playing next on handheld, so check back at some point soon!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 71): Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is a shooter for the N64. Building on the excellent ideas started in Star Wars: X-Wing, the game has you playing as Luke Skywalker, but rather than using a lightsaber or blaster, you're flying a wide range of Republic spaceships, including X-Wings, A-Wings, and Y-Wings. The plot of the game takes place primarily during the IV-VI timeline of the story, but focuses on an alternate storyline that occurs in parallel to the events of the films.

Unlike the crushingly difficult and oddly sim-like nature of the Star Wars: X-Wing games, this one takes a more arcade-like approach. Gone are the ability to max out the power of your lasers, thrusters, and shields, shift your shields from front to back, as well as the unfortunate reality of only having one life and being captured by the Empire seemingly every time you die, necessitating you to begin your campaign anew! Here you get a far more friendly amount of times you can get shot by enemies, a simpler control interface, and three lives per mission! Woah!

In addition to the more user friendly improvements, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is also a more strikingly beautiful game than its PC ancestors. Unlike the PC games, the battles here take place on planets rather than above them or in the middle of space, allowing the developers to play around a lot more with different surroundings and environments. Some levels here take place on watery worlds with large seas filled with naval opponents, while another takes place inside a volcano. Games from this era typically don't age terribly well in terms of their visuals, but this one is rather nice looking today. It certainly isn't as polished looking as the aerial combat in, say Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the brand new and inferior one), but you really won't notice many warts in the crafts. The surroundings could certainly look better, but it's a standout for this generation in terms of graphics.

The game also has excellent music and sound, with the songs being based primarily on the John Williams soundtracks, as you would hope. There are a few songs here that I didn't recognize, but they all work pretty well for the game. Their is legitimate voice acting here, which is a bit of a rarity for the N64. There's pretty extensive cutscenes with professional voice work, and it works nicely to advance the story along.

The combat is fun and engaging, with lots of different missions/spaceships with which to play. Each ship controls differently and is fun in its own way, although, as usual in most games in this genre, the more maneuverable crafts tend to be the ones that are the most rewarding to play and easiest with which to win. The Y-Wing in particular is pretty awful, particularly on the volcano level, which is nearly impossible to beat with the craft.

The game really would have benefited from a two player co-op mode, in which one player could play as the fighter class of ship, while the other plays a bomber. Then you'd have to work together to protect the bomber to get to your target, which would have been a nice feature, particularly on the extremely co-op friendly N64. The game is pretty graphically intensive for the time, however, so I can see why they didn't do this.

Some of the missions are a little dull, and definitely feel like a grind to complete. The system with which you receive medals depending on your performance, however, incentivizes you to repeatedly play through your favorites to try to get better medals, which is a nice touch.

If you like Star Wars: X-Wing, you will probably like this as well. It's definitely its more casual cousin, but who said casual was a dirty word? Everybody enjoys some casual games, and this is definitely slotted to fit well in most people's N64 library. It's fun to turn on and play a mission or two, and can definitely be beaten in a few days with a little dedication. I'll give it an 8.2/10.

Up next on the home console edition of What I'm Playing is a game that's technically impossible to beat, so I'm just going to beat it to my own definitions. Check out the teaser below...

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 70): LostMagic

Taito's LostMagic is a game I picked up in high school for cheap at Gamestop, and never finished. Like most of the games I include here, I've finally circled back around to this bad boy and finished it! The game is a real time strategy game for the DS that uses touch screen controls to control your monsters, but its real novelty is its magic system, in which you must draw magic runes on your screen to cast spells using your primary character, who cannot attack in any fashion other than with spells.

The magic system in this game is really cool and different, and actually works really well! You have a wide range of spells at your fingertips to start with, including a fireball to damage enemies, a spell to heal your allies, one that creates a wall between you and your enemies, and so forth. As the game advances, so does your ability to use magic, unlocking new and more advanced runes, as well as the ability to combine two runes into your own unique spell. So, for example, you can write the healing spell rune and then the explosion rune, which give you an area of effect heal instead of the usual localized one. There are over 300 different spells you can discover in the game, and some of the advanced ones are really cool! There is a tremendous amount of strategy involved in your spells, as you have a limited amount of magic you can cast before you need to rest, requiring you to prioritize only the most vital spells to turn the tide of battle. However, the system of casting also takes some strategy itself, as spells are more effective when drawn neatly, but you also need to stand still to cast and can't control your monsters while casting, meaning that you need to cast somewhat quickly to ensure that you can continue to position your troops effectively. You'll find that you have plenty of cushion to cast lots of spells, and that casting them remains fun and fresh throughout the game. If you're like me, you'll probably focus on and master a few spells and ride them all the way through, as remembering all of the different combinations of spells is onerous, but there are nearly endless tactics you can take with your spellcasting. The game also supports a more limited approach to spell casting, as the more you use any particular branch of magic, the stronger that magic gets. This means that casting tons of different types of magic will ensure that none of it is particularly strong.

The visuals of the game are pretty nice, especially for a fairly early DS title. The characters are cutesy cartoons, and most of them are pretty appealing. There's nothing special about the game's looks, but nothing bad either. The sound and music are fine as well, with nothing excellent to speak of.

The game's story is a tired trope of a boy fighting against impossible odds to save his world, assembling a hodgepodge of oddball characters along the way to stand against the evil one. It was more tired and dull than most JRPGs, and utterly unremarkable.

The basic controls of the game are pretty poor, with the exception of the casting. In typical RTS fashion, you can click on a character to select them, and then click somewhere else to command them to move and attack. You can also drag around a group to select them all. The problem is that if you want to micro (selecting individual units out of a group to move them around to your advantage), the stylus is extremely inaccurate, especially when picking them out of a group. This is particularly difficult when you're trying to get a last minute heal on a character, or moving a damaged character out of harm's way. It's also annoying that there's no button to select all characters, or to select all of one type. This makes dividing your forces to handle a two-pronged attack really difficult, and makes the game feel frustrating.

The actual RTS mechanics of the game are pretty annoying as well. There are generally two things on the map to interact with-crystals that will heal your units when captured, and portals which spit out enemies endlessly unless you leave a unit on them. The portals are particularly annoying, as you must leave a unit to stop their spawning, and in a game where you probably have 9 units at a maximum, this severely cuts into your units, especially when there are multiple portals in the level. The best strategy in the game almost always ends up being rushing past all enemies to go right for the win condition (capturing all crystals, defeating the boss, escaping the level, etc.), which doesn't make for a very rewarding experience. This is especially exacerbated by the fact that the levels also have extremely low time limits on them, requiring you to move very quickly through the level.

All in all, LostMagic is a fun little diversion of a game with a neat twist that is executed well. If you're like me, however, the slog of unit management and the weak RTS mechanics, combined with the lack of a compelling story, will make finishing this game a chore. This one is best experimented with for fun and dropped, unless you really love drawing magic runes and having fun. But it is definitely a delightfully experimental game, and any RTS fan should check it out. It's also one of the more clever uses of the DS touch screen, that oft-relegated to menus gimmick. I'll give it a 7.5/10.

Up next on the handheld section of What I'm Playing is a game I've been dreading playing for a long time, but must for duty's sake. Check out below for a teaser...

-TRO