There are two types of people in this world: people that love Zelda games, and people that hate them. So, dismiss all other debates right now as that sentence is the answer to all our questions and the solution to all our problems.
Good. That’s covered. There are also two other types of people in this world: those that loved Phantom Hourglass and those that hated it. I figured I’d quickly muck up my previous sentiments by jamming that fork in the eye of conviction. Enjoy it.
So let’s begin with Phantom Hourglass before we move into Nintendo’s December handheld try that is known as Spirit Tracks.
I absolutely hated Phantom Hourglass. I was fine with the controls, I was fine with the story, I was fine with the characters, I was fine with the items and I was fine with the dungeons... well, okay, the damn Ocean Temple, or whatever it was, that you had to return to after every bout with a boss made me want to die. Honestly, ruin a game that succeeds on almost every level by adding in monotonous backtracking. Yup, that’s how it’s down. Nintendo did it well.
Then we’ve got the boat which is controlled by players drawing lines on the map and the boat following them exactly. So, in order to get from one place to the other, players drew a line and then had their faces bored off. And, no, I don’t consider rapidly tapping pirate ships and seagulls an innovative form of gameplay that makes me want to hurry up and hope in my boat.
And it certainly doesn’t help matters that contemporary standards for game size reduce efforts down to simply making it a massive waste of time to go from place to place. Honestly, there are other ways to indicate grand scale in a game that don’t involve travelling for 10 minutes at a time.
