And I finally sat down and finished off Phantom Hourglass. I mean, all in all, it's honestly still a pretty fun game, if not stylistically a little bland. The touchscreen controls work, but can occasionally be unresponsive or finicky; fortunately, it's rare that you find yourself in any trouble in this game. There's a lot of really fun moments and puzzles in the game too, and it makes the entire experience quite enjoyable.
At the same time, it does have its shortcomings... Like the dire lack of music. The only times actual music play outside of cutscenes are on certain islands, sailing the sea, during enemy encounters at sea and certain scripted enemy encounters, inside houses, and during boss fights. And most of these are lackluster anyhow. Linebeck and Oshus have good character themes, but otherwise, the soundtrack is very underwhelming.
There's also a fair bit of tedium, coming from repeated instances of two elements: Ciela yapping too much and event cutscenes. For some reason, I never remember how egregious Ciela's commentary is, but it's up there with the other bad helpers in terms of pointing out the obvious. It gets really bad when she points out something you just saw or can easily see, like an open book on a table you need to read despite having seen multiple such books by now. Yes, thanks, like I was going to ignore it and the other four important-looking books sitting there. Shut up.
Event cutscenes: Any time you trigger something that opens a door, lowers spikes, or douses a flame barrier. They last way too long, and in many cases you trigger multiple at once, meaning you have to watch each individual action. I just want to get on with the quest! I can see the barriers are gone! What compounds this is the fact that the game is really fond of throwing them in conjunction with rooms that seal you in to fight a few monsters before you can proceed. A Zelda staple, but you know why it doesn't work here? Because of the aforementioned cutscenes. In other games, you walk in, door seals, you kill the enemies, the doors open, and it goes by fast. If they stopped and pointed at every door that unlocked and lingered there longer than it should, I'd hate these encounters in other games too.
I'd have a higher opinion of this game if it weren't for these problems. As it stands, I can't really call it much more than a fun romp but ultimately inferior to most titles in the series.
Can't talk about Phantom Hourglass without talking about the Temple of the Ocean King though. And as always... I still like it. Some individual moments in the temple are a little tedious but the overall journey is quite fun and keeps you on your toes. I do very much appreciate the midway skip later on in the game, and especially the ability at the end of the game to kill the Phantoms; one of the most satisfying elements in the entire series if I'm honest. So yes, I like this element. Not sure I'd want it revisited, but I like it as it is.
Spirit Tracks time.
