Introduction
Phantom of the Hourglass walks in the footsteps of the well known Zelda's Wind Waker on gamecube, and breaks completely with the usual rythm of traditional zelda games.
Story
Here, our friend Link spends most of its time to use any materials that surrounds him to make his way through the dungeons of the game. Here, we got more puzzle to solve than real time fights and action.
Graphics
Graphics are very childish, not that it would be a bad thing. In some levels, They're really cute, and they can also become very frightening in a few other dungeon-levels where you get trapped in dark mazes (not worth it if you have played twillight princess already).
Bosses are quite well drawned, but they sometimes look like plushes, thanks to the "let's put some cell shading everywhere" thing.
Gameplay
Gameplay is very easy to handle, you get used to the ingame commands as soon as you get your hands on the pad.
So it's really well done for this part.
Atmosphere
Monsters gets easily beaten if you can stay careful, and web's spiders are probably way more dangerous. But don't get me wrong, I don't mean the game system is crap !
At least, enigmas are more complicated than your usual stupid puzzle game.
Music / Sounds
For example, some unreachable statues can be touched, by making an arrow ricochet on a highly pressured rope with your grapnel launcher. This is tough : you need some high precision and a perfect orientation, this is sometimes not easy at all.
Replay Value
Replay value and longevity are quite good here, if you're not too silly you should be able to reach the first dungeon's bosses without dying more than two or three times.
Well, be careful anyway ;)
Conclusion
Zelda - Phantom of the Hourglass is a very nice plateform and exploration game, very cute sometimes, but remember, Phantom of the Hourglass is the sequel of the Wind Waker episode, so don't start the two games at the same period of time.
