Zelda: Phantom Hourglass Review - Stylus Sailing DS

✍️ Introduction — A Zelda You Play With a Pen

🗡️ This review is part of our The Legend of Zelda Hub — every mainline game reviewed and rated, plus the movies and the LEGO Zelda sets, all in one place.

Of all the bold swings the series has taken, none is quite as mechanically daring as Phantom Hourglass . In 2007, Nintendo looked at the touchscreen of the wildly popular DS and asked a genuinely radical question: what if you played an entire Zelda with nothing but the stylus? No d-pad movement, no face-button swordfights — just a pen, a screen, and the Great Sea. It could have been a disaster. Instead it is one of the most charming and inventive handheld adventures Nintendo ever made. For the Dadnology community, this is a 10/10 — a game I love more than its lukewarm reputation would have you expect.

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The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS) (opens in a new tab)

The DS original — the only way to experience the stylus controls and touchscreen puzzles as intended. Playable on DS, DSi and 3DS systems.

It is also a direct sequel to The Wind Waker, picking up the cel-shaded art and the open ocean and carrying them onto the small screen. Tetra and the pirate crew return, the King of Red Lions gives way to a steam-powered boat, and the whole thing is wrapped in that same expressive, sunny charm. But where Wind Waker was about scale, Phantom Hourglass is about interaction — about Nintendo wringing magic out of a stylus in ways no other platform could replicate.

The All-Stylus Controls: Gimmick or Genius?

Let us tackle the central gamble head-on, because everything else hangs off it. You play Phantom Hourglass entirely with the stylus. Link follows where you point, runs toward where you hold, and rolls when you scribble a circle. You attack by tapping an enemy or slashing across it, throw the boomerang by drawing its flight path, and dig, sail and interact all by touch. On paper it sounds like a tech demo. In practice, within ten minutes, it simply becomes how you play.

The genius is in the intuitiveness. Drawing the boomerang’s arc around three switches at once, or sketching a bomb’s trajectory, feels more direct and expressive than any button input could. There are a few moments where the touch movement gets slightly imprecise in a tight combat scrape, and that is the honest cost — but it is a small price for a control scheme that turns the whole game into something tactile and playful. This is hardware-specific design at its most confident, and it is a big part of why I rate the game so highly.

Sailing, Map-Drawing and Hardware Magic

The Great Sea returns, but you navigate it in the most Phantom Hourglass way imaginable: you draw your route on the sea map with the stylus, then watch your boat follow the line you traced. It is a lovely, low-key joy, and it folds the DS’s two screens into the experience — sea chart on top, action below — with real elegance.

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The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (Nintendo DS) (opens in a new tab)

The direct DS sequel — same touchscreen engine, with Link driving a train and Princess Zelda finally joining the adventure.

Then there are the puzzles that simply cannot exist anywhere else, and one in particular has become legend. Without spoiling the joy of discovering it, there is a moment that asks you to physically close the DS so that an imprint transfers from one screen to the other — a puzzle that uses the literal hardware in a way that makes you laugh out loud the first time you solve it. You jot notes on sea charts, blow into the microphone, tap out rhythms. Phantom Hourglass is built from these hardware-native ideas, and they are the reason it remains one of the most memorable handheld experiences in the series.

The Temple of the Ocean King: In Its Defence

We have to talk about the structure that gave the game its mixed reputation: the Temple of the Ocean King, a central dungeon you return to repeatedly across the adventure, against a draining timer, while avoiding invincible Phantom guards. The common complaint is “it makes you replay the same dungeon over and over,” and on the surface that is true.

In practice, I think the criticism is badly overblown. Each return unlocks new shortcuts and deeper sections, so you are rarely re-treading ground for long, and the stealth-and-timer tension gives those visits a genuinely different flavour from the game’s other dungeons — more Metal Gear than Zelda. It is a deliberate, cohesive design choice, not lazy reuse, and once you stop expecting a string of separate dungeons and embrace the central-hub rhythm, it works. It is the main reason some reviewers docked points, and the main reason I would tell you to ignore them. Far from ruining the game, it is one of its more distinctive ideas.

Combat, Bosses and Charm

Beyond the headline mechanics, this is a tight, well-paced Zelda. The bosses are highlights, several of them built explicitly around the touch controls in ways that make them feel fresh — drawing patterns to exploit a weak point, tracing a path to redirect an attack. They are clever, readable and satisfying, and they show off exactly what the stylus design makes possible.

The whole thing is carried by that inherited Wind Waker charm — the expressive animation, the warm humour, the bright sea-faring world. It is shorter than the console epics, which suits its handheld nature perfectly: a complete, satisfying adventure scaled for the bus, the sofa, the stolen twenty minutes. For a busy dad, that bite-size completeness is a feature, not a compromise, and the game never overstays its welcome.

Availability: A True DS Original

A practical note that is unavoidable here. Because Phantom Hourglass is built around the touchscreen and dual displays, it is one of the hardest Zeldas to play outside its native habitat. It is a Nintendo DS title, fully playable on DS, DSi and 3DS hardware, and that is where it lives. There is no Switch port, and frankly a faithful one would be difficult — so much of the design assumes a stylus and a fold-shut clamshell.

That makes it a slightly more involved game to track down than the console classics, but the hardware is cheap and plentiful second-hand, and the experience is absolutely worth it. If you still have a DS or 3DS in a drawer, this is one of the best reasons to dig it out. It is a game that is inseparable from the device it was made for — and that is part of its lasting charm.

Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks: The DS Pair

It is worth understanding Phantom Hourglass as one half of a pair, because it and its sequel Spirit Tracks form the most distinctive duo in the handheld series. Both are fully stylus-controlled, both inherit The Wind Waker’s cel-shaded charm, and both build a central recurring dungeon into their structure. Phantom Hourglass came first and made the bold case that an all-touch Zelda could work; Spirit Tracks took that proven engine and refined it, swapping the open sea for a rail network and adding the brilliant Princess-Zelda-as-companion mechanic.

If you are deciding where to start, start here. Phantom Hourglass introduces the control language that Spirit Tracks then assumes you know, and playing them in order — sea first, rails second — gives you the full arc of Nintendo’s touchscreen Zelda experiment. The two together make a genuinely rewarding weekend (or several) on a DS or 3DS.

Which is better is a real debate. Spirit Tracks is the more mechanically polished and gives Zelda a starring role, but Phantom Hourglass has the open sailing and the sheer novelty of being first — the game where every hardware trick still felt like a small magic act. For me they are close, and both land high; I would not want to be without either. Treat them as a set, and you have two of the most creative handheld games Nintendo ever produced.

Family Fit: The Touchscreen Generation’s Zelda

This might be the most naturally kid-friendly Zelda to actually control, and the reason is generational. Children raised on touchscreens take to stylus controls instantly — pointing, tapping and drawing is the native language of anyone who learned to use a tablet before they could read. Hand a kid Phantom Hourglass and the interface barrier that sometimes trips young players on traditional Zeldas largely vanishes.

It is rated E10+ with only mild fantasy combat, the bright Wind Waker art is immediately appealing, and the bite-size structure suits shorter attention spans. The touch puzzles, in particular, are a joy to solve together, leaning over a single screen. As an accessible, charming introduction to the series for a younger player — especially one comfortable with touchscreens — it is a genuinely excellent and underrated choice. There is something quietly perfect, too, about a kid solving that close-the-DS puzzle for the first time and looking up at you in disbelief — the kind of shared gaming memory that sticks for years.

How do the controls work in Phantom Hourglass?

Everything is done with the stylus on the touchscreen. You move Link by pointing, attack by tapping or slashing enemies, sail by drawing a route on the sea map, and solve puzzles by writing, drawing and interacting directly with the screen. It is a fully touch-controlled Zelda.

Is the Temple of the Ocean King really that bad?

Its reputation is overblown. The central dungeon is revisited multiple times, but each return unlocks new shortcuts and areas, and the clever stealth-and-timer design keeps it tense rather than repetitive. It is a deliberate structure, not lazy reuse — and far less of a problem than online complaints suggest.

Where can I play Phantom Hourglass today?

It is a Nintendo DS title, playable on DS, DSi and Nintendo 3DS hardware. Because its controls depend entirely on the touchscreen, it has not been re-released on Switch — original DS-family hardware remains the way to play it.

Is Phantom Hourglass good for kids?

Yes. The bright Wind Waker art style and intuitive touch controls make it very accessible for children, and it is rated E10+ with only mild fantasy combat. The stylus-based interaction is especially natural for kids who have grown up with touchscreens.