The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

The Nintendo DS game titled Phantom Hourglass is a sequel to The Wind Waker, and stars the Hero of Winds once again. The problems with its predecessor were greatly cleared up, especially sailing, which was peppered with monsters, pirates, NPCs and events to spice it up. Unlike previous Zelda games, there was also a single central dungeon, the Temple of the Ocean King; beating other dungeons would allow the player to progress farther in the Temple, which would open up more dungeons, and so on. The game is entirely stylus-based, with the bottom screen consisting of most of the action and the top screen containing a map that the player can bring down and mark for clues. Your Mileage May Vary as to how this worked out. Some fans liked the new controls, while others wanted to use a D-pad and buttons.

The plot picks up right after The Wind Waker, with Link sailing with Tetra's crew on the trail of the mysterious Ghost Ship. When the ship is in sight, Tetra goes aboard and disappears, prompting Link to go on after her. He is tossed from the ship, and wakes up on a strange island where a fairy named Ciela finds him. During his quest to save Tetra, he meets up with Linebeck, the captain of a steam boat, and the wise but mysterious old man Oshus. Oshus gives Link the titular Phantom Hourglass to ward off the curse placed over the Temple of the Ocean King by Bellum.

"Youngest Cubus Sister: Fallen! Fallen! They are the fallen! Excuse me. I don't know what came over me."
 * Bigger on the Inside: Not only do islands look a lot smaller while you're sailing than they do on land, they also have larger varieties in elevation like cliffs, hills and peaks when you're viewing them from your boat that aren't quite as evident when you're walking around on them.
 * Build Like an Egyptian: The Cobble Kingdom.
 * Color-Coded Timestop: Grayscale.
 * Comic Book Adaptation: Yet another Zelda Manga has been made, this time about this game.
 * Continuity Nod: Aside from being a sequel to Wind Waker, who exactly are the Six Sages buried on the Isle of the Dead?
 * Cosmetic Award: Beedle's "Complimentary Card," which sounds like it can be exchanged for a free item. When you redeem it,
 * Demonic Possession: Used on.
 * Earn Your Fun: The shooting gallery, Maze Island, and the "training" with the captain of the Prince of Red Lions.
 * Eleventh-Hour Superpower:
 * The, which sure would have come in handy a lot sooner than you're able to get it.
 * Then there's.
 * Enfante Terrible: The Obviously Evil Cubus Sisters, at least while they still appear human.
 * Enter Solution Here: One way they show off the DS's features is to allow you to write notes on maps. To make sure you get maximum use out of this feature, the solution to a puzzle is frequently given somewhere else in the dungeon, and you're intended to write it down when you find it.
 * Everything's Better with Sparkles: In the Temple of the Ocean King, Link's life/the sands of the Phantom Hourglass won't get drained away if Link stays on certain purple sparkling areas of the temple's floor. When Link stands on these areas, he also sparkles.
 * Executive Meddling: The game was originally going to be the first 3D The Legend of Zelda Four Swords, but when Shigeru Miyamoto demands a The Wind Waker sequel, his will shall be done. At the very least, it explains the promotional artwork that has seven Links.
 * Exposition Fairy: Ciela. Leaf and Neri also occasionally serve as this.
 * Expy: Ciela. She even has the same voice as Navi. HEY! LISTEN!
 * Faceless Eye: Bellum.
 * Fishing Minigame: With that in mind it's easy to believe that
 * Funny Background Event: Used rather frequently, mostly with Linebeck. The most notable one is of him knocking over and frantically trying to fix it while Oshus is seriously explaining something. Also, near the end of the game, the ship is flooded and you see Linebeck being washed away.
 * Game Mod: A patch that, surprise surprise, makes the controls button-based.
 * Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the final scene, the Ocean King offers Linebeck a single wish in return for his help. Linebeck asks to have his ship which was sunk earlier returned to him. This is supposed to be a bit of Character Development for the usually cowardly and greedy Linebeck, but it still comes off as a bit money-hungry if you've gone through the pains of collecting and equipping all the Golden Ship Parts, which would make said boat worth every Rupee in the Great Ocean.
 * Generic Doomsday Villain: Bellum, who is pretty much Majora without anything interesting about it. Justified though since Majora is a sentient demon while Bellum seems to be more of a.
 * Ghost Ship: Literally!
 * Guest Star Party Member: For part of the dungeon on Goron Island, you switch control at will between Link and Gongoron, the son of the chief of the Goron tribe. You get to play as him again in the race on the nearby Dee Ess Island after you clear the dungeon.
 * Guide Dang It: The second Sea Chart. Who would have known that you're supposed to
 * Hold Your Hippogriffs: When Linebeck refuses to enter the Ghost Ship Ciela refers to him as a "cucco." Cuccos are chickens in all but name and ferocity.
 * 100% Completion: The only possible value to be gotten from one particular bonus.
 * Identical Stranger: Zauz the blacksmith bears an extraordinary resemblance to Ganondorf.
 * Intergenerational Friendship: The adolescent Link and the adult Linebeck. Eventually.
 * Invisible to Normals: The Hero's New Clothes, making a return appearance (so to speak) from Wind Waker. Allegedly they can only be seen by very honest people.
 * Item Get:
 * Generally played straight, but there's a hilarious subversion towards the end. After Zauz forges the, he tells Link to take it back to Oshus, who can finish the job. When you meet Oshus, he asks Link to take out the Phantom Hourglass. For no reason whatsoever, Link decides to (unnecessarily) go through his typical Item Get motions. However, Oshus, apparently not in the mood, grabs the hourglass from Link mid-motion, leaving Link with his hand in the air and...nothing in it!
 * Also parodied at the beginning when Link does this while not being able to stand straight from Linebeck shaking him too hard, accompanied by a wonky version of the Item Get sound effect.
 * And parodied before that when Link opens up a chest and finds...nothing in it.
 * Parodied yet again when Link receives a "mysterious" gift (which is ) from the Man of Smiles, he does his usual Item Get animation but with a disturbed expression.
 * It's Probably Nothing: The Phantoms take the fact that this kid that they chase always vanishes into thin air a bit too lightly. Possibly justified by the fact that they are relatively mindless, presumably undead mooks.
 * Kid Hero: Link is still not beyond the age of thirteen in this game.
 * Lampshade Hanging: One of the talking skeletons whines about not being able to use the D-pad and buttons.
 * Lovable Coward: Linebeck is the incredibly lovable embodiment of this trope.
 * The Maze: The pyramid-shaped temple on the Isle of the Dead.
 * Money for Nothing: It's not hard to finish this game with literally thousands of Rupees in your purse and nothing worthwhile to buy with them.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Cubus = succubus/incubus.
 * Not Completely Useless: The items in the trading sequence, which otherwise serve no useful purpose -- the kaleidescope, for example, looks ridiculous if you don't know why you have it.
 * Obviously Evil: As noted, the Cubus Sisters. Seriously this is what the youngest sister says when describing her "captured" sisters. (Red text not included)

"Linebeck: "Hey, good for you! Taking a break from saving the world! Class act!""
 * One-Time Dungeon: The fourth dungeon -- and only the fourth dungeon is an example, but averts one instance of Lost Forever because The Dev Team Thought Of Everything.
 * Or Was It a Dream?: While Link and Tetra are first led to believe it was All Just a Dream, . Doubles as a Shout-Out to Link's Awakening
 * Our Mermaids Are Different: A girl just pretends to be one for fun. A big hint is her wearing an inner-tube as she swims around.
 * Out of Focus: Tetra compared to The Wind Waker, with Linebeck getting the limelight instead.
 * Point of No Return: Once you finish crossing the bridge leading to the final boss it collapses, leaving you stuck on the other side of the room. Ciela tells you that this is it; there's no turning back. Then a warp path to the beginning of the dungeon appears, subverting it.
 * Precocious Crush: An odd one. After defeating the Ghost Ship, if Link returns to Molida Island, he'll encounter a girl near the dock who wasn't there on his previous visit. She swoons over her mental image of the hero who defeated the Ghost Ship and gives Link a treasure map to give to the hero, who she seems to think is much older than him.
 * Rule of Three: Zelda games always do like threes.
 * This one takes it up a notch by having three separate stages of the adventure. The first two stages involve collecting three items (first the three Spirits, and then the three Pure Metals), and the third stage, the fight against the Final Boss, is itself split into three stages!
 * Also, in a more subtle example, three of the four sections of the map feature areas where rocks are arranged in a formation of three, and an island is hidden near each of them.
 * Schmuck Bait: Played straight and subverted with the Obviously Evil Cubus Sisters on the Ghost Ship. Played straight when one of them ; subverted when another.
 * Sealed Good in a Can: The Ocean King.
 * Shout-Out:
 * The game is bookended with Link's Awakening references: it begins with Link on a ship caught in a storm and ending up washed ashore on an island, and ends with.
 * There seem to be at least a few thematic shout-outs to Majora's Mask, as well, such as Link freeing trapped guardian spirits (the Ocean King and his helpers/the Four Giants), an emphasis on time limits (the Hourglass/the three-day cycle), a bad guy with tentacles and big, yellow eyes who seems more like a destructive force of nature than a thinking, plotting villain (Bellum/Majora), a yellow fairy companion with a bit of an attitude (Ciela/Tatl)...
 * The eyes on the boss "doors" and keys reminds one strikingly of Vaati's eye motif.
 * Gleeok is a double Shout-Out. The multi-headed dragon makes its first appearance since the original game, but is given powers similar to that of Trinexx from Link to The Past (one head shoots fire, the other shoots ice).
 * The way to defeat a Pols Voice in this game - by shouting into the microphone and then slashing it with the sword - was originally how one was supposed to defeat it in the original game, but it was taken out when the game was imported to America (since the NES didn't have a microphone).
 * Nyave tells Link, as a joke, that the kaleidoscope he found (belonging to someone from the Ho-Ho Tribe) belonged to his sister (as if he had one anyway). This is a reference to Aryll giving Link a telescope in The Wind Waker.
 * Out-of-series example: During one of Jolene's later ambushes, she reveals that she knows that Linebeck is hiding in the wooden box. When she calls out to him, the only thing you see come from the box is an exclamation point.
 * Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Isle of Frost and its dungeon.
 * Stalker with a Crush: Pirate Girl Jolene. When Linebeck she didn't take it lightly.
 * Stealth-Based Mission: The Temple of the Ocean King.
 * Stupidity Is the Only Option: On the Ghost Ship, Link has to "rescue" four little girls, "the daughters of the house of Cubus." It becomes increasingly obvious that they're really evil, but there's nothing else to do but "help" them.
 * Surveillance Drone: The Phantom Eyes. They don't hurt you themselves, but if you don't get to a safe zone fast, the Phantoms come...and they do.
 * Technicolor Death: All bosses except the Ghost Ship's boss turn into gold, disintegrate partially, explode into a column of sand, and then the sand freezes in midair.
 * Tennis Boss: Wouldn't be a Zelda game without it. Dead Man's Volley, anyone?
 * Timed Mission: Temple of the Ocean King.
 * Time Stop: The only way to hurt Bellum.
 * Taken for Granite:  For the second time in the series.
 * Tutorial Failure: The game tells you to "draw little circles at the edge of a screen" to perform a roll. In reality, the technique is more like wiggling at the edge of the screen — drawing circles will just make Link flail around with his sword.
 * Vendor Trash: Goron Amber, Ruto Crown, Regal Ring, Pink Coral, Pearl Necklace, Dark Pearl Necklace, Zora Scale, and Helmaroc Plume. Interestingly, their value and rarity varies greatly from game to game, so what may be common and cheap in one game can be extremely hard to find and worth a lot in another. This also applies to extra ship parts as well.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential:
 * While you're sailing, a flock of seagulls will gather behind you. You can shoot them.
 * Link can attack cuccos with any of his weapons, however, overdoing this will cause a flock of angry cuccos to attack him.
 * Warp Whistle/Warp Zone: A variation -- writing symbols on a blank slate summons golden frogs who use cyclones to transport the ship to various parts of the ocean.
 * Doubles as a Shout-Out to its predecessor, which also had a frog who summoned cyclones for your ship.
 * What the Hell, Hero?:


 * Hypocritical Humor: Linebeck's original (and increasingly subverted) reason for going with Link at all is to make money and plunder stuff.