There’s something about playing a Zelda game on a handheld system that puts a whacking great smile right across my face. This is probably due to my first experiences with the franchise having been with Link’s Awakening at some point in the mid 1990s, battling my way across Koholint Island whilst peering into the dimly lit Game Boy screen for hours on end. Whatever the actual reason may be, my enjoyment of portable Zelda has held strong throughout the last decade and a bit, even as my love of the games took a bit of a dip after playing Wind Waker.

‘But hang on Matt’ I hear you squeal at the top of your collective voices, ‘isn’t Phantom Hourglass a continuation of aforementioned GameCube title?’ Well, yes, yes it is. Taking place after the events of Wind Waker, the game sees you having to take off in chase of a ghost ship that has pinched Link’s little pirate buddy and Princess in disguise Tetra. Expect plenty of sword-slashing, sea-faring, dungeon-mastering antics, all tweaked and tinkered around with to perfectly suit the nature of the DS.

Things start off quietly enough, with young Link having to potter around a small island he’s been washed up on in order to obtain – yes, you guessed it – a sword. Whilst this may be all very familiar to everyone, the method of controlling Link around the island to achieve this is something that everyone’s going to have to start afresh with. Rather than setting control onto the digital pad, moving Link around is achieved by moving the stylus across the screen, whilst swishing and stabbing at it will get your little green-capped chum to swashbuckle at anything within range. The basics, i.e. moving and fighting, are as intuitive as you’d have hoped, and after not too long you plain forget there’s anything different about the way you’re moving Link around.

Later on, as you begin to accumulate more weaponry and tackle trickier, multi-levelled dungeons, the DS controls really come into their own. Firing arrows at enemies and switches is merely a matter of pointing where you wish the arrow to go and hoping you got the timing correct, whilst you can use the stylus to draw a path on your map that a bombchu will follow. As a result you end up with some particularly clever puzzles, which in turn makes the fact that you can scribble notes across your maps to aid your memory all the more integral to progression (especially if you’re an absent-minded buffoon like me).

The game itself proceeds pretty much as you’d expect a Zelda title to; you move from island to island tackling dungeons, obtaining new weapons and items and then using them to open up previously unreachable sections you’ve been tantalised with before. It is, for the most part, classic Zelda, and that’s very much a good thing. Should you wish to trudge around looking for treasure and fishing then that’s perfectly fine; should you want to just move through the plot itself then that’s fine.

There are, however, plenty of little nuances other than the control system that Phantom Hourglass has to differentiate it from its predecessors. Firstly, Nintendo seem to have taken a liking to how recent Paper Mario titles have ended up and have injected a good deal of humour into proceedings, with Link getting dizzy if he carries out too many spin attacks and some hilarious little set pieces occurring during the cut scenes. Best of all is the constantly amusing relationship between Link, his rather forthright fairy Ceila and random pirate and ship navigator Linebeck, something which leads to many comedy moments. We all enjoy a bit of a chuckle now and again, so this is very welcome indeed.

Secondly, a central part of the game is one large dungeon that the player must visit numerous times to burrow deeper towards its end. Whilst working through the same floors again and again may seem worryingly tiresome at first (and on some floors seems unavoidable), the more items and weapons Link picks up, the more shortcuts he can take through the dungeon as he goes. To aid his progress through the noxious air this dungeon is filled with, Link carries with him the Phantom Hourglass, which grants him a certain amount of time before the air consumes his health. As you progress through the game you obtain more and more sand for the hourglass, giving you more leeway to explore a bit on your way down.

The biggest (and by far the best) departure is from Wind Waker’s mind-numbingly dull sailing sections. Yes, this time you’ll need to spend a good deal of time out on the salty blue, but thankfully it’s been reworked into something much more enjoyable, with random enemies to be blasted by your boat’s cannon and obstacles to be jumped. Pack in plenty of treasure hunts (complete with occasionally tricky haulage mini game) and a number of other boats and islands to discover and you have a far more entertaining method of transport. The DS controls also help here too; instead of having to control the boat yourself, drawing a path across your sea chart will have your boat travelling in the right direction all by itself.

In terms of looks, the game is somewhat similar to previously mentioned GameCube title, with Link and the world around him maintaining their beautiful, colourful look. The DS copes wonderfully well with all this, and whilst it’s not quite as pin-sharp as its older brother it still allows for a range of wonderfully drawn emotions to be displayed on the characters’ faces, whilst some of the dungeons and enemies are equally fantastic. The whole uproar about cel-shaded graphics seems an age away now, but more so than ever Phantom Hourglass shows that the world and stylings of the Zelda world suit the graphical style perfectly.

Minor quibbles do raise their heads, of course. Performing a forward roll by twirling a small circle at the outer edge of the lower screen is a bit hit-and-miss, whilst it’s fair to say that the quest isn’t exactly the most difficult that Link’s ever had to navigate. In fact, the adventure, whilst reasonably long, won’t particularly tax anyone who’s played through a Zelda game before, with only a few of the latter bosses putting up much of a fight. It’s a bit of a shame, for sure, but given all the new things the DS brings to the party it’s not as big an issue as it might have been.

Chucked in for good measure it a Wi-Fi multiplayer mode, allowing four players the chance to play a little hide-and-seek through a couple of maps. One player is given the role of Link and asked to collect three pieces of tri-force and deposit them at his base, whereas the others are all huge, hulking Phantoms and have the objective of finding the little scamp before he achieves this and dealing with him. There are ‘safe’ zones in which Link goes invisible to his opponents and the DS controls allow the opposing players to draw the path of their Phantoms, so all in all plenty of tactical considerations come into proceedings. It’s great fun, and whilst not as good as Four Swords it is a good addition.

So, it’s a roaring success for the most part. Whilst not quite being good enough to topple Ocarina and Majora’s Mask off the top of my own personal little Zelda Hit Parade (quite possibly the saddest thing ever, I know), it is now lodged well up there alongside Link’s Awakening. The older, classic Zelda stuff feels fresh and interesting when added to the mixing bowl with the control scheme, the humour and the Wi-Fi multiplayer. Yet another great reason to pick up a DS if you haven’t done so yet; another reason to be smug if you have. Roll on Christmas season!