Okay, let’s do a Zeldo
Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass [9] Ocean, Again
Video Length: 26:33
In today’s exciting episode, we head back to the Ocean King’s Temple to once more plumb it’s depths. But before we do so, let’s check up on a few of the boats lingering in the North Eastern Sea. Beedle is one, and it is here I’m reminded that his shop sells different stuff depending on the region he is in, and his masked ship probably does the same. That’ll be rough. Also rough, I do NOT have enough rupees to buy the bomb bag, which I’d very much like to have right now. Unfortunately I also decide the cash is burning a hole in my pocket so I buy us a nice gem. After that, we head to a mysterious long-ship that turns out to be…the Prince of Red Lions, piloted by a rather suspiciously dressed individual who believes himself to be a hero of some sort. We train a bit…and by train I mean terrify him with our sword, and he rewards us for it. We’ll be back to train more COMPLETELY with Nyeve here later, because I forget how to make him willing to do more. And because I definitely don’t have time to do 100-200 hits on him just yet.
With those distractions out of the way, we finally return to Mercay Island, and wander our way up to the Ocean King’s Temple. With our bombs and shovel in hand, we do have SOME access to new things. First off, on the walk up to the temple, we can blow up some rocks to get a shortcut to the temple (not super relevant considering how short the other path is) and blow up a rock wall that leads to some treasure, and further mysterious interactables. Within the temple itself, the first two real floors get a shortcut with the bombs, though of these the first one is a bit more significant than the others. Floor B3 has basically no real shortcut, since the shovel point really doesn’t accomplish much that isn’t just as easy to perform otherwise. But finally, after all that, it’s onto new content. And what new content it is!
B4, the start of the next bit of new content, introduces us to a…contentious new friend. The Phantom Eyes! The eyes of the Phantom, they have a…finicky view range that is not even remotely shown on the map, and once they see you they become invincible and alert every single Phantom on the floor to your location. They also sometimes SUMMON more Phantoms, so that’s always fun. Thankfully, if you do catch them unaware with the boomerang, you can kill them and that solves that. And on this floor you even get a treasure chest for doing so! The puzzle otherwise is just navigating a wind maze without being caught out, so it’s easy enough. Onto B5, which…is less puzzle and more combat challenge. This is honestly appreciated, since a ton of puzzles in a row isn’t always the best gameplay. Sometimes you need to break it up with some combat…though given it’s Phantom Hourglass’s combat, that’s a small blessing to be sure.
The last room, B6, is another example of how the game feels trickier than it is. There are six tablets, and the four in the corners tell us the order we should care about them, while the middle two tell us “hey care about the order” and…just kinda rudely dunk garbage onto us without any warning at all? It’s super bad and probably the worst thing we’ve encountered in this game up till this point. Reading this tablet, without any warning, drops two more Phantom Eyes into the room, at rather inconvenient spots. It’s not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a level of rudeness you wouldn’t often expect from Zelda, and one that is very much not appreciated since it implies we’ll probably end up with MORE rudeness like this later. At any rate, we draw ourselves a hourglass symbol, and make our way into the room of courage, wherein we find a fun little sun mural telling us how to get to the next temple! All we need to do is press our map into the stonecuttig on the mural. This is one of the most iconic, memorable puzzles in the game due to how it takes advantage of the DS in I think interesting, relevant ways. With our map marked with a little courage symbol sticker, we can now safely…have no idea what to do with it. But the hintings at a Salvage Crane makes me PRETTY sure what we can do next.
Before that though, we check out the now open Treasure Teller! He appraises our treasures and ship parts, and we can sell them to him for rupees. The price he assigned each ship part set and each treasure is entirely random, determined when you start the game…and it turns out most of the stuff I have right now is garbage! Thankfully, I know not to sell to him just yet. There’s a store out there that buys certain items at a rather high price…it’s just that this is also determined randomly. Sweet. It’s to encourage connecting your game with other players, but as someone who is flying entirely solo that doesn’t really help me much. It also just feels bad to have all this treasure and be told it’s not worth much. But ah well, it wouldn’t be Zelda if there wasn’t at least one finicky and weird mechanic.
But that’ll be it for today. Join us next time when we finally obtain the Salvage Arm, and set about…probably trying to get treasure from under the sea, but also probably progressing things. We’ll see. Hope you all enjoyed!