Game: "The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass"

Console: Nintendo DS

Developer/publisher: Nintendo

Genre: Action/adventure

Number of players: 1 or 2 players, download/multicard /Wi-Fi

Rated: E for everyone

The premise: This game is the sequel to "Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker" for the Gamecube and begins with Link and Tetra (Zelda's alter ego) sailing around the world. That is, until Tetra boards the Ghost ship and it disappears into the mist. It's up to Link to save her ... again.

Gameplay: All player movement and manipulation of game controls and environment are done with the stylus — the first "Zelda" game to implement the stylus feature. From the puzzles to the way Link fights, players use the stylus and dual screen features.

The good/bad: It would be good if there were an option to turn off the stylus for Link's movement, which can get cumbersome at times.

The puzzles are well thought out, from tracing the landscape of an island to counting the number of palm trees.

In other "Zelda" games there were a lot of fairies floating around that restored you back to life when you died. This, I thought, was an excellent feature because they were everywhere, they were free and you were able to hold on to five of them. In "Hourglass," the fairies have been badly replaced with an expensive potion — and you can hold only two and only buy them in towns.

Tips: You will be using the stylus a lot, so make sure you assign it to the correct hand you will be using.

All around you is vegetation. Chop down the shrubs, roll into trees and dig as much as you can for rubies and hearts.

When the time comes for stealth, be very patient and utilize the safe zones effectively.

Be very slow and careful when retrieving items from the bottom of the ocean. Wrecking your crane can be very expensive to repair.

My take: I have played and mostly enjoyed every "Zelda" game. And although I didn't have the urge to return this game, I wasn't blown away by it. The stylus is not positioned properly for a left-handed person. This makes the puzzles almost impossible when precision is needed. If you have to count on straight lines to intersect (an actual puzzle), your lines will not match up. The stealth portions seem tacked on and slow down the game. The boat you use has no manual control, so you are basically drawing a line for it to follow.

I think the bar for "Zelda" games has been set really high. It's not as though there haven't been original, great portable "Zelda" games — "Seasons," "Ages," and "Link's Awakening" are a few. I was just expecting a lot more, and this game does not deliver. It seems to be coasting on name recognition and gimmicks rather than quality gameplay.

Jeffrey Davis of Honolulu is a video game enthusiast.