The awesome Japanese box art that we won't be getting here.
My understanding of Japanese characters does not go beyond, the short one is yes and the long one is no so, I am having a very tough time getting anything done.
The game takes place like right after Wind Waker and they start the game with a really cool recap of what happened in WW in an even more abstract style than WW's. I thought it was very well done. It really captures the mood of WW, especially the intro and the stained glass pictures in Hyrule Castle in WW.
The controls work very well. You just have to press where you want Link to run. You have to press down kind of far away from Link to get him to run though and that can be annoying at times. You have to press like a fourth of the screen away from him to get him running. You can just tap on an interactive object and Link will run to it and interact with it. This works for doors, crates, NPCs, chests, and anything else you can interact with. I think the only move which is kind of hard to pull off is the roll. You have be running and then scratch back and forth quickly to pull it off. The swordplay works much better than I expected. You can slash either right or left with a small arching scratch in either direction. You do the spin move by drawing a circle around Link. You scratch forward to stab, scratch backwards for a forward slash, and tap on enemies from a distance for the jumping slash. I haven't gotten any other items so I don't know how you use those but, I got a shield and I think it just works automatically.
I did get to sail around for a bit. I don't know if people will think it's better than Wind Waker's sailing. I never really had a problem with sailing. I thought it was cool. Sailing in this game is different though. Basically, you draw out your path on the map before you get on the ship and then you just start sailing. You can move the camera around by pressing on different places on the screen which works a lot like the right analog stick camera control in other games does. You can also tap on this little circle on the screen to make the ship jump. Sometimes these monsters will come out and you have to jump over them. You can also stop the ship at any time and draw out a new route if you want to. Oh yeah, and the sea is much smaller than in WW so there's stuff on the horizon all over the place and the trips are much shorter. Also, I guess you can upgrade your ship with different stuff you find along your quest. I haven't found anything new yet though.
The graphics are amazing for a DS game. It is extremely low poly like Animal Crossing but, it's displaying a lot more geometry than AC did. They did an extremely good job of capturing the Wind Waker look and atmosphere, which reminds me a lot of One Piece and Popeye. Also, they didn't skimp on all of Link's cartoony expressions. I can almost tell what's going on from the funny expressions on the character's faces.
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