by Joel

According to Japan’s Famitsu magazine. Here is what Wikipedia has to say.

Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu was the first to review Phantom Hourglass, awarding it a score of 39 out of 40 (the individual scores of the four reviewers being 10, 10, 9 and 10). Only 15 other games in the history of the magazine have received such a score.

Chris Kohler, of Wired‘s gaming blog “Game|Life“, having received his copy of Phantom Hourglass, finds its stylus-driven control scheme “totally natural” (he notes, however, that “so did playing with buttons”) and also notes that there “seems to be absolutely zero learning curve“. In his second set of impressions, he likens Phantom Hourglass to Super Mario 64, stating that the game is “classic Nintendo”, in that “it is the game that will be copied endlessly from here on out… a textbook of how to use a touch screen for a third-person action game”. He did, however, note the high amount of cutscenes-to-gameplay ratio, and even though they were “visually interesting”, hoped that the amount “evens out a little bit”.