Fresh Takes or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Temple of the Ocean King

Back in 2020, Zelda Dungeon’s staff collectively ranked the Top 50 Dungeons in the Zelda series. Given the nature of such a project, no one person could have been 100% satisfied with the final result. But when all was said and done, we walked away confident that most of the dungeons the Zelda fanbase holds up as the greatest were accounted for on that list. As long as perennial favorites like Ocarina of Time‘s Forest Temple, Twilight Princess‘ Arbiter’s Grounds, and Skyward Sword‘s Ancient Cistern were present, there shouldn’t be a lot of room for complaints beyond simple ordering… right?

While I personally still respect what our staff built back then, something that has always bothered me about that ranking is the inclusion of Phantom Hourglass‘ Temple of the Ocean King. As far as I knew, this unconventional hub dungeon had always been regarded as a particularly poor section of an already polarizing Zelda game, with fans of all stripes criticizing its focus on stealth, its time limits, and its insistence that players re-explore the same floors again and again over the course of their adventure. And ever since Phantom Hourglass hit store shelves in 2007, the Temple of the Ocean King’s reputation as a poor dungeon — at least from my perspective — had been further reinforced in magazines, on television, and within online spaces.

The Temple of the Ocean King’s placement on Zelda Dungeon’s Top 50 Dungeons list left a lingering source of doubt in my understanding of this dungeon’s reputation within the greater Zelda fanbase. Had the community come around on it? Was it always just misunderstood? Did I not give it the proper chance when I first played through Phantom Hourglass all those years ago?

So, five years after that ranking was published, with the ZD team rethinking our positions and opinions in the form of Fresh Takes, I knew that I needed to once again sail through Phantom Hourglass and determine for myself if the Temple of the Ocean King earns its place among The Legend of Zelda‘s greatest dungeons. If it does, with what positive qualities does it succeed? And if it doesn’t, what novel ideas are nonetheless obscured the dungeon’s infamy?

Join me, if you please, as I reenter one of the Zelda series’ most unique dungeons in an attempt to understand, and to earn a greater appreciation for, its many peculiarities. Join me as I learn to love the Temple of the Ocean King.

 

Making the Most of Link’s Inventory

Writing for our Top 50 Zelda Dungeons ranking, Zelda Dungeon owner Mases Hagopian praised how the Temple of the Ocean King asks players to utilize every tool in Link’s arsenal in order to succeed. “What I’ve always loved about the Temple of the Ocean King is that every time Link acquires a new item from elsewhere in the game, it always has a use in the dungeon,” he said. “Whether that is sending Bombchus through narrow corridors, using the Grapple Hook to travel across distant gaps, or using the Hammer to launch yourself over walls, the dungeon takes advantage of every single item in Link’s inventory.”

Every item is provided a purpose; nothing is superfluous.

As I explored the dungeon’s halls for the first time in 15 years, I observed this very same characteristic in practice. Every item I had collected throughout my adventure had a use — sometimes more than one — within the temple, from the obvious tools like the bow and bombs, to the more specialized instruments like the shovel and the hammer. Even something as idiosyncratic as the Bombchu, an item generally useful for only one token puzzle in every Zelda game it features in, has a clear and distinct function within the Temple of the Ocean King.

In this way, the Temple of the Ocean King can be seen as an answer to a trend within Zelda games that had become more and more maligned by the time Phantom Hourglass came out. By 2007, the single-use Zelda item — a tool acquired in a dungeon that sees its greatest utility in the very dungeon it’s discovered in — had already become a trope. Twilight Princess‘ Spinner remains the go-to example for such an item, as it demonstrates its greatest utility within the dungeon in which it’s found before going largely unused for the rest of the adventure.

The dungeon items of Phantom Hourglass don’t have this problem, as they require continued use throughout Link’s quest, especially within the Temple of the Ocean King. One would think that a basic tool like the shovel would exhaust its usefulness by the last leg of a Zelda adventure, but as I played through Phantom Hourglass, I found myself digging up patches of loose dirt to reveal wind streams as late as my final visit to the temple. I can’t overestimate how refreshing it was to know that every part of my tool belt would serve a continued purpose; nothing felt like wasted space.

Crucially, Phantom Hourglass‘ selection of items benefit from one of the Temple of the Ocean King’s greatest sources of criticism, its focus on repeat visits. While I can still empathize with players who scoff at the idea of re-navigating the same rooms again and again — Zelda dungeons don’t typically ask us to do that — I now recognize that the primary reason the dungeon is laid out this way is to better emphasize the versatility and efficiency of Link’s growing arsenal.

By forcing players to explore a series of rooms with less tools first — to experience that initial struggle of overcoming obstacles and puzzles the hard way — the Temple of the Ocean King is establishing a baseline difficulty that can be contrasted against the ease of repeat visits. The dungeon is providing an example of how laborious its challenges can be, only to allow players to bypass more and more of that laboriousness with each new visit, as they gain more and more items.

I’m reminded in this aspect of the Metroidvania genre, a style of game defined by expanding collections of powers and tools, and by the act of backtracking through already explored areas. Speaking personally, I rather enjoy revisiting early areas in Metroidvania games, as by doing so, I am able to better recognize how much my mobility options and combat abilities have increased. There’s a power fantasy at play, as I can now, with weapons and powers acquired in later areas, effortlessly move through an introductory area that I had struggled through hours earlier.

By reframing my perspective during this latest playthrough of Phantom Hourglass, I recognized the many visits to the Temple of the Ocean King as a form of backtracking, like that seen in Metroidvania games. As I ran through the first few floors, each time with an incrementally larger inventory, I found new ways to circumvent tedious puzzles, bypass combat encounters, and create shortcuts. With bombs, I could blast a hole in wall to walk straight to an exit rather than take the long way around. With Bombchus, I could trigger a switch once out of reach and save the time and effort it’d take to walk to it. And with the bow, I could stun Phantom sentries to more freely and safely navigate the labyrinth. Compared to the fumbling and aimless wandering of my first attempts through, these late-game passes were a true power trip. There existed a deeply satisfying sense of progression.

The often criticized time limit of the Ocean King’s temple also plays into how Phantom Hourglass conveys this progression. It’s one thing to feel — in some immaterial way — how much Link’s abilities have expanded with each new revisit; but it’s another see how that expansion benefits the player empirically. If you are using all your tools effectively in the Temple of the Ocean King, you are always saving time. What may have taken ten minutes to complete now only takes two; thus you have more time to dive even deeper into the temple than you had before. And if you needed an indication of your progress beyond your perceived performance, that time limit in the corner of the screen is always there to reinforce the idea that you are in fact doing better than you were before.

Perhaps this can be attributed to my deeper gaming résumé, but, during this latest playthrough, I much more appreciated the design decisions made with the Temple of the Ocean King in regards to player progression and inventory implementation. Back in the day, I could only see the emphasis on revisits and the time limits as arbitrary gimmicks that needlessly pulled Phantom Hourglass‘ farther away from the traditional Zelda formula. Today, however, I can recognize these more controversial elements as effective responses to longstanding issues present within that formula.

By borrowing a few ideas from other game genres and employing them in this dungeon, Phantom Hourglass allows players to perceive the hero’s growth over the course of his adventure that much more acutely. One’s entire core inventory is put to good use from beginning to end, and, by employing every new skill and instrument effectively, one is able to more quickly and with greater ease overcome initial challenges. In the end, the player truly feels like he or she has conquered the dungeon, rather than simply having gotten through it.

 

Tactical Espionage Action

Phantom Hourglass doesn’t just borrow from other game franchises to accentuate its progression system. The game also borrows from other franchises in order to improve a particular form of play.

Stealth sequences have played a part in The Legend of Zelda since A Link to the Past, with nearly every game in the series providing moments along the critical path for Link to hide, sneak, and tiptoe around watchful sentries. Whether it be Hyrule Castle Courtyard in Ocarina of Time, the Pirates’ Fortress in Majora’s Mask, or Forsaken Fortress in The Wind Waker, these sequences have reliably shaken up Zelda‘s standard gameplay loop and added a fair bit of tension to an adventure.

But before 2007, I don’t think the Zelda series had borrowed enough from the leading stealth game series out there when presenting its own sneaking missions. Sequences focusing on infiltration and evasion in games like Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker were certainly adequate — fun, even. But the environments built around the concept were just too basic and the enemy AI was just too simple and inconsistent when compared to the genre’s greatest names. Luckily, Phantom Hourglass, through the Temple of the Ocean King, rectified these shortcomings by taking quite a few cues from perhaps the most renowned stealth game franchise: Metal Gear.

(Although I couldn’t find any direct confirmation that Konami’s Metal Gear series served as an inspiration for Phantom Hourglass, enough reviews of the latter mention the former to justify the comparison in my eyes.)

For anyone who has played the earliest Metal Gear series — chiefly the first MSX entry through Metal Gear Solid 2 — the similarities between that series and Phantom Hourglass‘ hub dungeon are immediately evident. Enemy sentries’ lines-of-sight are clearly conveyed by large vision cones on each respective game’s map, helping the player to reliably avoid detection if they stay in guards’ blind-spots. Environments are labyrinthine mazes of walls, hallways, and hiding spots, giving the player ample pathways to sidestep patrols while sneaking or to retreat if caught.

As a seasoned gamer who recognizes the ways Metal Gear innovated the stealth genre, I can easily appreciate how Phantom Hourglass encourages and rewards careful play within its tightly constructed stealth arenas. The temple’s floor plan, for example, utilizes various interconnected, grid-based hallways that allow for multiple approaches to many of the given challenges. If a Phantom is pacing back and forth through a single hallway, Link could choose to hide in a corner, just outside the guard’s line of sight, until it passes, or he could purposely reveal himself in order to lead the Phantom away from that hallway.

Like in the Metal Gear games, the true magic of the level design comes when the varied patrols of guards intersect with each other. If a single Phantom’s patrols are leading it through an upper hallway, Link would obviously be wise to take a lower hallway to avoid detection. But if a second Phantom was patrolling that lower hallway concurrently, Link might need to run back and forth between both hallways — doubling back even — in order to remain undetected by either sentry. Thanks to these dynamics, the moment-to-moment gameplay remains tense throughout the Temple of the Ocean King, as the player is forced to adapt to a continuously evolving play area defined by the asynchronous movements of multiple patrols. It’s really exciting!

Beyond just constantly shifting lines of sight of the sentries, the Temple of the Ocean also employs sound to enhance its stealth gameplay. Like the uniquely perceptive guards of Metal Gear Solid, the temple’s Phantoms respond to certain noises produced by our hero as he sneaks through the halls otherwise unseen. For one, certain items in Link’s inventory, bombs most notably, produce sound when used and thus attract the attention of nearby Phantoms. Players should think two steps ahead and map out their exit strategies if they plan to blow something up.

Sound is also incorporated into the temple’s level design, with some rooms sporting unique floor tiles that emit noise when Link runs across them. The only way to navigate these tiles silently is to walk slowly over them, which makes avoiding the Phantoms’ patrols that much more difficult. They very much remind me of the metal gratings and puddles of water that Metal Gear players are forced to walk slowly over lest they make too much noise. Combined with the constantly shifting sight lines of sentries and the various traps that litter the dungeon, this application of sound detection enhances the tension and excitement of Phantom Hourglass‘ stealth that much more. In the later floors, players must be mindful of all guards’ positioning and patrol patterns, the layout of the rooms, and the presence of sound hazards in order to succeed. No other Zelda game had before leaned that much into its complexity of stealth.

But sound in the Temple of the Ocean is as much a tool as it is an obstacle. One of the first tricks Link learns in this dungeon to use the noise of a breaking pot to draw the attention of patrolling Phantoms. By throwing a pot in a certain direction or smashing one from a distance with the boomerang or bow, Link is able to lure guards away from their posts or create openings in their patrols. Link can also create sounds with the aforementioned bombs and with sword strikes to a wall (like Solid Snake knocking on a wall), providing our hero with some advantages over his adversaries, even if he can’t attack them directly right away.

Because the Phantoms on patrol have more complicated movements and more robust perceptions — especially compared to Hyrule’s guards in Ocarina of Time or Deku Palace guards in Majora’s Mask — they prove worthy threats against a particularly under-equipped Link. The stakes are further raised with each subsequent return to the temple, as new and more adept Phantoms are introduced to the mix, such as the Phantom Eye spotters and the sneaky Wizzrobes. And to top it off, Link has no true method of taking them on directly until very late in the game. He’ll be able to stun them momentarily once he gets his hands on the bow, but that’s about the extent of his combat ability for most of the adventure.

The intelligence and relative strength displayed by these enemies make one’s first few visits to the Temple of the Ocean King feel like truly daunting expeditions, as any mistake will result in a band of overpowered baddies closing in on your position. The only option at that point is to run and seek shelter in a safe zone, not unlike an alert phase in Metal Gear. It’s always a safer bet to retreat and hide than it is to hold your ground and fight — as if the latter option is viable at all.

Now, while I do recognize that some players found the constant run and hide arrangement with the invulnerable Phantoms to be a tad frustrating, I personally believe all the systems described above work together brilliantly to ensure that failure is almost always due to a player’s lack of patience and foresight. If I get caught and have to run to safety, it’s usually my own fault. And even then, the Phantom’s alert phase is rather short, meaning that players need only to hole up in a safe zone for a few seconds before the sentries return to their posts. The punishment for detection is rather forgiving in that sense. I’d even argue that the time punishment for getting caught is not all that severe.

By so closely following the template set by the early Metal Gear titles with the Temple of the Ocean King, however implicitly, Phantom Hourglass achieved the most elegantly designed and consistently satisfying stealth scenarios the Zelda had seen by that point. The dungeon makes fabulous use of level architecture, enemy behaviors, and environmental features like sound to keep the stealth sequences increasingly varied, consistently tense, and satisfyingly challenging. Only after having exposed myself to other stealth franchises out there over the past several years was I able to fully recognize these design decisions and fully appreciate their effectiveness.

 

Justifying the Touchscreen

Truth be told, I am not a fan of Phantom Hourglass‘ touchscreen controls. Aside from a few novel enhancements to item use — such as controlling the path of the boomerang — I find the constant need to hold a stylus for all manner of actions intrusive and irritating. I understand the developers’ desire to utilize the Nintendo DS’ unique hardware to its fullest effect, but replacing tried-and-true control systems with a much worse alternative was entirely misguided in my opinion. Movement via a directional pad has worked great for The Legend of Zelda since the 80s; it didn’t need to be replaced with the imprecision and unwieldiness of movement via a touchscreen.

However, my latest playthrough of Phantom Hourglass did illuminate one genuinely useful mechanic facilitated by the touchscreen: the ability to write and draw on maps using the stylus. At several points throughout the adventure, the player is encouraged to mark down important information on their map, both for reference on future challenges and for simple puzzle-solving. One might be asked to copy geographical markings displayed on an ancient stone slab, extrapolate where on the map two straight lines intersect, or jot down clues denoting the correct order to activate a series of switches.

In a lot of ways, this mechanic emulates the historical act of taking notes or drawing on a map within one game’s manual. In fact, Phantom Hourglass was released in the waning days of game manuals, which makes me wonder if this feature was meant as a way to preserve and modernize the experience of writing in your physical booklets, given how crucial that experience had been to The Legend of Zelda historically. But I digress.

The point is that, by introducing this note-taking mechanic, Phantom Hourglass found a worthwhile — and brilliant, honestly — use for the stylus that was neither intrusive to real-time gameplay nor irritatingly gimmicky. It’s a feature that I actually wish was in more Zelda games. Breath of the Wild and the titles that followed did come close to this feature by letting players place stamps and icons on their maps, but those tools will never be as versatile or as robust as what one can compose in freehand. Stamps and icons might carry implicit meaning, but written words, numbers, diagrams, and traced pathways communicate so much more.

Because Phantom Hourglass demands players scribble on their maps during every leg of their adventure, I’m convinced that the game was deliberately communicating and reinforcing a valuable skill that should be in turn leveraged in the Temple of the Ocean King. Just like a dungeon item found elsewhere demonstrating its greatest usefulness in the temple, the many moments throughout the game that teach the player to write and draw on the map are meant to inform best practices in the temple. You’re much better off making memos in the Temple of the Ocean, and the game is trying to get you to realize that.

Like Link’s growing arsenal of weapons and tools, this crucial skill serves its greatest purposes in subsequent visits to the Temple of the Ocean King, as, when employed effectively, knowledge gained during early visits can be jotted down in the moment in order to save time and effort during later visits. My own scribbles left behind within the dungeon, for example, include circles and ticks pointing to priority targets on each floor, arrows denoting the quickest paths through given sections, and symbols identifying different types of switches in the dungeon’s late-stage areas. I can only imagine how each individual player documents that information in their own unique way.

I left behind every one of these notes in order to save me time each instance I returned to the dungeon, because I knew without them I’d be fumbling around trying to remember the best paths through, the exact locations of important keys and switches, and the correct order of actions needed to proceed. I even began marking the locations of hidden time bonuses by the end of my playthrough. When the goal is to get through the temple more quickly each time so that you can go farther than you did before, every second counts.

It’s through this dynamic that I think the Temple of the Ocean King’s unique qualities — the backtracking, the time limits, the goal of getting further in each time — are best justified. If we were asked to only run through the dungeon once, or even twice, we’d have no pronounced reason to leave memos behind for ourselves beyond a few shallow puzzles like those seen outside the temple. By forcing us to explore the same floors again and again — and to do so more efficiently each time — the game presents clear opportunities to use every tool at our disposal to cut down on time. And, in my opinion, there are no better tools available to the player than the map and the stylus we use to write on it.

My most recent playthrough of Phantom Hourglass may not have redeemed the stylus controls in my eyes — in fact, it kind of made me hate them even more. But what the playthrough did do was reveal to me best application of the touchscreen and demonstrate that application most emphatically in the Temple of the Ocean King. With this very special dungeon, one of Phantom Hourglass‘ biggest strengths, to me, would have been left underutilized by the developers and overlooked by players.

 

Conclusion

When I decided to set sail into the Realm of the Ocean King once again for this Fresh Takes project, I did not expect to be definitively won over by what I perceived to be one of the most derided dungeons in the Zelda series. In fact, I did not expect to find so many reasons — so, so many words — to champion the Temple of the Ocean King and its various peculiarities.

But here I stand now, as a man who has learned to love the Temple of the Ocean King. I have come to understand the design decisions behind the repeat visits, behind the ticking clock, and behind the invulnerable enemies. So many aspects of this dungeon work together to accentuate what Zelda games do best, to eliminate bad habits the franchise had developed over the years, and to utilize new ideas established in other game series.

The Temple of the Ocean King is different, but that doesn’t make it a bad dungeon. If anything, that uniqueness makes the Temple of the Ocean King an attempt to revolutionize the Zelda series during a particularly inventive time in Nintendo’s history. And while I find myself humbled having realized that I was wrong all those years ago, I am nonetheless appreciative of the opportunity to finally see this special dungeon for what it is.

The Temple of the Ocean King is a great dungeon, and it deserves to stand amongst the Zelda series’ best.

What are your takes on the Temple of the Ocean King? Have I convinced you to give Phantom Hourglass another chance? Let us know in the comments below!

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Screenshots derived from Phantom Hourglass walkthrough by RetroArchive