First off, if you missed it, here's the first post in this little series. Got a bit behind last month and didn't beat anything, thankfully there were other games I beat recently and in January to still cover.

Today, I'm gonna cover what I just beat.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks



Pros
- New weapons are well-implemented.
- Dungeon design his back on par with the N64 installments.
- Respectably challenging, plenty of dungeons.
- Having Zelda as a sidekick is awesome most of the time.

Cons
- DS screen real estate can lead to some frustrations with Zelda in combat situations.
- Things tend to fall apart to inane trial-and-error just before and even during the final boss.
- Spirit Flute was a cute idea, but becomes a frustration in scenes needed to progress the story.
- Overworld travel can be tedious unless you like trains.

Now, keep in mind that Majora's Mask is my favorite installment of the series. I particularly liked it for the mind-bending dungeon puzzles and Groundhog Day factor. Zelda dungeons have been rather watered-down since then. Used to be that Zelda dungeons started out intuitive and ramped up considerably by end of the game.

Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass never rose above the earliest dungeons in terms of challenge. Spirit Tracks brings that challenge back with some of the most satisfying dungeons as well as the most creative weapons of the series so far.

The big theme is navigating the overworld via train and that's fun sometimes and sometimes it isn't, similar to the boat travel of the previous Toon Link installments. Turns out the sacred spirit tracks laid across the land are being used to seal an ancient evil beneath the earth and naturally some jerk wants to set it loose, which makes things hard for the engineers of the land, including newly-promoted engineer Link.



Clearly, Chancellor Cole - a man that wears two top-hats, couldn't be that culprit, could he? Oh, he's totally stable.

Anyway, this jerk knocks Zelda's spirit out of her body because he needs its power to resurrect the dark lord Malledus. So you gotta go after this guy not just to save the world, but to restore the spirit tracks and put Zelda back in her body.

The hub dungeon concept returns, but thankfully isn't as painful as the one in Phantom Hourglass, which constantly had to be retread. No stupid hourglass, either. Here the hub dungeon - known as the Spirit Tower - all sectioned off, compete a section and you never have to go back to it again..

Between the tower sections and the normal dungeons, there are a total of ten to explore, each more involving that the last. Not only will you have to use the usual tools to solve puzzles but pick the right Phantom Knights for Zelda to possess, of which there are four you'll encounter.

Suffice to say, you will be put to the test, but as in the past, finding that solution is always satisfying. There are some very clever puzzles to be had here.

Things start to get a little shaky at the end. There are epic moments but on the other hand there are moments you'll want to hurl your DS into the nearest wall. This is because you have to manage Zelda's actions in the midst of some serious action at the end.

When things get too frantic for Link, you sometimes end up hitting the little tab that you move Zelda with and she stops doing whatever she was directed to do. The DS screen size is mostly to blame here, as you'll sometimes push the stylus along too frantically, but this could be remedied with a DSi XL, I suppose.

Touch controls worked just fine up to the end point of the game, so its unfortunate to see things become so frustrating there. Also unfortunate was the implementation of the Spirit Flute, one of two items in the game you have to literally blow into the mic to operate. It doesn't work well for the flute, which makes some cutscenes of the game frustrating when they really shouldn't be at all. The mic's sensitivity is just too spotty.

Any other time you need to use it for other functions, the flute works just fine, but on certain cutscenes it just falls apart on you because the musical bits just get a little to ambitious.

Otherwise the game was a real treat for me. I was glad to see Eiji Aonuma doing the kinds of dungeons he could be doing rather than make things too easy again. Let's hope he keeps things that way.

I give Zelda: Spirit Tracks:



Four Selphie Tilmitts out of Five.

As I said before, my score criteria is different :P