Wryview: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is a game that MAY have been snubbed by fans. It's hard to tell since nobody ever talks about it. Most people I speak to only know that in Spirit Tracks you drive a train, which sounds a little silly if you consider that Zelda is a traditional fantasy series. The previous Zelda game on the DS generated some negative buzz so my guess is quite a few gamers did not even bother trying Spirit Tracks.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass introduced the concept of making a Zelda game's controls 100% touch operated, which upset a number of purists. Phantom Hourglass' relative lack of challenge compared to other Zelda games only made it worse. The game became the subject of much bickering and nitpicking, partially because it gave the impression of being "casual." Many seemed to feel that Phantom Hourglass somehow betrayed the Zelda series and dumbed it down. I thus find it a little amusing that The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks tried to make some compromises for the fans yet nobody seems to know about them.

If you're a purist who disliked Phantom Hourglass I think you should at least consider playing Spirit Tracks. While I have my complaints about the game it's got some really great things to offer. Before we begin keep in mind that I'm not one of the people who disliked Phantom Hourglass. It's one of my favorite Zelda games just below known classics such as A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. You're free to take what I say with a pinch of salt.



The story of Spirit Tracks is very simple and the next few paragraphs describing the plot and structure of the game are going to feel very familiar to Zelda fans: Your character (Link) is a train conductor turned hero who needs to help Princess Zelda stop a demon who will destroy the world. You accomplish this by visiting various dungeons that hold the power to lock the demon away. The basic formula of the game is that you need to solve puzzles inside a place called the Spirit Tower to restore some of the world's Spirit Tracks, which are basically just train tracks. Your train travel on those spirit tracks to a new part of the world where a temple is hidden. After some more puzzle solving, obtaining a new weapon, and fighting a boss in the temple you unlock a new part of the Spirit Tower. Once you're back at the Spirit Tower everything loops around and starts up again. There will be people wary of this idea because Phantom Hourglass had a similar formula. The main difference here is that you do not need to repeat any section of the Spirit Tower.

Terrible pun aside the experience is very much so on rails. The game will guide you from beginning to end with relatively little chance of getting lost or sidetracked. Spirit Tracks has a very direct attitude, perhaps because the game is aware that all of the best bits are in the dungeons. With that we've established the basic framework of the game that most Zelda fans are familiar with. Now we get to talk about some of the more interesting bits.

Something needs to be said right off the bat about this game: If you're one of the people who believes The Legend of Zelda is all about its great stories and narrative, run away. Spirit Tricks is a living, breathing gimmick of a game. Everything is about trains. Link drives a train, your arch nemesis drives a train, and there is even an ancient race of people known as the Lokomos (who look like trains.) It makes a little bit of sense when you consider that Japan is a country that's pretty fond of trains but there is one word to describe Spirit Track's story: Silly. Hopefully you have a sense of humor. This is one of those games where the villains want to destroy the world just because. The bad guy is evil, because he's a demon. That's all. Story aside, Spirit Tracks has two major selling points: Solid touch screen controls mixed with well designed and fairly challenging dungeons, and the inclusion of Princess Zelda as a playable character.



The touch screen controls from the last game remain and they're just as good as they ever were, but there's some game mechanics that are a little hard to get a handle on. Spirit Tracks' main addition to the Zelda series is the fact that Zelda's basically dead and follows your character around as a ghost. When you're in the Spirit Tower she's able to possess walking suits of armor, which can you direct by drawing paths on the touch screen. In this case Zelda is actually the tough one. She can walk through spikes, swim in lava, and is impossible to kill. Adding a second character to the mix pretty much completely changes things. The Spirit Tower dungeons are approached in an entirely different manner than the rest of the game's dungeons. Zelda can get Link into certain areas he couldn't access on his own, but Link can't leave Zelda behind for very long. You need to constantly figure out solutions so that both characters can advance. There's four different types of armor for Zelda to use too, each with their own unique ability.

Things get very complicated by the end of the Spirit Tower when Link has all seven of his items and Zelda has all four of her armors. I found these cooperative dungeons to be one of the most interesting ideas I've seen in a long time. They're something that would only really work on a touch screen. but switching between Zelda and Link quickly is difficult. The shortcut buttons assigned to the D-Pad do make things easier but on the few occasions where you need to use Zelda during a boss battle it can be tough either way. Some people will definitely be infuriated because they never found out about the shortcut buttons. In the game's defense: Even if it's hard to use Zelda sometimes it's always interesting.



Spirit Tracks really is all about the inclusion of Princess Zelda. She livens up the game. She's a nicer companion that what you usually get in the Zelda series, and it kind of makes sense to give the title character a little more focus. Even when she's wearing her big suit of armor she moves around in a girlish manner that's comical and fits the tone of the game. As interesting as Zelda is though she's only used for roughly a third of the game. The touch screen controls, the visual style, and the overall structure of the game feels lifted right out of Phantom Hourglass. Even driving around your train and shooting enemies while you travel will feel pretty familiar. There aren't a great deal of new items either. Drawing a path for your boomerang and pulling back on the screen to shoot your bow and arrow are still great but several of the items work exactly as they did in the last game.

Spirit Tracks is by no means an actual rehash, but every once in a while I see something brilliant in this game that makes me wish they had relied less on the framework that Phantom Hourglass had set before it. The Zelda segments in the Spirit Tower are a wellspring of potential and a couple of the new weapons have convinced me that the touch screen is capable of producing new ideas. My favorite weapon is easily a magic wand that let you harden sand and turn it into a pillar. You could pull your stylus over a pit of sand and watch a bridge just form in front of your character. It felt just a little bit magical and there were plenty of puzzles that put it to use in different ways, especially once you returned to the Spirit Tower with Zelda. Some of them were pretty tough puzzles too. Spirit Tracks really doesn't hold your hand very much. It's not the hardest Zelda game ever but definitely makes you wear your thinking cap more than Phantom Hourglass ever did.

Despite the flashes of brilliance I don't think Spirit Tracks is entirely well thought compared to some other Zelda games. Probably my biggest beef with this game is the way it approaches side quests. Simply put the sidequests feel tacked on, and to me personally the Zelda series has always been about exploring the game's world and finding all the items. To me the dungeons, puzzles, and fighting are secondary to simple exploration. Hidden activities and mini-games scattered through the world are supposed to help keep all of that interesting, because wandering would feel aimless without things to do. The problem is that a huge portion of the game's sidequests are all kind of the same: Drive a passenger or cargo from one town to the other.

You won't really start discovering these sidequests unless you begin to backtrack in the game. I was probably about halfway done with the game before I decided I wanted to take a break--which is a good sign in itself--and I had to deliberately backtrack through the game to start finding the quests. The basic idea is that you talk to somebody in a town you've already been to and they'll say something like "I wish I had some ice," or "I wish I lived somewhere warm." To my knowledge nobody will do this unless you go back to somewhere you don't really need to be anymore. After that you'll escort them where they want to go, or go fetch whatever is they want.

That's quite honestly what more than half of the sidequests equate to. Driving the train is good fun, don't get me wrong, but doing the same thing over and over gets old. A point in this game's favor is that Spirit Tracks is very direct. People who hated wandering the open seas in the last game will probably consider the lack of distractions a godsend. You'll be guided directly to all of the game's dungeons, which really are the selling point of this game. The sidequests are very clearly there only there for the sake of being there, just in case you get tired of the main game and start wandering. That much I don't see any real problem with even if it's not how I'd prefer things, but the quests probably wouldn't have felt so tacked on if it weren't for the fact that they're all very similar.



One last bit of nitpicking before we finish up. My least favorite weapon in the game is definitely The Spirit Flute. This is an item that you're told is a royal artifact crucial to your success, which when played can change the world around you. Anybody familiar with this Zelda will figure out the Spirit Flute is inspired by the Ocarina of Time. Simply put the Spirit Flute just doesn't DO much compared to its inspiration. The Ocarina of Time could make rain, turn day into night, summon a horse, provide you with hints, and even teleport you to all the dungeons in the game. The Spirit Flute can make a bird fly close to you and restore your health in a dungeon. It just doesn't compare. The Spirit Flute's really not all that useful and it's mainly there because you need to play a rhythm mini-game to unlock the game's temples. The only thing I can really say I like about the flute is that the game's main theme song is extremely catchy.

Maybe you'll understand my agitation more when you consider that Zelda fans have already seen a much more useful item that works the same way. Maybe you'll understand more after hearing that I've already described half of the game's new weapons to you in this review. There's only 2 other items in the game that weren't in Phantom Hourglass, though they're good ones.

Spirit Tracks doesn't really offer a whole lot of new ideas compared to The Phantom Hourglass, but it's honestly a good game. If you can get over the lackluster sidequests and just appreciate the game for its main quest and silly story there's some great stuff in here. Even if a lot of the weapons and items aren't new, they're used extremely well in the new dungeons and especially so in the boss battles. The bow and arrow feels new for just a little while as you're riding mine carts around a giant monster and shooting it in the back. The train theme does have a certain charm to it if you can just laugh once in a while, and making Princess Zelda an actual part of the game is a nice change of pace. For me personally Spirit Tracks' new ideas outweigh any problems I have with it. It's not a game I'm in love with since I don't think it's a well rounded package, but I'd still recommend it to Zelda fans because it does have its strengths.

To note I'm tired of dealing with numbered scores and how to justify them. This game gets a thumbs up.