Systems: Nintendo DS, Wii U
Release Date: December 7, 2009
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD
I would not say that I hate The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. That would mean that there was nothing I found redeeming in the game and there were several times where I actually did enjoy playing, but those moments were vastly overshadowed by how much I did not like this game. To date, this is my least favorite game in the entirety of The Legend of Zelda series amongst the games that I have played*, and that statement actually makes me a little sad. Legend of Zelda games should be fun adventure games to play, not games that are disliked because of mechanics and design. I should extrapolate in that it is not so much my "least favorite," more like, this is a Legend of Zelda game that I would like to never play again unless it is to actually go back and finish the penultimate dungeon and then go through the final dungeon to defeat the boss.
That is correct. I have not finished Spirit Tracks because I reached a point in the second-to-last-dungeon that I just threw up my proverbial arms and said, "Fuck it, I'm done with this." I was not having any more fun. I was consulting a walkthrough because I am apparently an idiot who cannot un-puzzle this Legend of Zelda game and cannot remember game mechanics that were introduced I do not know how many levels back. I guess I am still a bit frustrated with myself for not sticking with the game consistently enough to remember how specific characters act and how Zelda as a spirit can be used (more on that later).
When I first started the game, I was a little "eh" about the whole train mechanic and how the whole game centered around trains. It really just felt like a more on-rails version of Phantom Hourglass and Windwaker, in that instead of navigating a boat around islands, you are conducting a train around various biomes on a larger landmass and you can only explore specific locations (which I guess is not too dissimilar to The Adventure of Link, but only if you were stuck to the roads in that game and couldn't wander into different environments). I did not mind so much the in-game lore behind the construction of the train tracks as a form of chain to bind in the Demon King Malladus in his prison, and presumably that the chains were at some point used as a device to build trains upon. Inevitably, the tracks (and in turn the prison) are destroyed (in a sense, and I will give credit to the writers for this left turn plotline) after Zelda is killed and her body taken to be possessed by the Demon King so he can return to the world. Zelda then accompanies the player (Link, although I named him Jaconian, because why not?) because he is with her when this happens and because Link is in possession of the Spirit Pipes (more on those in a bit). Together Link and Zelda work with the Lokomos (get it, like locomotive!?), the keepers of the Spirit Tower, and elemental dungeons to restore the Tower of the Spirits that was destroyed after Zelda was killed to stop the Demon Cole from resurrecting the Demon King Malladus.
Now that the plot (more-or-less) has been taken care of, let us get down to all of the issues I had with the game.
The controls in this game are essentially the same as they were in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, but for whatever reason, this game seemed to bother me. There were countless times when I felt that my right hand while holding the stylus and directing where I wanted Link to go on the bottom screen of the 3DS, that it was covering 2/3rds of the screen, especially if I was having him move from right to left. I also do not recall the controls being as finicky in Phantom Hourglass, but here I seemed to need to exaggerate my movements with the stylus to get Link to attack and not just move forward, or to run instead of just walk; although apparently there were no significant changes between the controls implemented between the two games from what I have read. I could probably also chalk it up to the way that I hold the stylus, which is the same way that I hold a pencil, which I know it's not the proper way to hold it because it has been something that I have been aware of since the first grade. This is also one of the inherent tradeoffs when playing a game on the 3DS that is attempting to make full use of the fact that you are playing on a video game system with a touch screen, and really one of the things I like the least about trying to play games on mobile phones.
One of the other issues I had with the game was Beedle's shop, how the store itself operated, and rupees in general. Each town in each of the biomes had their own limited store, but Beedle, the ever entrepreneur operates a hot air balloon that travels through each of the biomes and you can flag him down by way of tooting your train whistle if you travel under him. From what I understood about how Beedle's shop operates is that he will have bombs, potions, and randomized treasures that always felt stupidly expensive. And the treasures Beedle would only keep stocked at one item for every real-world day, so if you bought a Pearl Necklace, you would have to wait until you turned the game off and waited until the next day* to buy something else. Beedle's shop also offered a frequent buyer's card that after a certain amount of rupees spent is gifted to the player. But if you do not have enough rupees to purchase one of the treasures and you never end up using potions, but you still use rupees buying another shield because another stupid Like Like ate it. Again. Or from having to purchase another block of ice to deliver to the Gorons because it continues to melt while avoiding one of the Dark Trains or fending off one of the flying Snurgles. The point is, there always seemed something that I needed to buy from a vendor in the game who was not Beedle and I never really needed to buy anything from Beedle to count towards my Membership Card so that I could buy enough to be gifted the Heart Container he has sitting in the back of his store.
And speaking of treasures in the game, I never felt that there was a good explanation as to the treasures and their purpose until, what felt like to me, about 2/3rds of the way through the game when you are told that you can use these treasures to upgrade your train. And what does an upgraded train get you? I guess you will just have to buy the parts, use up your treasures and find out because I could not find anything in-game that gave any kind of explanation. I did read that having a combined train, caboose, canon, and freight car will give the train more hearts (life) whereas your starting train only has four hearts. So all of these treasures that you collect can be used to upgrade your train, for mostly cosmetic reasons, regardless of the item description. And the fact that these treasures are located in some larger than normal treasure chests in dungeons felt very annoying. To complete a puzzle that took 10ish minutes to figure out and finally execute only to be gifted with a randomized treasure that turned out to only be a Mystic Jade, or worse, a Pearl Necklace felt very much like a slap across the face. Looking back at Phantom Hourglass, I do not think I cared about upgrading the ship either so I must not have focused too much on collecting and/or selling treasures.
Moving down the list of things that I did not like about this game was how Zelda was used and implemented. The game's director, Daiki Iwamoto said that he wanted Zelda to play a more active and integral role in this game, and once Zelda was killed and she became a ghost, I thought that she would then take on a Navi-like role, either drawing Link's attention to locations, objects or injecting commentary while they were on their adventure to save the world. What I realized was that Zelda would really only come about when you entered a train station to get back on the train, or during scenes when the two would interact with the wizened Lokomos. She did show up in the Spirit Tower when you needed her to take over the body of one of the Phantom Knights, but she would mostly stay silent throughout most of the game. While she was present more than in some previous Legend of Zelda games, I still felt that her role in this game could have been used a lot more than it actually was.
And speaking of things that could have been used more, let us talk a bit about the Spirit Flute, a panflute used by Link to. . .do things? I guess? In Majora's Mask, you could use the Ocarina to alter the flow of time, bring about rain, or teleport across the world map (being just a few functions), and in The Wind Waker, you use the self-titled baton to open stone doors, change the direction of the wind, or again, transport yourself across the map to specific locations. In Spirit Tracks, your musical item I felt was so infrequently used that I would often forget that it was even in my possession. Your acquiring of it is what allows you to see Zelda in spirit form, and you do use it to unlock the access to temples by playing a different duet with a different Lokomo or to uncover something that you think might be hidden in a surrounding area. The most useful song was probably the Song of Healing, which essentially summoned a fairy once per game per dungeon (meaning if you died and restarted, you could use the fairy again. . .I think. . .) to heal you instead of using a potion or finding hearts. Maybe because I had become so jaded with this game, that the song you could use to talk to stones whose sole purpose was to tell you if there were any treasure chests left undiscovered on the specific floor of the dungeon you were on, that I just did not care about playing this song. Maybe you use the Spirit Flute during the final boss battle against the Demon King Malladus, but I guess we will not know until a few years from now when I decided to do a Legend of Zelda timeline playthrough.
You know, let us end with a few things that I actually enjoyed about Spirit Tracks because I recognize that I have been pretty negative for the last five paragraphs. I did enjoy the music, with the overworld theme once you cleared a biome being my favorite. I loved a lot of the sub-weapons and I still think that this way of controlling the boomerang, by plotting its path is a lot of fun. I liked the snake whip I think because it is a pretty rare weapon in video games although the snakehead could have been used more or had more of an effect on enemies than just stunning them. Riding the train was occasionally fun and the canon had some good oomph too when your shots impacted either enemies, signs along the tracks or boulders. Maybe if this game had not been a Legend of Zelda game I might have had a better impression of it, or more likely, I probably would not have played it in the first place.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
*P.S. I have not played the following games in the mainline Legend of Zelda series:
Skyward Sword
Minish Cap
Four Swords
Oracle of Ages
Oracle of Seasons
A Link Between Worlds
Tri-Force Heroes
Four Swords Adventure
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