Review: The Legend of Zelda - Spirit Tracks
A century has passed since the ending of Phantom Hourglass, and the sailors from the Great Sea have established a home in the land of New Hyrule. The land is covered in a spider's web of a railroad known as the Spirit Tracks, with train engineers being a highly revered profession blessed by Princess Zelda herself despite the fact that the tracks are slowly fading away. Link is on the final day of his training and meets the princess to become a fully-fledged engineer; she warns him of the danger presented by her chancellor, a man named Cole, and begs Link to take her to the Tower of Spirits which connects the tracks. Along the way, Cole and his partner Byrne defeat Link and capture Zelda, splitting her soul from her body. Zelda's soul begs Link's assistance to restore the Spirit Tracks and get her body back.
Complications arise when the two reach the tower: the tower's attendant Anjean, a sage from the Lokomo race, warns them that the Spirit Tracks were in fact shackles holding the ancient demon Malladus. Cole plans to ascend the Tower of Spirits and use Zelda's body as a vessel to revive Malladus, and the only chance for Link and Zelda to stop Cole is to restore the Spirit Tracks and climb to the top of the tower.
The Spirit Tracks constitute both the game's main thematic element and the primary method of travel: the Spirit Train. Calling everything Spirit-whatever sounds weird in retrospect, as if the Adam West Batman were in charge of the naming conventions of New Hyrule. The train is only tangentially similar to the boat of Phantom Hourglass and even further removed from the boat of The Wind Waker. Players track their intended path over the rail line tracing to their destination, which seems laid back and easy but because this is a DS Zelda everything is unnecessarily obtuse.
The speed of the train, even at its highest setting, is absolutely too slow and unlike Phantom Hourglass, the method of travel is too restricted to get players where they need to be quickly. Instead, being stuck on a path commonly leads to players just watching themselves travel with all the excitement of paint drying. Of course, small distractions will occasionally pop up to keep the player invested in the tedium of traveling the Spirit Tracks but these are just that: distractions.
Forcing the player to randomly shoot at boars or other wild animals on the road are just about the height of depth that ever occurs on the Spirit Tracks. I'd argue that it's not much different from the little distractions of the World of the Ocean King from Phantom Hourglass, but giving the player the option to trace entirely free paths across the sea at least allowed for some level of mobility. In that regard, the tracks are a complete step back from Phantom Hourglass. Warp points existed in Phantom Hourglass to help the player travel to specific areas of the map, so even though it felt fairly large it was very easy to navigate since all it took was the easily-found Cyclone Slate and some decent aiming on the player's part.
As this was apparently too intuitive the developers chose to sprinkle warp gates all over the Spirit Tracks which connect to the different sections of the overworld, but the locations make no sense and there's no reliable way to tell where you need to go aside from entering a warp point and hoping for the best. At a certain point players will either need to write detailed instructions for the warp gates or just go back to the Tower of Spirits to enter one of the four realms. Since I was on a time crunch, I never had the time to do the former and chose to go back to the tower in order to make travel just a bit easier, but I don't understand why the warp gates wouldn't just allow players to choose where they wanted to travel to. I also have a minor gripe with the way the game deals with stopping at stations on the world map; I appreciate the detail of having to stop the train if the player wants to enter a station, but it can be annoying to orient the train if the player missed the stop.
Even worse, and probably my absolute biggest hang-up of the overworld, is the existence of the Dark Trains which roam the Spirit Tracks. These trains patrol a specific area of every line of tracks, but stopping and starting the train to avoid these is an annoyance at best. If a Dark Train touches the player it causes an immediate game over which restarts the player at the beginning of their starting point on the map. The idea of the Dark Trains could have been interesting in concept, but the execution is horribly flawed and gives the game an unbelievable amount of annoyance in even the smallest areas.
That's not even to mention the unintentional difficulty of just moving around, which has been carried over from Phantom Hourglass. There's really not much to say about the on-foot gameplay since it's virtually unchanged since the previous game, but there are both positive and negative changes in various aspects. Naturally, items like Heart Containers and item capacity upgrades cost an exorbitant amount of rupees, and by the end of the game I was missing both the larger bomb bag and quivers and still had six Heart Containers I simply couldn't find or afford. The maligned central dungeon reappears as the Tower of Spirits, though this time players are not required to scale floors that have already been completed. Because these games are designed to annoy their players, the dungeon instead consists of several new floors each visit and each one is more difficult than the last; by the end of the game, players are revisiting floors seconds apart for a single item or power-up and drawing complete maps of floors which are entirely blanketed in darkness.
While I hate the implementation of the multiple floors, the dungeon layout seriously appeals to the dormant dungeon crawler fan in me; charting out entire floors for a dungeon is an incredibly challenging and satisfying element to dungeon crawling and I was surprised to see it appear so frequently in Spirit Tracks. Charting maps also appeared as a very brief island puzzle in Phantom Hourglass, but its larger importance near the end of Spirit Tracks was an element I simply didn't realize I wanted in Zelda. I'd go a step farther and say I wish the entire game was like this, but I'll take what I can get. Like I said, the game was designed to annoy and it doesn't necessarily stick the landing: since the blank maps are only utilized when the floor is coated in darkness, it can be irritating to stumble around and frequently have to make adjustments to the map. I accept the annoyance of stumbling around in darkness because it's such a fascinating design element, but the developers should have gone all-in.
The actual main feature of the Tower of Spirits comes in the way that Princess Zelda is utilized as a character. Spirit Tracks includes possibly the most likable incarnation of Zelda--she's hyper, outgoing, and drives Link to continue his quest. She appears to want her body back at all costs but she's not pushy about it--one of the biggest fears I had going into the game, even knowing what it was about, was that Zelda was going to act like a brat and constantly nag the player like Tatl from Majora's Mask, but this Zelda understands the weight that is placed on both her and Link and takes responsibility for her role in Cole's plan.
As part of her outgoing personality, Zelda takes charge when players enter the Tower of Spirits and becomes an integral part of climbing the tower, possessing the spirits of the Phantom guards that roam each floor. Unlike Phantom Hourglass the floor doesn't have a time limit and challenges are planned accordingly; the floors are made more difficult as a result, not only in terms of sneaking around guards but also in the addition of puzzles which require both Zelda and Link to complete. Zelda is able to possess the bodies of Phantoms after Link collects the Tears of Light--yes, a returning item from Twilight Princess though utilized much more smoothly this time around--and with that ability is able to distract guards and carry Link across danger zones. Players need to find intelligent ways to use Zelda's Phantom body and the game's difficulty is such that it constantly scales up to match.
Link is also likable in his own way, this time being less of a warrior on a quest and more of an easygoing engineer who is swept into a series of events for which he is partially responsible. His voice is changed from Phantom Hourglass and The Wind Waker to match his role as a distant incarnation of that version of Link, and his new outfit is a unique change as well. I downright hate that the game forces Link into the green recruit uniform as it diminishes the unique nature of his new incarnation, and as soon as I was given the option to change into his new engineer outfit I made the change and never looked back. The recruit uniform should have been donned long enough for a callback to the Wind Waker Link and swapped back out for the engineer uniform as soon as players began to explore the world with the recruit uniform serving as a reward for collecting Niko's stamps, but I'm glad the option existed to allow the engineer uniform to come back.
The stamp collecting is one of the areas of collectibles I actually enjoyed, though I can't say the same for treasures and mini-games scattered around the map. Treasures return from Phantom Hourglass, though they're much more involved as Linebeck's descendant use them for currency to upgrade the train. Since treasures are random it's difficult to gauge when exactly it's time for an upgrade, and for my part I only upgraded two parts of the train over the course of the entire game. It made the final boss a bit more difficult than necessary, but nothing that couldn't be handled. What makes the treasures annoying is that, since it uses the same engine from Phantom Hourglass, players are taken out of the action and shown the treasure they picked up every time a new one appears.
Since these treasures are random drops now this can lead to several seconds of players picking up the exact same treasure, showing the camera, having a detailed description of these treasures, and putting them away in quick succession. The Zelda series had been getting bad about this obtrusive design aspect for a while, to a point where Twilight Princess would describe coin amounts of rupees every single time a player loaded their save file despite the fact that players could just look at the rupee counter and see what the total amount ended up being. Spirit Tracks doesn't go to this extreme when rupees are involved, but it's made worse by the fact that strings of treasures could lead to several seconds of randomly being taken out of the game. The only positive I can add is that at least the incremental fairy upgrades are nowhere to be seen.
Apart from returning to the tower, Spirit Tracks contains a formula of its own: find a Sanctuary, play a duet with the Lokomo in charge, and finally enter the dungeon. Most of the dungeons also require a challenge in order to enter the dungeon itself. These steps are repeated in each new realm and each time the difficulty increases, made worse by the sudden inclusion of passengers. I like the idea of having a passenger boarding the train and it's a nice diversion, but it should have been just that--a diversion. Passengers force the player to randomly speed up, slow down, blow their whistle and take corners slowly so as not to upset them, but the biggest flaw is that on two occasions the player has no choice but to take on a passenger.
Frustration takes root of every part of the DS Zelda games, but I'm shocked at how pervasive it is here. I like the idea of the Spirit Train, but it's implemented poorly--the moment Spirit Tracks started to break me was upon entering the Ocean Realm where rather than simply going the sanctuary and playing a duet like normal, they instead forced me to go to another town to find a song, then return to a different town to find the Lokomo, return him to the Ocean Sanctuary, then play the duet with the Lokomo. The Lokomo there then gave the challenge of riding past islands in a specific order, blowing the whistle, and finally entering the temple when it appeared. The game never explicitly states the player needs to blow the whistle at specific statues, so when I came to the very end of the challenge I thought the statue lighting up was indicating I did the order correctly. Instead I found out that I was supposed to be looking at the statues directly before blowing the whistle, so I had to light the statues in the incorrect order to reset them and then do them in the correct order. As I mentioned before, the train can only go so fast so it took an absolutely ludicrous amount of time to just access the temple.
The challenge before the fire temple is even more annoying since it requires the players to enter a town, go all the way back to the Snow Realm to pick up ice, then transfer that ice all the way back to the village to find the Lokomo. Had I not unintentionally finished a side quest earlier it would have taken me even longer to get the ice required to find the Fire Lokomo and therefore longer to finish the Fire Realm--even after jumping through these hoops players are forced to hunt flying monsters to gather keys necessary to enter the temple. I understand that the length of handheld games need to be stretched out to keep players invested, but game design has come a long way. The Minish Cap has almost no filler and despite being significantly shorter than Spirit Tracks, I'm more inclined to go and replay that game simply because it didn't seek to annoy me at every step of the way.
The rhythm mini-game, and accompanying flute instrument, is half-baked at best. The flute requires players to blow into the system's microphone, and I'm not sure how well it works on the DS but playing it on the Wii U--which by all means should have a stronger mic--the flute responded maybe three quarters of the time. If you know you screwed up playing one of the duets with the Lokomo, there's no option to reset and naturally, you're going to screw up even if you're the best flute player in the world simply because of the microphone's response. I don't doubt play-testers also had problems with this part of the game so my question is this: if there's a gameplay element that the developers know only work part of the time, how much would the game benefit from its removal? Playing the flute itself is a neat concept, but its implementations are sparse and the game wouldn't miss out if they had been assigned a button.
The game's story feels like it's wrapping up after the Fire Realm is completed, and there's even a nice fight between Byrne and the combined efforts of Link and Zelda that feels like a step before the final boss, but just to annoy the player even further a new temple is introduced at the last second. Just as the game picks up and the big threat is fully revealed, the player has to step back once again and complete an entirely new dungeon. The realm itself is smaller and constitutes only part of the Ocean Realm, but in a narrative sense I'm blown away by how terribly it damages the pacing of the story. The Sand Realm should have simply been a bonus dungeon the players could complete if they so desired, but forcing them to go through one final hoop is baffling, especially given how important and dire the situation becomes after the events at the top of the tower.
The Sand Temple is actually pretty fun and the layout is very clever, but I feel that's the case with most of the dungeons in Spirit Tracks as they dial down on overall dungeon numbers in favor of intelligent layout. While most of this is just brilliant level design I believe part of this is that it takes back the one-key-at-a-time approach that began in Twilight Princess, allowing players to carry multiple keys at once and therefore giving more options to explore. I still believe this should have been optional content and it damages the pacing of the narrative, but I have to give credit where it's due. This also causes the game to have a strange number of dungeons in comparison to previous Zelda games. Six I understand, even four is decent if they're carried out well; the ideal number for me would be nine for bigger games or four for smaller ones. Five dungeons is just odd, and I'm not sure why it bothers me so much.
As much as the little details irk me about Spirit Tracks, I need to say that the final area of the game more than makes up for the disruptive pace and accomplishes one of the finest conclusions in the entire Zelda series. I utterly adore the idea of returning to the very beginning of a long adventure to access the finale, and Spirit Tracks accomplishes this spectacularly by opening an island most players would never have thought twice about as the entrance to the Dark Realm. The Dark Realm itself is one of the most cathartic experiences in the franchise, allowing players to gather Tears of Light along the Dark Realm's Spirit Tracks and finally destroy the Dark Trains. Players who actually completed much of the game's side content are likely fed up of the trains, and even someone like myself who tried to make a beeline to the end of the game still felt a deep resentment toward them. Having a chance to finally destroy these things feels triumphant and allows the player to enter the final encounter with a sense of accomplishment.
The boss battle against Malladus is also one of the game's highlights, running through multiple types of encounters which utilize each gameplay type in succession: a train battle, a puzzle with Phantom Zelda, a top-down boss where the player must protect Zelda, a rhythm game, and finally a straight boss battle which uses a unique perspective controlling both playable characters. The rhythm game annoyed me when it first came up, but I'm not sure if it was more lenient or I simply became better because for the first time I cleared this mini-game without any trouble. The final phase of the boss is something I never knew I wanted and I'm glad I got a chance to play it without spoilers.
Zelda games have a surprising tendency to end on a high note; even the weaker games like Adventure of Link wrap up the game neatly and leave a strong final impression. There are a lot of complaints I have with Spirit Tracks, but the climax of the story is easily one of the best in the entire series. More than its own great ending, I felt like Spirit Tracks serves to fulfill the promise of King Daphnes at the conclusion of The Wind Waker: when Link and Tetra finally find their new home it'll be a land of their own. Link and Zelda of Spirit Tracks finally accomplish the king's wishes and claim New Hyrule as their own land, and if the player has been following the storyline then this ending gives a great sense of closure.
Verdict
Spirit Tracks is lacking a great deal of polish, and a few of the game's weaker elements seem like the developers doubling down on the elements some players disliked in Phantom Hourglass. Some elements feel half-baked, and in the case of the Spirit Tracks themselves I feel like the developers could have put more time into making this more fun for the player. The game mechanics feel like a direct step backwards from Phantom Hourglass in some respects, but in those cases I wonder if they were last-minute changes to account for player feedback from that game. The problem is that I wish the gameplay had been given additional polish because I actually like this version of Link, Zelda, and New Hyrule. The setting and characters work well and the narrative is truly engaging--if not poorly paced--but as far as gameplay is concerned Spirit Tracks is a weird amalgamation of experiments which rarely work well in tandem.
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