Zelda and company return to the DS with a less favorable adventure.
The young adventurer Link is studying to become an engineer. He takes his train to the castle, where he meets Princess Zelda at a celebration, but not long afterward, an evil presence makes itself known. The Spirit Tracks that connect all the realms of the kingdom together have suddenly vanished, and Zelda asks Link for his help to escort her to the Spirit Tower aboard his train. On the way over, however, the duo was ambushed, and Zelda's spirit was forced out of her body, her body being taken away to a place unknown. The Spirit Tower was also broken up into four pieces, and now Zelda and Link must partake in a journey to restore the Spirit Tracks, the Spirit Tower, and reunite Zelda's spirit with her body.
Every Legend of Zelda title has revolved around exploring. You'd walk all over the land, discovering new places and new enemies, either on foot, or on horse. Wind Waker ended up exchanging land for water, and had Link explore on a sailboat. In Spirit Tracks, however, the exploring doesn't have the same level of adventure as previous Zelda titles, simply because of the nature of trains. Your only means of travel is on a train, on a fixed path, and you only get off the train to walk around towns or explore dungeons. This makes the game feel a little smaller than it is.
The gameplay of the train segments is pretty basic. You draw the route you want to take on your map, and the train will ride down the path automatically. You can change your path at any junction by switching the tracks, and you can also control your speed. At first, you're only armed with your whistle to scare off wildlife. Eventually, you'll be upgraded with a cannon to not only shoot at enemies, but also break up rocks and barrels for hearts and rupees.
A bit further into the game, you'll come across people in towns that need to be transported to other areas. These passengers don't like bumpy rides, though. In order to please them, you have to follow signs on the road that indicate what speed you should be moving at, and blow your whistle when it's appropriate. They also don't like when the train is hit by enemies, as well as be disappointed in you when you don't line up the train perfectly at their stops.
The core Zelda gameplay is pretty much the same as its always been. Traverse the land to reach a town, talk to villagers, head to a dungeon, solve puzzles, fight a boss and repeat. There have been several changes, though, the biggest is that everything is dictated by the touch screen interface. Controlling Link requires you to touch the direction he wants to go. The farther your stylus is from Link, the faster he'll move. Tapping on enemies will make him attack, and touching people and objects makes him interact with them.
Unfortunately, it's not as intuitive as Nintendo would like you to think. For starters, you're only allowed to have one special weapon selected at a time, instead of having several mapped to different buttons like in the previous versions. Selecting a new weapon requires accessing a menu, and this disrupts the flow of the gameplay. The biggest problem is that most special weapons require you to be static, such as the boomerang. If you have several enemies you want to hit with the boomerang, you need to make sure you're at a safe distance so you can draw the path for the boomerang and throw it without getting hurt. Touch control can be fun, but there's no excuse not to include a more conventional control method as well.
A very irritating facet of the game is when you work in tandem with Princess Zelda. Several times through the game, her spirit will possess a suit of armor, and you can give it directions by drawing out a path for her. The problem is since your actions are also touch-based, it's too easy to make a mistake and disrupt her path on accident when things get frantic. When you need her to come back to you, you have to call her, and many times she'll become confused and walk right into a wall instead of around it. Nintendo's not known for AI mistakes, and this is one's unforgivable.
The DS also makes use of the microphone. Link has a blowing weapon he uses to put out fires, disperse toxic clouds and push back enemies. There are a couple of instances where the game will ask you to speak into the microphone and answer questions. The biggest function of the microphone is for the Spirit Flute. When you pull the Spirit Flute out, you touch it with the stylus, and drag it back and forth while blowing into it to produce different notes. Just a forewarning, you'll be blowing into the microphone regularly, so don't plan on playing the game if you don't like people around you looking at you funny.
The bane of Phantom Hourglass was The Temple of the Ocean King. It was a multi-tiered dungeon that served as a hub for most of the game's important key items. You continued to revisit it throughout the game, having to start over from the bottom level each time, and it proved to be too monotonous for what it's worth. The same concept returns in Spirit Tracks with the Spirit Tower, but fortunately you don't have to start over from the beginning. Still, the dungeon becomes an exercise in patience, because each time you revisit it, the puzzles become harder and more obscure, eventually reaching a point of mind-numbing frustration.
Although the dungeons are fun to play, they don't seem to be of the same caliber as previous Zelda games. The issue lies in the fact that they appear to be smaller in scope. They aren't particularly challenging, and the only really hard moments exist in the Spirit Temple. To make up for this fact is that the boss fights are still very enjoyable, analyzing their patterns and using the newly acquired weapons to defeat them. Still, it doesn't help to cover the disappointment that comes from there not being enough individual dungeons, thanks to the constant recycling of the Spirit Temple.
The graphics are Spirit Tracks' greatest asset. Using the same graphical technique that gave Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass's cartoon style, Spirit Tracks animates very smoothly. Dungeons and towns are very pleasing to the eye, and outside environments are beautiful in the distance. Since the DS is an underpowered platform, this unfortunately means you'll see a great deal of pixelation on anything up close. It just takes away a bit of the majesty of this otherwise fantastic setting.
The audio is very complimentary to the visuals. As with every Legend of Zelda game, the music is composed very well. It gives the game a free-spirited charm, befitting of a story about an adventurer. Yet, it can also be foreboding when the mood calls for it. The sound effects are pretty much exactly the same as previous Zelda titles. Everything from Link's sword smacking into enemies, bombs blowing up, the people speaking in grunts and mumblings, and even the unmistakable chime of Link opening a door in a dungeon are all familiar.
It's really hard to figure out just where this game went wrong. The fact that everything is touch controlled doesn't help. It becomes problematic when Link fights more enemies than he can handle. The dungeons, which are the meat and potatoes of every Zelda title, aren't as exciting in this offering. Even riding on a train, which should be relaxing, can be frustrating, as you're constantly battling control of the camera when taking a turn and fighting enemies. Spirit Tracks also has one of the most abrupt endings in the franchise's history, making completing the game a bit of an empty feeling.
Still, it's worth playing if you're a Zelda fan. The boss fights are still wonderful, and the classic Zelda gameplay for the most part is still fun. It's just really starting to show its age. Spirit Tracks was an attempt to try to reinvent the wheel, but it didn't pan out entirely well. Having a better control scheme, the ability to explore the land outside of your train and several more unique dungeons would have gone a great deal further into making The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks a better game. Only buy this game now if you're a die hard fan. If not, you can wait for a price reduction, because you're not missing much.