Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks DS Review

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is the next installment in the Zelda franchise, more importantly it's the next installment in the Toon Link story line. One Century after Wind Waker it seems Link has traded in his boat for a choo-choo train.

Note: This review will not include any story line past the opening scene, so rest your easy as you will find very few spoilers.

Premise:
The game starts off with a little back story told in a cartoon slide show like all other Toon Link games. The story tells of the Spirits of Good who protected this land and created the Spirit Temple to bring their power throughout the land over the Spirit Tracks. The Demon King however, wanted to take over the land and thus a great war started between the Spirits of Good, no word if they have anything to do with Great Fairies or the Three Goddesses, and Malladus, The Demon King. The Spirits of Good sealed the Demon King and returned to the Spirit World. The first settlers of this land found the Spirit Tracks already made and created a Kingdom to live in. This Kingdom was created by Tetra and her crew and the soldiers uniform was decided to be trade mark Link's Green tunic and hat. Many returning characters are found in this game such as; Niko, Linebeck, and Zelda of course. These are all the grandchildren from the previous games though.

Plot:
The plot of this story is that the Spirit Tracks are disappearing and Zelda asks Link, a train engineer, to take her to the Spirit Temple to find out hwy. On their journey Zelda comes face to face with the Kingdom's Councilor, Cole, Along with his Freight Train from Hell and Body Guard Byrne. Byrne defeats Link and his mentor, who is obviously the grandson of Tetra's First Mate from Wind Waker, as Cole separates Zelda's body and Soul. Link wakes up in the castle and finds Zelda's spirit roaming the halls, he seems to be the only one who can see her and so they set off to the Spirit Temple once again. Unfortunately the Spirit Temple breaks apart and Link and Zelda must go to the four temples in the land in order to connect the four pieces of the Spirit Temple so they may reach the top where Zelda's body is becoming the new host for the Demon King.

Graphics:
The graphics in this game, to put it blatantly, are decent. They are nothing but recycled graphics from Phantom Hourglass. Perhaps even worse that Phantom Hourglass. When riding on the train the scenery around you looks very flat and plain. The trees are scarce and identical, the grass, snow, and water around the land is extremely pixelated. The sky is nothing but a blue tint that never changes and nothing really pulls you in. The characters on the other hand look well made, even though the Goron and Anoukis are nothing but recycled characters from Phantom Hourglass. It seems as if they had simple dropped Link into Animal Crossing and threw in temples. It saddens me to see that even after creating the DSi and having over 2 years to develop this game, nothing visually has changed.

Gameplay:
The upgrade to the Train feels good, although the train does not go as fast as you may want to and trying to brake at top speed simply makes you slow down for a good 10 seconds before actually stopping, the train gameplay is fun and intriguing. Moving along tracks instead of unrestricted movement adds a sense of strategy and let's you know where your going. Having a cannon, passenger cabin, as well as a freight cart to carry supplies, has you going on some side quests picking up people and items from across the land. Sadly, this is not used very often. Besides moving on the tracks bombing enemies like pirates and boars, there are also bunnies to collect. Much like the chao garden from Sonic games, you can find bunnies all over the land and catch them with your net to bring them to the Rabbit Land Rescue, where you can later see your collection of bunnies as well as get prizes for the amount you collect. Like Phantom Hourglass you can customize your train, trade in treasure to LineBeck the Third for other nice looking train parts.

The temples are well thought out and have puzzles that actually require thinking, on the other hand these temples are short and linear. For example so far I've beaten two temples a day, not including the Spirit Temple in which you must add another floor to it for each temple you defeat. Now the Spirit Temple in this game completely trumps the Ocean Temple form Phantom Hourglass. No longer do you have to redo a floor after beaitng it once to get to the next section you have added. Also the Spirit Temple is extremely fun, full of puzzles that are actually hard at times and utilizes the many different types of Phantoms that Zelda can inhabit, Wrecker Phantoms, Walkers Phantoms, Warp Phantoms, and Torch Phantoms. Towering double screen boss fights return and are very exciting. The boss fights are short though, after doing some sort of task or puzzles to hit the boss' weak point it should only take one repeat while the boss does not get any harder. Not only are the temples short but there are not many of them, in total there are about 6 temples, sad in comparison to the usual 9 temples found in console zelda games, or 8 found in handheld zelda games.

The game also loses Zelda's trademark sense of adventure and exploration. There are no heart pieces to collect in this game, no only full Heart Containers. After beating all the bosses you should have about 9 hearts in total. Usually you would have to collect 4 heart containers to create another heart, in this game however to make up for the lack of boss hearts you only have to collect one full heart container. Many heart containers are gotten from things like mini games also.This unfortunately means less hidden spots to get to along with new items. This also means less items to collect for your journey. The items you can get are; a wind fan items which you blow into the micro phone to send out a gust of wind which is simply the Gust Jar from Minish Cap with out sucking in, the boomerang, bomb bag which must buy from Beedle's air balloon shop, the whip which acts as a claw shot/grappling hook in one, Hero's Bow and Light Bow. Yes, two bows. The gameplay IS fun but short and the side quests are scarce, which is sad for a franchise so well known for it's side quests.

Music:
Something I was happy to see was the return of a musical instrument. The Spirit Flute, which is a Pan Flute, allows you to learn magical songs like all the other games. the great thing is that these songs aren't recycled songs from past games. They are new, fast paced, catchy tunes. Although the down side is you can only learn five songs. The song of Healing, Song of Birds, Song of Light, Discovery, etc. These songs are also not used as much as I would have liked to see. The Song of Healing however is probably the most useful song in the entire game, it allows you to heal yourself with a fairy. It's like having a fairy in a bottle, although you can only use it in temples and only once per temple, unless you leave and return. You also learn one song for each temple, much like how Shiek taught you songs for each of the five adult temples for you to warp there at any time. The sad part is you cannot use these songs to warp to temples, you only play them once to open the way to the temple. The sound track in the game however is very catchy, even though it's simply remixed version of old songs. Be it the Goron Village or just riding in your train i loved the music in this game.

Multiplayer:
This game does have multiplayer and it completely trumps Phantom Hourglass' multiplayer mode. 4 players must collect triforce pieces as if they were coins. Attack other players to take their pieces with a sword or bombs that are scattered around the map. There are also pitfalls to watch out for as well as a Walker Phantom. Other players can step on switches to activate pitfalls when other players are standing on them as well as an item system similar to Mario Kart to walk through boxes and get either a random item like lightning or points. It's actually fun.

Final Verdict:
Overall I must say that good looks worse next to great. Having said that don't take it the wrong way when I say that Spirit Tracks is the worst Zelda game to date, not including CD-i. Now while it still is a top notch DS game, it doe snot compare to other Zelda games. Although the temples are enjoyable and the addition of a train was well worth it, it does not live up to normal Zelda standard. It was worth the buy, even though it was a Christmas gift, but The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap on the gameboy showed much more than this game could. I suggest picking up Minish Cap before this.

7.9/10