The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — It Counts As Action … Shut Up!
A couple people are going to criticize me for this review. After all, we are supposed to be an action website, and while sword swinging and demon slaying counts as action in every sense of the word The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and its cartoonish animation style is far from what we would expect a hardcore action fan to pick up. In fact, we haven’t had a real hardcore realistic styled Zelda game since Twilight Princess came out as a Wii launch title. Still, this is Zelda we are talking about, the franchise that popularized the hack and slash adventure game! It’s a big release, and although the whole thing might be cartoony, you still get to stab things in the soul, so shut up, sit down, grab a sword, and stab an octorok. It’s time to go back to Hyrule once again!
In every great time of peril, a hero named Link comes forth to save the world from darkness. This has been the plot of the Zelda series since the original. Spirit Tracks is no exception to this rule, except this time, instead of the great evil being some form of Gannon/dorf, the bad guy is Malladus, an ancient evil sealed deep within the land of Hyrule itself. Malladus was bound by shackles, which take the form of train tracks on the world above (hence the game’s namesake). What better to do with the shackles of an ultimate evil, than ride on them with awesome choo choo trains! Choo Choo!
Unfortunately, these tracks are starting to disappear, which is a very, very bad thing. Link, an engineer in training, must be bestowed his full engineer title by princess Zelda herself. Unfortunately, in the middle of the choo choo revelry Hyrule’s Chancellor Cole betrays Zelda (once again proving that royal chancellors exist solely to betray the royalty they serve) and severs her spirit from her body to use it for his own evil plans … her body that is … not her spirit … yes we know that sounds sexual; stop being immature! Now it is up to you in your trusty green tunic, and the spirit of Zelda (who is your nagging Navi for this game) to save the day.
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is the second Zelda outing on the DS, following its big brother The Phantom Hourglass. As such, the games feel very similar, at least when it comes to core gameplay. Once again you are stuck controlling link with the stylus instead of the button controls. This was a little unwieldy in Phantom Hourglass, but the controls have been tightened since. You slash and tap at enemies and the map to make Link move, swing his sword, and use items in a variety of ways. Slashes and taps with the stylus feel more natural, and as long as you have the touch screen calibrated correctly you should catch on just fine. If you haven’t played The Phantom Hourglass, it may take you a while to get used to the peculiar controls, but before you know it you will be slashing away at baddies by the bucket full.
Once you have the controls down it is the same basic Zelda formula of dungeon crawls and fetch quests, but luckily enough Nintendo seems to have learned from its mistakes in past installments. The puzzles and objectives you find both in and out of dungeons are varied, and can be solved and completed in many different ways. Unlike other titles, you never seem to find yourself in the repetitive grind of “bring object A to person B” or “push the box onto the switch … again.” OK, well, that is a lie. You still do get these objectives every so often, but at least they are new and interesting boxes that need to be placed newer and more interesting switches.
Certain dungeons have Zelda following you by having her spirit inhabit a suit of armor. You can draw paths for her to follow, and command her to interact with other objects on the map, which she will do while you control Link elsewhere. Depending on what suit of armor she possesses, her ability set changes. This leads certain dungeons, specifically the main dungeon, the Tower of Spirits, to have interesting tag team solutions that require you to think outside the box and really utilize both Link and his infinitely deep bag of tricks, and the armor clad ghost Zelda as well.
Link will be getting a bunch of new toys to play with this time around as well. He seems to have taken a page from the book of Mother 3, and now uses a snakelike whip both as a weapon and as a means of Indiana Jones like locomotion. His new generic Zelda game instrument is a pipe flute, which you use by dragging the pipes with the stylus, and blowing into them via blowing in to the microphone. It takes a bit of training to be able to use the pipes effectively while blowing and sliding at the same time, but once again, you will get used to it. As an added bonus, watching a friend try to use the pipes effectively for the first time is downright hilarious. Feel free to laugh at him as he drops his stylus and spits all over his touch screen.
Instead of a boat, Link has a train this time around, and this is one of the best innovations to the game yet. One of the most annoying parts of previous cartoony Zelda titles (*cough cough* Windwaker anyone?) was the tendency to get lost on the high seas. The train, however, does not suffer from this problem. There are plenty of deviating routes you can take, but the routes are all fixed in the ground and you spend a whole lot less time wandering around aimlessly trying to find your destination. Aside from tripping track switches to send you the right way at forks in the road, the most control you have over the train’s route is selecting which tracks to travel on. You are pretty much guaranteed to get where you need to go, even if you take the most roundabout and convoluted path.
Sure, the whole affair is less interactive than sailing the ship was, but what interaction it does have is fun and a bit of a guilty pleasure. Instead of avoiding enemies, you blow the whistle so that your train doesn’t plow into wandering livestock (although sometimes it is just as fun to hit said livestock). You also have to stop whenever you come to your destination which, while needless, is generally fun, and buys into your psychotic side, which will cause you to drive like a mad man and slam on the breaks at the last second. The environments that Link traverses in his train are beautiful, and span from vast countrysides, to underneath the sea itself! Of course you can also attack enemies with a variety of weapons … cannons anyone? The portions of the game that have you controlling the train are integral to the story, and they have their own puzzles, bosses, and sidequests that really open up the game, however the real fun of the train will always be the eye candy and goof off factor. Honestly, you couldn’t ask for more.
Spirit Tracks is satisfying, which is a good thing because more recent Zelda titles seems to have traded satisfying for frustrating. You always feel like you are on the right path, and you never seem to spend eight fucking hours in the goddamn water dungeon, as you might have in other unnamed Zelda titles. Boss battles are great, and the bosses themselves tend to be huge and imposing. Figuring out a boss’s pattern and slaying it gives you a sense of accomplishment whether you are on foot or driving your train. Every new item you get feels like a welcome addition to your repertoire, and you never find yourself using an item to complete one puzzle and stashing it forever, as you have in other Zelda games. Nintendo simply listened to fans and fixed the formula, and that is refreshing. Outside of the unfortunate inability to use traditional controls, there is nothing wrong with this new single-player Zelda experience.
Now, the multiplayer aspect of Spirit Tracks, well that is another story. It is, in a word, dumb. It is basically just a rupee collecting fest, where you try to kill your friends many assorted items and be the man with the most money when all is said and done. It is a fun distraction, but you won’t be getting much use out of it after you play one or two games and realize how shallow it is. As a saving grace, only one DS cart is needed, so you can give your friends who don’t own Spirit Tracks a short taste of the game.
There is also a “tag” mode, which allows you and a friend to trade treasures, which then in turn helps you to get better upgrades for your train. Unfortunately, most friends will hoard the best items for themselves (or maybe I just have a shitty group of friends.) In addition, though the game is easily 25+ hours, and even more with side-quests, you probably will end up beating the game before you even get a chance to trade with someone else who owns the game. Even if you do get to meet someone else who has the game, you will probably be in vastly differing areas of the game, making trading mostly useless.
However, Zelda has always been about the single player experience, and Spirit Tracks certainly delivers the single player experience. If you ignore the multiplayer, then Spirit Tracks is exactly what Zelda fans want, a DS Zelda that fixes what was wrong with Phantom Hourglass. Gamers of all kinds, ALL KINDS, can appreciate this game for its action, puzzles, and great storytelling. If you have a DS and enjoy gaming classics like Zelda, you owe it to yourself to pick up Spirit Tracks.
There, now that that is over with, I can go back to writing about explosions and Michael Bay.
(25 votes, average: 2.80 out of 4)
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