The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (2009)

I have quite special memories of Spirit Tracks, as it was the first Zelda game I played during my university years. I was busy doing plenty of stereotypical college student activities, but I always made time for Zelda. It had been quite the hiatus since the last game in the series, so I ate this game up like the famished fanboy I was.

This is an iterative Zelda in the same sense as Majora's Mask or Tears of the Kingdom, in that it takes the engine and assets of its direct predecessor and spins it into a new direction. Thus, it's tempting to summarize Spirit Tracks as Phantom Hourglass, but better, though it's actually a little more complicated than that. Regardless, maybe check out my thoughts on Phantom Hourglass, since I won't repeat myself much on certain topics, such as the touch controls.

Spirit Tracks takes place one century after the events of Phantom Hourglass, and it is set in the kingdom founded by the Hero of Winds and his friend Tetra. This time, you'll be swapping the sea for steel, as our heroes just happened to colonize a land populated by the Lokomo, a tribe of spiritual sages with a penchant for trains. These trains are ridden on the titular Spirit Tracks, which serve as a convenient form of transportation, but also double in function as the chains binding the evil demon Malladus. Something is causing the Spirit Tracks to disappear, and you'll quickly learn that evil forces gather to plan the resurrection of the demon lord. This time, Link is joined by the spooky ghost of Princess Zelda herself, who I'll get into in a bit.

Spirit Tracks looks and plays identically to Phantom Hourglass, with only a few quality of life changes (Thank goodness they changed the way you roll, because it was annoying as heck). You still navigate the overworld in a vehicle, with the only difference being that you are now bound to the tracks that are available. The world is still split into four quadrants that you have to unlock, and there is still a central dungeon that you have to return to after every temple.

This works for me, because I liked Phantom Hourglass's core gameplay, for the most part. The new dungeons are still quite strong, and I loved the more unique assortment of items this time around. As I mentioned in my review of the previous game though, all of it was brought down by the abysmal repeating dungeon, which single-handedly dragged down what was an otherwise pleasant game.

Well, I'm pleased to say that its replacement, the Tower of Spirits, is a stratospheric improvement. First and foremost, you no longer have to repeat sections of the tower each time you revisit it. Instead, you unlock new wings to visit with each dungeon you complete, with optional treasure being available if you backtrack. The important difference being, that now you can backtrack at your own pace, or not at all if you don't feel like it.

Another frustrating element that has been completely removed is the time limit (Thank Hylia!). Phantoms and safe-zones still exist, but you no longer feel completely helpless, thanks to your new companion. Zelda has run into unfortunate circumstances and turned into a ghost, but she has also conveniently gained the ability to possess Phantoms. With her, the Tower of Spirits becomes one of the most fun sequences in all of Zelda, taking full advantage of controlling two characters at once. Zelda is able to lift Link up to higher areas, carry him across pools of lava, and even distract other Phantoms. In addition to this, there are several different variations of Phantoms that Zelda can possess, each with their own unique abilities and puzzle potential.

The final few floors do have moments where they try to jack up the difficulty, but end up making things feel a little tedious instead. But overall, I loved the Tower of Spirits, and I always looked forward to revisiting it, a complete flip to the dread I felt having to go back into Phantom Hourglass's Temple of the Ocean King.

There are also small improvements to the exploration in the game. Now that you are limited by what tracks are available, the game makes a point to open up the map little by little, adding new tracks with each story milestone. You can also complete optional side quests that reward you with new tracks, which can mean overworld shortcuts, entirely new areas, or rabbits that you can find and catch for rewards. These side quests take full advantage of the train fantasy, and usually involve transporting passengers or cargo from point A to point B. They can be quite fun!

This is all great stuff, but once the novelty of being a train conductor wore off, I did feel a bit burnt out by the overworld. Now that you are forced to navigate on rails, it takes much longer to get around than in Phantom Hourglass. It doesn't help that they occasionally add Dark Trains that trap you and kill you in one hit. I have a big beef with these, especially because they culminate in a frustrating sequence near the end of the game where you have to take out a bunch of them without getting hit once. The biggest issue for me is that, compared to the freedom of navigating the ocean, being on a train just feels like a limiting regression.

Spirit Tracks does repeat a lot of what Phantom Hourglass did, so when played back-to-back like this, I think the déjà vu hurt the experience a little. But when I really think about it, Spirit Tracks is the better game in almost every sense. It has better items, better dungeons, better progression in the overworld, better music and a more memorable story. To this day, it's a nice conclusion to the Wind Waker saga, though I wouldn't mind it if Nintendo re-explored this branch of the Zelda universe.

Zelda's touch screen era was a fascinating one, but ultimately I'm glad that we returned to standard controls. The feedback you get from having physical buttons and sticks just feels more natural, which is why the fan-made D-Pad control patches for these games help make them more enjoyable today. Nintendo wasn't done experimenting with the DS era, though. They carried on this spirit into the Wii with the next major console Zelda game, which promised to take the series sky-high.

Fuuuuuck this game entirely. I appreciate that of their three biggest franchises (Mario, Metroid, Zelda), Nintendo uses the Zelda franchise to experiment the most with new and innovative gameplay, but all three of their most aggressive attempts in this regard—Skyward Sword, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks—are just... not in any way enjoyable to play. They are tedious slogs, start to finish, and if not for the fact that I've completed every single-player entry in all three of those franchises save for this, Majora's Mask, and Oracle of Seasons (tackling those next), I would have ditched this game after about an hour. It's shit, and not worth the time or money.

I can't think of another franchise that has such dramatic gulfs in quality—Breath of the Wild, Link to the Past, Link Between Worlds, and Ocarina of Time being some of the best games ever made, yet the trio mentioned above are some of my least-liked gaming experiences of all time.

Fuuuuuck this game entirely. I appreciate that of their three biggest franchises (Mario, Metroid, Zelda), Nintendo uses the Zelda franchise to experiment the most with new and innovative gameplay, but all three of their most aggressive attempts in this regard—Skyward Sword, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks—are just... not in any way enjoyable to play. They are tedious slogs, start to finish, and if not for the fact that I've completed every single-player entry in all three of those franchises save for this, Majora's Mask, and Oracle of Seasons (tackling those next), I would have ditched this game after about an hour. It's shit, and not worth the time or money.

I can't think of another franchise that has such dramatic gulfs in quality—Breath of the Wild, Link to the Past, Link Between Worlds, and Ocarina of Time being some of the best games ever made, yet the trio mentioned above are some of my least-liked gaming experiences of all time.

Let me start by saying I was planning on giving this game a 2-star review right up until the last like two hours of the game. Luckily for it, I actually really liked the final dungeon and boss battles, so I decided to bump it up to a 3, but in reality it's more like a 2.5.

The weird thing is, I considered Phantom Hourglass a 3-star game, so how could Spirit Tracks be better if I liked it less? The thing is, the two games are so similar that I think I just got tired of the same thing. I was worn out. Had I played Spirit Tracks first, I probably would have liked it more, but two games of pretty much the exact same thing is a little much.

While most of the dungeons are decent, the main problem with Spirit Tracks is the stuff you do between the dungeons. Most of it boils down to fetch quests and running around the map. Which is really horrible in a game where just moving around is annoying. More on that in a second.

I think they actually made the combat worse by making the dodge roll activate with a double tap rather than a little circle, so you start rolling around the screen when you're frantically trying to tap multiple enemies. Other than that, combat is exactly the same as Phantom Hourglass, and a few of the weapons make reappearances. To be fair, the new weapons are actually pretty decent, with the whip and the sand wand being particularly nice additions.

The train navigation was a better system than the boat system in Phantom Hourglass. Though it gave you a bit less freedom, it was also less annoying and slightly more engaging, with a few instances of genuinely good game design when you're dodging the bullet trains.

Side quests were bland, just like in Phantom Hourglass. To be fair, they may have been decent, but the game wasn't fun enough to make me want to do them, so for the most part I was on a straight course to the finish line.

I think what I've learned from games like Spirit Tracks, Phantom Hourglass, and Skyward Sword is that I just don't like all these peripherals. I don't like blowing the mic, I don't like swinging a wiimote around, and I definitely don't like using the stylus to do literally everything. Games make great use of these features when they're used sparingly; take your stylus to draw notes on your map, or use the wiimote to put the key in the right way. Even blowing into the mic can be fine if it's used to blow out a candle or something. But when these gimmicks take over a game, it just makes me hate playing. The whole time I was playing Spirit Tracks, I was just waiting for the end so I could just sit back and play a game with a real controller.

Finally, I think these games are just designed for kids, so they're not as fun as an adult; they're too easy. That being said, the final section of this game was actually pretty challenging, and I think it took me about two hours and several deaths to get through the whole thing.