<big><big>The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Review</big></big>
<big>By 1UP.</big>
Rating: A-
A surprisingly large, and surprisingly fun, portable adventure.
Continuity in Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda games can be a muddled, confusing mess, but Spirit Tracks is unambiguously presented as the sequel to both 2003's Wind Waker and 2007's Phantom Hourglass. Set "about 100" years after its predecessors, the game's clear lineage means it benefits from both those games' strengths -- but it also suffers from their weaknesses.
Of course, many of those strengths and weaknesses are wholly subjective, as Spirit Tracks belongs to a distinctly separate spur of the Zelda series from the "main" console titles like Twilight Princess and its forthcoming sequel for Wii. Spirit Tracks has a cutesy art style, employs entirely stylus-driven controls, makes no mention of Ganon, and features a heavy emphasis on traveling by vehicle between numerous points of interest scattered across a huge world map. It's a long way from the sober, traditional odyssey of Ocarina of Time and its ilk, though that's not necessarily a flaw. Zelda is often at its most interesting when it deviates from expectation, which is why quirky side stories like Link's Awakening and Majora's Mask remain fan favorites.
To its credit, Spirit Tracks does a remarkable job of balancing its oddball side-story feel with a touch of the gravitas most Zelda fans long for. Sure, the game's villain looks like the demon spawn of Lucky the Leprechaun, but the plot -- which involves the resurrection of an ancient evil using Princess Zelda's body as its vessel -- is pretty solid as far as justifications for combing ancient labyrinths goes. Even better is the presentation, which is by far the most sophisticated of any DS game to date. The game may have the visual fidelity of a PlayStation game, but the cut-scene direction is up to snuff with modern console epics.
It's also a big game. Spirit Tracks has a much larger scope than the game's four dungeons would suggest. Beyond the core dungeons are half a dozen towns, countless outposts situated along Hyrule's railways, and even a rabbit adoption farm. Even more impressively, Spirit Tracks turns Phantom Hourglass' most widely decried element -- the repetitive Temple of the Ocean King -- into its biggest strength.
Players will find themselves returning repeatedly to the seemingly similar Tower of Spirits, a single dungeon full of invincible Phantoms, but once inside you realize the stealth and redundancy that made the Ocean King's home so tedious are cast aside. The tower is massive -- more than two dozen floors high -- and once you've cleared a five- or six-floor block, you need never return to that section again. The tower effectively doubles the amount of dungeon-crawling in the game, and each segment of the tower employs new and unique puzzle elements. The tower is also where Spirit Tracks' second hook -- the ability to team up with Princess Zelda -- comes into play. The stealth and evasion phases of the tower are fairly brief, lasting just long enough for Link to hunt down gems that allow him to attack Phantoms. With those in hand, Zelda can possess a stunned Phantom, and each area becomes a huge puzzle that must be unraveled through teamwork.
And they're great puzzles. The Tower of Spirits features some of the trickiest level design ever to grace the series. While the "main" dungeons are fairly standard stuff -- find a weapon, use that weapon to acquire the boss key, kill the boss by exposing its weakness with your new acquisition -- the tower has less emphasis on formulaic gimmicks and centers around pure, brain-bending puzzles. It's fantastic stuff, challenging and satisfying, and it elevates the game well above being merely "Phantom Hourglass on a train."
Which is good, because Spirit Tracks carries the flaws inherent in Phantom Hourglass in tow as well. Nintendo has tweaked the stylus-driven controls a bit, and while they work well they suffer from maddening imprecision at times. The final dungeon item you collect is especially egregious in this regard, as the interface combined with the 3/4 overhead camera perspective transforms the tool from merely uninteresting to actively annoying -- especially since the game's camera constantly auto-centers on the wrong areas when you activate it. The camera's behavior is also a nuisance while riding the rails, as it insists on rotating 90 degrees every time the train corners (which is frequently). These bends, naturally, are where most hazards lurk, and the camera's insistence on turning away from the enemies you're trying to fend off lets them land lots of annoying, cheap hits.
Fortunately, Spirit Tracks is nowhere near as toothless as its predecessor, so these issues amount to minor irritants at worst. It's a deceptively meaty adventure with enough novel twists on the Zelda formula to keep it from feeling phoned-in. It's definitely a game that rewards casual play -- not in the sense of "casual games," but rather in the sense that it's packed with events and quests that you'll completely miss if you simply rush from dungeon to dungeon. The loose, upbeat banjo-and-whistle melody that plays as you ride the rails says it all: Relax, take it easy, enjoy the ride, see the sights. And while I miss the traditional overworld design of the core Zelda games, there's something inherently fun about rambling across the countryside on a steam engine, unlocking new tracks by completing side quests, and filling a little book with station stamps at each stop along the way. The end result is a charming side story that, like Link's Awakening and Majora's Mask, forges its own unique personality -- something the medium could certainly use a little more of these days.
I suppose it's pretty much a given that Nintendo fans are always going to buy the latest Zelda game, but Spirit Tracks doesn't simply coast along on its legacy. Like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, it's a direct follow-up to a recent release that exceeds its predecessor in every way. And while it may not hit the soaring heights of Mario's latest, it's a fine game in its own right.
REVIEW BY 1UP.
Credits to Megamannt125 for posting on TBT.
