The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Review

A friend of mine once told me that it seemed like we had more fun and excitement from anticipation and speculation about video games than we actually did playing the games themselves.  Although I don’t subscribe to the same pessimistic beliefs, I can agree that over anticipation can poison one’s reception.  Such was the case with Spirit Tracks.

The story of Spirit Tracks takes place 100 years after the events of Link’s previous DS excursion, The Phantom Hourglass.  Don’t worry if you’ve never played the previous installment; Link and Zelda don’t remember what happened either, so as you can imagine, it must not have much of an impact on Hyrule.  A system of ancient railroad tracks that bind an ancient, evil force, have been disappearing across the land.  Now it’s up to Link, and his ghastly girlfriend, Zelda, to restore the Spirit Tracks and recover the poltergeist-princess’ body from some nogoodnicks, who are no doubt up to no good.

Spirit Tracks does everything that a sequel should: it allows the player to relive everything that they enjoyed from the first title, while expanding the story and adding new mechanics.  The combat and dungeon crawling aspects of Phantom Hourglass remain untouched, but now, Link is accompanied by the ghost of Princess Zelda which adds another tool for puzzle solving.  In spirit form, Zelda has the power to possess Phantoms, and to mindlessly follow the path that you draw for her using the stylus.  By allowing the player to control both characters at once, Spirit Tracks combines escort missions and stealth missions; undoubtedly the two most irritating elements in gaming.  Luckily, getting separated from your Phantom never gets frustrating enough to toss the DS, and as the game progresses, Link becomes less fragile and more forgiving if you leave him out in the open.

The boat from Phantom Hourglass has been replaced by a train.  The train controls in much the same way as the boat: players plot their course by drawing a path on the map, and the train will follow it.  However, since the train has to remain on its track, traversing the land can be a bore.  Occasionally, an oncoming train or an enemy will force you to divert your course, but overall, the world map feels like one long, interactive loading screen between choosing destinations.