3/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.

Platform: DS Time Played: 18 hours Status: Beaten After being slightly surprised at how much I enjoyed Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, I hoped that Spirit Tracks would also surprise me with a similar amount of entertainment coming out of it, but after those last several hours of the game, no way. Spirit Tracks starts out promising, taking place a century after Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass but still clearly taking place within the same world with those people's descendants; and the initial setup and premise of the story seemed very intriguing and had me wanting more. Even the train system with the Spirit Tracks felt like something I was going to appreciate; and for a while I did. I'd say for about a good 3/4 of the game I was enjoying myself; I found the dungeons to be fun, simple, yet rewarding; the train system to but fun and unique once I got the cannon, and the little detours in between dungeons felt fun. But eventually things started to feel too similar, as if it was just a cycle that kept repeating, but not as apparent as Phantom Hourglass: do task for village, find the Lokomo to get to dungeon, get to dungeon, beat dungeon, beat next area of Tower of Spirits, repeat. Now this isn't to say that I wasn't enjoying myself at this point, but things did feel repetitive and chore-like during longer play sessions. As I said before, each dungeon felt fun and simple, and I enjoyed all of the four main temples throughout the adventure. The Tower of Spirits on the other hand was nowhere near as well-designed or as fun, THAT shit felt like punishment. Punishment for what? Couldn't tell you. The AI and mechanics for the armor that Zelda possesses was just not intuitive at all and therefore felt very boring and irritating to play with. Once I beat the Fire Temple and had to return to the Tower of Spirits for like the fifth time, that's when the game started going downhill fast. I spent so long on each section of the game going forward, everything felt unfair, poorly designed, etc, etc. The Sand Temple, the fifth and sixth visits to the Tower of Spirits, the Dark Realm with all those fucking trains, the first phase of the final boss; all of it just felt like shit. The amount of times I raged at the game during these hours was immense. I would take long breaks in the middle of sections of the game just to save my sanity; especially with that last Tower of Spirit visit and those stupid Dark Realm trains. Don't even get me started on the Sand Lokomo and how precise you have to be with his song in order to correctly pass it, shit had me fuming. The build up of cutscenes leading up to the final boss felt like things were leading to a very awesome climax, and I was just praying that the final boss would make up for what I had gone through for the past several hours, but that first phase of the boss with Link's touch screen control attacks not being 100% accurate was grueling. But the second and final phase was actually pretty decent, but it was too late by that point. All in all, Spirit Tracks was okay. It was fairly enjoyable for a good chunk of the game, but by the final few hours I was just praying that it would be over. Sucks that the sequels to Wind Waker are stuck here on the DS and weren't made elsewhere, but I suppose with the original reception of Wind Waker, this was the most we could have gotten, so I suppose that's okay. One thing I will add, is that the characterization of a lot of the cast in this game is significantly better than what was in Phantom Hourglass, the story, cutscene animation, and dialog were all improved big time for Spirit Tracks, as those were all things that its predecessor lacked. While I can't really recommend this, if you're a Zelda fan and want to check it out, go ahead, but if you aren't, this isn't gonna be for you.