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Full Review for The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks by Forgoten_Scars

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Introduction

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is yet another game in this seemingly never ending and drawn out series of games featuring a small male with pointy ears and a green hat. It was released in December of 2009 on the Nintendo DS for the enjoyment of all the small children who have stumbled across this series and the older fans that just refuse to give up on it.

The game brings back all of the important ones from the previous game; Phantom Hourglass. Even though this game takes place 100 years after the previous one, they've managed to fit the characters in just fine. Link and Zelda are an obvious comeback couple for this game, seeing as the whole thing just about revolves around them.

So let me start out by writing up a small summary of what the storyline of this game has. The game starts out with a small little story told in what looks to be a child's book with words on the screen. Music plays, story draws on telling of a great evil that has been crushed in the past (Wow, big shock there), and the screen zooms out to show Link dressed in normal clothes. You proceed a bit further doing normal stuff as usual for this series and finally get the good old green and tan suit that makes Link look like a Keebler Elf. Keep going with this for a little while and the real fun starts. As usual, Zelda finds herself in trouble and the little 3 foot tall guy has to come save the day and shut down the big old bad guys with a magical sword... Sound familiar? Yeah, any more info would ruin this little story so I do believe I'll stop here.

 

Graphics

The graphics were overall pretty good for a Nintendo DS game. This game was made in a 3D cliched anime style that looks considerably good when toned down to such small dimensions as the DS screen. The graphics for the game are nearly a carbon copy of those used in the previous game, so no real improvements have been made.

The movements of the main character, such as a sword swing, seem to be a sort of drawn anime somehow mixed into the 3D movements of the character. Most of the elements in this game are obviously 3D, along with the occasional 2D image such as a tree or forest. With single 2D images out in the field where the player could move all around them, they were made to turn so that the face of the 2D image was always turned towards the player. They've blended both the 2D and 3D elements well in this game. Because of this, I really have no quarrels with it cheating a little to save memory and not being a full 3D game.

The famous boss battles of this game series have been further improved in this game with the way the programmers have made it look. The bosses are incredibly detailed 3D enemies that take advantage of both the lower and upper screen. When both are in use at the same time, it's much more appealing to the eye than just having one screen in use. This part of the game is rather enjoyable to look at, in my opinion, and I enjoyed every single one of them.

Small cut scenes and movies made to entertain the player of this game were always welcome and fun to watch. Incredibly detailed when looking at things in the distance was an upside but when the screen zoomed in on one of the characters, I was suddenly reminded that this was a DS game. The characters are made of a bunch of pixels, and that doesn't change when zoomed in on them. The game has no problem showing block-like images for eyebrows or eyes. Small downside but nothing that would completely cripple the graphics experience of the game.

This little game gets an 9 out of 10 from me for the eye candy it has provided us with.

 

Sound

Again, the makers of this game did a pretty decent job on this game, especially with the sound in it. Not really all that much that can be said here.

The only real upside to this game is the music that is almost always playing. It is enjoyable to listen to and adds a feeling of nostalgia, seeing as it's similar to that of the music put into earlier games in this series. It always seems to blend in well with all other elements of the game, not overpowering something else and seeming out of place. When something changes such as the player being put into danger, the music changes from gentle pipe music to a chase scene style music.

As many might have guessed with this being a sequel to the Phantom Hourglass game, there is no real dialogue to this game other than a few grunts, squeaks, and squeals. Keeps it close to the old ways so a lot of it is just reading.

For this part of the game, I'll give it an 8 out of 10 for good effort in keeping everything nice sounding.

 

Gameplay

Now, for the biggest part of the game, the gameplay itself. I have quite a bit to say about all this.

I would like to start off by saying that this game is not very merciful. What I'm talking about here is the way it goes about having puzzles and collecting things. If one happens to pass up something in the game or overlook a small detail, the game won't give much help in figuring out what went wrong. There are few people that will just stop the player and say "Oh wait, you need to go here and get this". The player's only help is either the internet, or the restart button. The puzzles are fairly easy at the beginning of the game, but as the player progresses, they seem to get pretty challenging near the end of it. I've gotten stuck on several puzzles in the game that have taken me several hours to a day just to figure out. This is nothing compared to the ending ones though. They're so complex that I never got past one of the final dungeons. I just ended up cheating there and playing on my friend's file to see the ending because I couldn't beat the place that apparently takes a week to get through.

The game progresses as any other in the series would. The player goes into this apparently difficult but necessary place to retrieve an item crucial to the progression of the game. Along the way, the player finds some new item/weapon that is used near the end of the area to defeat a boss. There are two points that can be brought up here; items and bosses. As for the items, they did a good job on making them but not such a great job on how they were used. The player needs to switch between items a lot during this game and for that, they have to bring up the items menu, select the item, then click on an icon to use it. A little bit drawn out and sometimes tedious. Second point here would be the bosses. They seem almost invincible when first introduced to the character but soon, it becomes apparent in how to defeat them with this new power the player has with the item. It's a really nice mix.

The AI of this game is a bit clumsy and seemingly ill made at times. When drawing a line to order Zelda where to go, she often times just stumbles around, walking in circles if the line is a bit too close to a wall or object. It's only too bad that the AI of the enemies can't be as dense as that of the allies.

The game is made up of multiple locations spread out over 4 different maps. To go from place to place and cross these maps, the player has to take control of a small train and navigate the maze of train tracks covering the land. Overall, I would say it's pretty fun. There are enough twits and turns in this part of the game to keep the fun up and not become just some tedious little part of the game that could have been left out. Controls given to the player while in this part of the game are speed controls, a whistle for the train, a cannon, and a track selector for when the train the player is in wants to make a turn on the tracks. There are always enemies out in this wide land that want to attack the train and bring it's life down to zero so it explodes and the player has to start over. Most of the enemies out there are not very hard to beat, however, there is one exception. Roaming the tracks of this land are demon trains that will destroy the player's train upon impact. Shooting at them doesn't do much good, it only slows them down for a few seconds. If the player has not navigated and timed the course well, the demon trains are sure to arrive and completely stop any hopes of progressing. Closer to the end, there are even demon trains that can't be hurt and can turn around, making things even harder on the player. Major upside for the game is all of this track business.

As many may have guessed, this game's biggest downside is having to collect things, and revisit the same place time and time again. In this game, the place is called the Tower of Spirits. This place is filled with a wide assortment of puzzles and large, indestructible foes called phantoms. Upside here is that Zelda can control these phantoms but it's still just a game prolonging place.

I would give the overall gameplay here a 9 out of 10. Only reasons I take off points here is because it's so close to it's predecessor in the way it plays that it's not really that much of a new experience.

 

Lastability

As I've said, this game is unmerciful so it can really start to draw out for a long time. Not a bad thing, but challenging at times. Along with this level of difficulty at points in the game, it has a long and drawn out story. One that I can honestly say I enjoyed playing. If one wants to take this game even further, it has a small multiplayer mode that just adds on to the length of time the game takes up. Definitely a buy if someone has some money to spend and a long bus ride or something to go on.

10 out of 10 on lastability. Well done to all who made the game.

 

Overall

Overall it's a great game, but it's just drawing out on what I believe is a dying series. I would have to say somewhere around a 7 out of 10. There's really no need to make any other games on this series seeing as this one topped the bar for what can be done while following this path on the DS game.


Final Score: 86%

Review by: Forgoten_Scars

 

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