Game Review: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is a beautifully crafted game where the gameplay, music and artwork complement each other to create an engaging world that you don't want to leave. I have a couple of major issues with the game, but apart from these gripes I absolutely love the game and would recommend it to many people, including my Mum.

(Note that images in this review were taken using a camera of the screen while I was playing the game. Please accept my apologies for the poor quality of some of them.)

Review Date: 18/06/2010

Platform:Nintendo DS

In a few words:

The Good: Brilliant overall design, including the diverse gameplay and the beautiful music.

The Bad: A couple of design flaws meant I got stuck on one puzzle with no hope to find the solution, and I couldn't finish the game.

A few more words:

Before I get down to the nuts and bolts of this review, I have a confession to make. Well... It's really two confessions.

Firstly, I really like the feeling of completing a game - and I mean 100% completing a game. These days this seems to be a more and more unreachable goal. And, while I do like to get a certain number of gaming hours from each game I buy, I think I'm getting to a limit. I hate all the repetitive things that need to be done to get that 100% trophy. So I always get to a point where I have to give up, and this makes me feel like a loser, even though the logical part of me knows that's not true.

We come now to my second confession: I'm not actually that good at playing games. My twitch reflexes are appalling and I often have to use hints for story-based games. This doesn't stop me loving playing games and hoping that eventually I'll become better at playing them. Unfortunately for me, as much as I learnt playing Zelda Spirit Tacks, I couldn't complete the final battle. This has tormented me for weeks now and I've tossed and turned about how to complete it, since I really felt that I should complete a game before reviewing it. But I've given up...

Zelda has bested me, broken down my spirit and left me feeling somewhat ashamed of myself. This is quite sad overall, because up until the point when I admitted defeat, I really enjoyed all those hours puzzling over the game and laughing as I played it.

Story and World:

The story of Zelda is nothing out of the ordinary: evil villain takes over the land and you, as a young apprentice Engineer must set it right. However, the diversity of the characters you meet and your interactions with them can't help but pull you in to the story further and give you that extra incentive to keep at a particularly hard puzzle or battle.

The land that we find ourselves in is divided into several realms: forest, snow, ocean, fire and sand. Each realm has its own weapon to use, enemies, spirit temple. The structure for the game follows the reassuringly repetitive pattern of: Spirit Tower level, go to the new realm and village, find a new sanctuary on the train, complete the spirit temple (including a boss battle) and return to the spirit tower to continue. As you go along you pick up special weapons for each realm. The use of these weapons/tools are so well integrated into each realm that it is beautiful to play and follows a wonderful logic that builds on itself.

Graphics and Music:

The music is definitely one of the strong points of the game. From playing your magic flute (panpipes) yourself by blowing into the microphone, to the uplifting music as you slowly conquer the evil in the Spirit Tower, to the cheery train-driving music that was so catchy I found myself tugging the train whistle in time to create an accompanying instrument. The music was always thoughtfully chosen and matched the theme of the realm you were going through.

The graphics themselves are nothing amazing; however the graphic design of each realm is wonderfully worked to match each realm's theme and the entire world. The objects you find are consistent, which gives you multiple cues to use for figuring out which weapon/tool to use next.

Gameplay:

The gameplay itself is wonderfully diverse, teaches you slowly and builds up your abilities so that you barely notice how complicated it really is. There are 5 weapons that you obtain along the way that can be used to defeat enemies or as tools to cross maps. They are: a fan (used by blowing into the microphone), a boomerang, a whip, arrows, and bombs. On top of this you are given a magic flute which you can use to cast spells, either on your own or with one of the spirit characters. Not only does each level work on its own, individually, but together the levels join together so that the game has a consistent feel on all dimensions across all the realms.

Although on the surface there are only two core playing mechanisms (on the ground or on the train), there is such a diversity of tasks to perform that you are never bored. The train driving can be a somewhat boring task, but luckily they slowly spice up the driving with passengers, ferrying goods, shooting at objects for points, killing or avoiding enemies and searching for rabbits. When on the ground you can talk to the villagers you meet and do them favours by ferrying goods about or themselves (passengers). In the dungeons you must fight the enemies using your many weapons, often needing the spirit of Zelda to take over a guard. The requisite bosses you must defeat in the temples have weaknesses that relate to the realm they are in, giving the realm a wonderful symmetry.

Along the way you meet many great puzzles which are about so much more than just how to defeat a particular type of enemy. For example, you'll need to work out where to go and how to get there, which is where being able to draw on your maps comes in handy. Drawing on maps also comes in handy with all the side quests that you can complete. Side-quests include helping out the villagers you meet, mini-games to play, and collections to build. The game encourages you to collect hearts, force gems, train parts, stamps, and rabbits. Although you can easily get distracted by these side-quests, the game does encourage you to follow the main story-arc, which is always clear and well explained.

In fact I think I have only two issues with the game. Firstly: the fact that I couldn't finish the game. I think that the battle the beat me required precision timing skills that I hadn't needed before and therefore hadn't built up, which is a design flaw in my eyes. The battle that beat me also couldn't be saved at the start of that battle, so every time I failed I had to complete the previous battle as well.

My second issue with is also a design flaw in my eyes. When I started playing the game I jumped in, not realising the depth of the game, and went straight for the main story arc, only completing the core missions. I got to a point where the only way to solve a particular puzzle was with a skill that hadn't been essential to any prior mission and couldn't be acquired in the current location. This meant I had no idea what I was doing wrong or how to solve the puzzle.

Final Comments:

This is the first Zelda game I have ever played, so I am unable to compare the game to other incarnations of the game. I don't think this put me at a disadvantage to playing the game, although perhaps that was why I stumbled twice. I can't comment on the multi-player battles since most of my friends don't own a DS. Despite this and my two aforementioned gripes, I loved playing Zelda. I loved the challenge of the puzzles and the battles, the detail and obvious attention to detail on every level. Of course, don't expect to finish the game in a couple of hours.