Spirit Tracks: Very Impressed!(Spoiler Alert!)

[Peace Of Heart]

Edit: I beat the game last night and I think that ST is the most epic handheld Zelda game ever! Very good and it's difficulty was right on!

Hey! I actually have my game paused on my bed right now during the final dungeon in the Tower to get the compass of Light, and I must say that Spirit Tracks has given me hope!

First of all I'll talk about the bosses. If you know me, then you would know that I am a HUGE Zelda boss critic.

Anyway, the bosses in ST are FINALLY how they should be! The deeper you go into the game, the harder the bosses. I have been waiting for this in the Zelda franchise for a very long while. I hope they keep this up all the way to SS too(And hopefully beyond!).

Second, the dungeons are a real challenge(specifically the ones in the Tower of Spirits). A lot of thought has been put into them and it makes the game a lot more memorable.

I think that's it. I'm very impressed with Spirit Tracks so I thought that I would share my feelings to ZD =P.

What about you? How do you feel about Spirit Tracks and do you think it raised the bar for the series(both console and handheld games)?

 

[ThatOneGriffin]

Spirit Tracks is among my personal favourite of the whole franchise.
I think that speaks alot for itself.

 

[Michael Heide]

The bosses are great, I'll give you that. The dungeons are slightly better than those of Phantom Hourglass, but that isn't much of a feat. But otherwise, I'm really not impressed by Phantom Hourglass at all. The game figuratively and literately railroads you from mini-area to mini-area like no other game before, the exploration aspect that made the series great is virtually non-existent. The few puzzles that the game has are great, but, well, there aren't many. And while you can drive a few NPCs around in exchange for Force Gems, that's not really much when you compare it to Majora's Mask's sidequests, the only Zelda game that has less dungeons than the DS titles.

I think the blame rests firmly on the shoulders of the faux 3D graphics. The DS game cards have a capacity of 512 MB, and you can only do so much with that in this art style. But in comparison, that's 16 times the capacity of a Game Boy Advance cartridge, 32 times the capacity of a SNES cartridge and 512 times the capacity of a Game Boy cartridge, so just think of what could have been done with the art style and game mechanics of Minish Cap, Link to the Past or Link's Awakening. Oh, and guess what else had 512 MB of capacity? Nintendo 64 cartridges. Just saying.

But regardless of where the blame lies, I can only judge the final result. In the case of Spirit Tracks, the final result just isn't that good.

 

[XTC]

I can agree with Michael Hide for about 90 percent of what he said. But the only thing I don't agree with is: while being 'railroad[ed] from mini-area to mini-area' the initial captivation of the train stops are intriguing. Then when you reveal more tracks you get to be excited (if you're an explorer like me and have to ride every rail walk every path so-to-say) who knows, you may have just stumbled upon a heart container, or a mini game, or a new side quest. Though I do think much more could have been done I think that the game deserves some thumbs up because it blew Phantom Hourglass out the window, which isn't saying all too much. I rather liked the game and story though.

 

[Pop 360]

Spirit tracks is a very good game and I agree with you the bosses do get harder as they go along and thats how it should be, Have you played Phantom Hourglass?, if not then you'll like it as it is similar to ST. Phantom hourglass was the first Zelda game I ever played and I adore it its my 2nd favorite game in the series, and people do put the handhelds like ST and PH down, but they need to understand some people prefer the handheld to the n64 and game cube games and its difficult to compare them to them to these as, its very difficult to get the same experience and game play on a handheld than it is on a Electricity powered console. If people could respect this maybe there would be more positive comments on games Like Spirit tracks.

 

[Michael Heide]

Oh, I respect that, and it's good that PH and ST have found fans. It's just a matter of personal preference, really. I would have preferred another game in a Minish Cap style, which would have been possible on the DS (which also runs on electricity, by the way ). That's why I was not impressed by PH and ST. I played them, sure. And they are good games, don't get me wrong. They are still heads above the competition. It's just that in my eyes, they could have been even better.

 

[Meego]

Well, Spirit Tracks was a great, cute game. I adored it and it was mainly great! But I see why there are a lot of people who down it. For a Zelda, it's not great...the DS releases seem to lack the epicness Zeldas usually have. But I personally love it! I do prefer others though.

The bosses. Well. The first boss was painfully easy. It took me about five seconds to figure out what to do and one try to beat the thing. The second boss, however, seemed sufficently more difficult than the first and took me longer to fingure it out and complete it. Then, to me, the difficulty level decreased again....? The bosses then seemed to get easier then harder then easier again. Then the final boss was harder but not as hard as I would have liked it to be. But, I did love the design and ways of beating them. They all looked great, the graphic design and the patterns and colours on them. the methods were easy sometimes, or simple but actually hard. I liked the way that each time you got a new weapon from the dungeon you used it to beat the boss, however, it did make the way to beat it more obvious. Cragma had to be my favourite, cool, fun to beat and well designed.

I found that the stages in the final boss fight were interesting. The demon train (once figured out) was fairly easy and puppet Zelda the same. Malladus himself was harder to get the timing right and the strategy right, but once you did it was quite possible. I like the way collecting stamps helped you because if you had the special attack from that then you had an advantage when Malladus sent multiple rocks your way.

All in all. Good game.

 

[Peace Of Heart]

I liked the way that each time you got a new weapon from the dungeon you used it to beat the boss, however, it did make the way to beat it more obvious.

Although I'm thrilled that the bosses got more difficult, this, right there, is still a problem.

No matter what the boss looks like or how it attacks, one thing remains the same: The weapon you use. If you know what weapon to use then it's a matter of seconds until you get the hang of it. I don't like that. At all.

I feel that it's really pulling at the bosses difficulty factor by a huge degree.

 

[Link-182]

ST is a great game with flaws. 1. The warping system totally sucks especially in later parts of the game where you're just going all over the place. 2. The dungeons were a little short and not as good as I had hoped. BUT Spirit Tower was fantastic! The side quests were great. The difficulty was pretty great at the end. The characters were well done. Overall a great game. First play through was fantastic.

 

[tetrafan]

I loved Spirit Tracks the whole game was really fun and enjoyable! One of The best Games I have ever played I hope Nintendo makes a sequel to it.

 

[43ForceGems]

Well, the first time I played it I thought it was AMAZING! It was my 3rd favorite when I first played it. I beat it about a week after I got it, which was the day it came out. So it wasn't until later, I saw people on ZD forums, ZD webmasters, etc. saying reasons they didn't like it. I thought and thought about these reasons they said the game was bad. And then, I played it again. I realized these reasons and then thought about the game myself. It suddenly dropped to 6th. A couple months after, I was still thinking about it. In those couple months, I got new Zelda games, and played more until I played them all. ST suddenly dropped to 8th. Now, almost a year later, it stays at 8th. I didn't think it was that great. It wasn't horrible, but it was... Okay. That's my final comment. (rabbits )

 

[kingofredbulls]

I have finally caught all of the rabbits yesterday... the little critters run so fast it took me forever. But I consider this game to be the best handheld Zelda game, except for the fact that I think the Phantom Hourglass online to be more fun. I thought the puzzles in this game were excellent, and the bosses to be extremely fun. Great game overall.

 

[Nayrinarore]

I bought Spirit tracks over the summer when i had some spare cash, because I did enjoy (but was not thoroughly impressed by) phantom hourglass. although phantom hourglass did not exactly have the exploration factor as previous titles, i just figured "whatever". i got through about half of the game i think (i just beat the ocean temple i think), and i actually gave up. it did not catch my interest or impress me to the least. I must say, i am a HUGE fan of every other zelda game out there but spirit tracks just did not do it for me. I am not very happy with where nintendo took the cute little cel-shaded link. Wind Waker was in my opinion the most fun zelda game, along with minish cap and majoras mask. just look at the Pokemon series. when the DS came out, pokemon diamond and pearl were stunning, the graphics looked soooo nice, because they didnt get carried away with the graphics. I'm not one who insists that graphics "make the game" but it would be nice to have a link and zelda that don't look like a child's drawing. I mean come on. PH and ST graphics are BAD. i think nintendo should make top-down zelda games on DS and save the 3D for the wii. Im sorry if i sound ranty, those are just my opinions on DS zelda games

PS wouldnt it be nice to have a DS game like the GC zelda collectors edition? with all the old-school top-down zelda games???

 

[Michael Heide]

Zelda, Zelda II and Link to the Past are all available for Game Boy Advance. The first two DS generations were backwards-compatible. Which is one of two reasons why I still haven't bought a DSi or DSi XL.

 

[blackice_cc]

I must say, for about the first half of the game, I was quite impressed with ST as well. It was just really fun: perhaps it was because I'd been for a long time without playing a new Zelda game, and I was really excited about it, but whatever the reason, I liked it a lot. But then, once I got past the Ocean Temple, all of the train sequences really bored me. There really wasn't anything fun about them anymore: the 'new' feel of it had quite worn off, the enemies were all really easy, and avoiding the monster-trains became simple. Since you have to use the train to get everywhere, that killed a bit of the enjoyment for me. Don't get me wrong, the on-foot parts were still really fun, but I wish there was some way to avoid the train, at least for a little while.

Then, of course, it has no replay-value at all, to me. I tried going through it again a week or so ago, and I got a little ways past the Forest Temple before I decided I just wasn't having any fun at all.

I can give ST some credit for having a decent story, though. Sure, it was pretty shallow, but it was enjoyable, and some of the characters were actually pretty interesting. Plus, the story did go in a quite different direction than any other Zelda, instead of nearly rehashing the OoT storyline with some extra things throw in.

while being 'railroad[ed] from mini-area to mini-area' the initial captivation of the train stops are intriguing. Then when you reveal more tracks you get to be excited (if you're an explorer like me and have to ride every rail walk every path so-to-say) who knows, you may have just stumbled upon a heart container, or a mini game, or a new side quest.

I'd have to agree that it was pretty awesome when I found a new station: I was always excited to explore a new on-foot area. It was a bit of a shame that most of the stations were solely for on little mini-game type thing, which, once you beat, made the station obsolete.

people do put the handhelds like ST and PH down, but they need to understand some people prefer the handheld to the n64 and game cube games and its difficult to compare them to them to these as, its very difficult to get the same experience and game play on a handheld than it is on a Electricity powered console. If people could respect this maybe there would be more positive comments on games Like Spirit tracks.

With me, anyways, it's not really anything to do with "console>handheld". I thought MC was one of the best Zelda games made: it was plenty difficult enough the first time through, the graphics were nice, the story was good enough, the replay value was sky high. It's just that, in my opinion, PH and ST are waaaay too easy, and they don't have very many interesting side-quests to keep you occupied after you beat the final boss.

Anyhow, ST was pretty good, overall, and it did up the difficulty a little bit in comparison to PH. That's the thing: in comparison to PH, it's better in almost every way; but in comparison to any other Zelda, it's quite lacking in most respects.