Spirit Tracks is a bit of a trainwreck.
So, I'm a huge Zelda fan, and it is honestly the most likely pick for my favorite franchise of all time, but something about Link's latest DS adventure just did not sit well with me at all. A lot of the staples were there - dungeons, hearts, rupees, swords, but honestly very few of those things felt like they came from the Zelda franchise I know and love. The dungeons are the saving grace of Spirit Tracks, because they actually felt like some effort was put into them, and while the game was lackluster for me in almost every way, I can't say I didn't have a bit of fun in the few dungeons this game provides.
I'll talk about that first then - dungeons. This is Zelda, and those dude know how to make dungeons that revolve around puzzles which revolve around an item. Everything you'd expect is here - monsters, keys, a strict one-item-per-dungeon, and a boss fight that's way too easy. All par for the course. If it wasn't for these points of real Zelda goodness, I don't know what I would say about Spirit Tracks that carried any positive connotation with it. Probably my biggest complaint about Spirit Tracks is the controls. I'm so sick and tired of DS touch screen controls that are bad. Just because you can make the character walk by dragging the stylus around doesn't make that the best option, and in this case, as well as with some other games (Scribblenauts) it just plain is a bad idea. The real problem with the controls in Spirit Tracks is that everything is controlled by the touch screen. Walking, swinging your sword, using an item - everything. This essentially limits you to one action at a time, i.e. you can't move while attacking or using an item. A simple fix would be to let the d-pad control movement, the L button activate your item, and the touch screen be for attacking/directing your item. Oh, and I'm not even going to get started on the spirit flute, just suffice it to say that I hate blowing in the microphone.
The other main problem with Spirit Tracks is the part that is everything outside of the dungeons, namely, the over world train segments. Anytime you want to go anywhere you hop on your train and take a long, boring ride, during which you must pay constant attention lest you be killed and reset to your starting position. These segments are too long, tedious, and frequent to be any fun at all. The rest of the out-of-dungeon game is some of what you'd expect in a Zelda game, but the whole thing feels watered down. There aren't heart pieces, just full heart containers, and you only get up to 16 hearts instead of 20. The many collectibles and fetch quests you can undertake give little or no reward, and there are no extra swords or shields to be acquired, just those that you get through the storyline.
It could be that I'm being too harsh on Spirit Tracks, because really it isn't that big of a step from Phantom Hourglass, which I enjoyed just fine, but this game just gets to me in a bad way. I think I just feel like there must have been a crippling amount of laziness behind it for Spirit Tracks to end up the way it did, and when we're talking about a series like Zelda, I think laziness can't be forgiven.
