The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is the longest tenured game on my backlog, and now it is finally complete. I started into the game on a work trip to Dayton nearly a year ago, getting decently far and having a great time with it. After lending my DS to my bored brother in the army for a year or so, I finally picked up where I left off a few days ago. The game plays similarly to the previous DS installment Phantom Hourglass with 4 expansive areas each with their own temple and set of small towns and attractions, as well as one giant tower acting as a central hub. Rather than sailing from port to port, this time Link rides around on a train, and this mode of transportation drew most of the criticism for Spirit Tracks. This makes sense- rather than being able to freely travel wherever you wanted on a boat, getting around on a train is much more limited as you can't exactly go off the beaten path. There are a few distractions from the boring rides though, as you can engage in cannon combat with enemies or hunt for animals while continuing to your destination. The towns, mini-games and temples are all standard Zelda fare- if you've played any recent installments, you have a pretty good idea of what you're going to get. I also have to praise the developers for listening to a recent grumbling among the Zelda fanbase- people insisted that items were growing stale, and that there's no surprise in getting the bow and arrow or boomerang anymore. But I enjoyed some of the new items- the whip and sand-raiser were fun to use and more importantly had important uses outside of their respective temples. You also play a flute along the way, using the DS's microphone capabilities, which did prove tough- sometimes it seemed like the DS just wouldn't register my blowing (har). In addition to the typical Zelda mainstays, Spirit Tracks has a central train station known as the Tower of Spirits, this game's answer to the much maligned Temple of the Ocean King from Phantom Hourglass. It appeard that Nintendo listened to people's complaints, because while the tower can be a pain in the ass at times, it's not nearly the burden that the Temple of the Ocean King was. Basically on six seperate occasions Link has to traverse four or five floors of the tower to proceed with the game, but unlike before there's no time limit and you don't have to redo old floors. In the tower the phantoms from Phantom Hourglass return, patroling around and instant-killing Link, but this time around the spirit of Princess Zelda (her body gets stolen from her early on) can possess these phantoms, allowing Link and the Princess to work together to get through the game. I appreciated this aspect- despite being the name of the whole series of games, Zelda always takes on a background role and most often plays some damsel in distress. Spirit Tracks did wonders for fleshing out the character as spunky and more adventurous than our hero Link, and it would be impossible to get through the tower or defeat the final boss without her. By the time you've reached the endgame the quality of different aspects of the game really seemed to reach their extremes- the temples and mini-games got more and more fun, while constantly shuttling around passengers on your train and playing more difficult tunes on your spirit flute became boring and difficult. Those two flaws don't bring the game down much for me though, and overall I had a great time with it. That people consider Spirit Tracks one of the worst Zelda games speaks volumes about the quality of the entire series.