They screwed it up even more.
All of you might remember that I didn’t much care for Nintendo’s maiden DS Zelda effort. After seeing some trailers for the newest game, Spirit Tracks, I became hopeful that it would right the wrongs of its predecessor and usher in a new era of Zelda on the DS. Dear readers, I come before you today to report that, in fact, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is worse.
Now, keep this in mind: I played a short demo. This demo was designed to show off new gameplay features in Spirit Tracks, so I am assuming that the horrors I experienced in the demo are diagnostic of the entire game. I could be wrong: the demo might show off just one dungeon with one unique gimmick.
The demo began on a train, with Link riding along a pre-set path. It would appear that no, you do not draw the tracks with the stylus. Rather, because the tracks often diverge, you can only select whether to go straight or turn. The overworld actually looks very nice, much more colorful and interesting than in Phantom Hourglass, with mountain vistas and forests. Trees and boulders line your path. Unfortunately, pigs like to wander onto the track, and you must pull a “whistle” (with your stylus) to sound the horn and clear those pigs off the track! When I pulled the whistle, some pigs dispersed, others did not. Those that were hit by the train attacked me and drained hearts from my life bar. This annoyed me. Enemies soon appeared on the horizon—Moblins riding on boars, just like in Twilight Princess (but with a Wind Waker look). They chucked bombs at my train while the boars rammed the engine. Hearts dwindling, all I could do was tap on the enemies furiously to throw bombs back at them, but the rate of fire was such that I was quickly overwhelmed. This annoyed me. That particular demo ended, and another one began: the dungeon crawl.
Right off the bat, you take control of a Phantom (yes, from the previous game). He’s your buddy this time, and the entire dungeon consisted of tag-team maneuvers forcing you to constantly switch between controlling Link and the Phantom. If the Phantom ever gets off-screen (which will happen constantly), you need only tap his icon, and the view will jump to him. You can also simply call the Phantom to Link by tapping the “call” icon. While this may seem interesting, it quickly becomes tedious. Move Link to one switch, and the Phantom to another, and a door opens. Move the Phantom through lava to hit a switch and make a bridge appear, then move Link across the bridge. Make the Phantom hit certain timed switches, then make Link hit the other two timed switches. Controlling the Phantom confounds and annoys because he often gets stuck on the environment, so timed switches run out of time before he manages to get to the next one, or Link burns in lava because he was supposed to jump on the Phantom’s head but the Phantom got stuck on the staircase. It took about ten minutes, but I finally got through the dungeon demo, and the worst demo began: the broken one.
Supposedly you’re fighting a boss, but you’re not. After making Link walk through poisonous gas because he didn’t have any items (no amount of blowing into the mic moved the noxious clouds), I blew up some blocks with worms that turned into bombs when hit, and was horrified to discover that after all that effort (the bombs had a very long fuse), a giant hole—too far to jump across—blocked my progress. Link didn’t have any items, and the poisonous gas ate away his soul and refused to go away. I asked the Nintendo rep what I was supposed to do, but she didn’t know, and half-heartedly apologized. I quit in frustration, and also because I was taking a really long time and the line for Spirit Tracks snaked around the corner of the Nintendo area. I got a cool stylus for suffering through the demo, so that’s something.
The dungeon areas look identical to Phantom Hourglass, and the controls are the same. The one new item I experienced (in the Phantom section) is a tornado blower, which activates windmill switches and blows certain items away from you. In the demo, it was used to blow a small key from an island surrounded by fire onto Link’s path.
My new worry is that there will be some kind of Temple of the Conductor King to screw things up even more. The game is scheduled to release before the end of the year.