Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks review

...I prefer the Phantom Hourglass. Seriously. I don't know if it's
because it was the first Zelda game I've ever played or what, but I
loved playing it way more than this one. First of all, the sequel has
waaay less temples and dungeons. Then, the puzzles aren't challenging
at all. Only moment I had to plan anything was in the last floors of
the Tower of Spirits. The music isn't as catchy and, for some retarded
reason, I had many slowdowns. Don't understand why there were
slowdowns, but there were. There was an even lesser variety of enemies
and the train really limited movement in the World Map.
However,
even with this in mind, it's still a nice game with quite some awesome
additions. Those being? Phantoms. God, the ability to control them is
just too awesome. But even the levels with the Phantoms weren't as
challenging as in the Phantom Hourglass. They were too easy. Another
cool addition was the windmill but, unfortunately, it wasn't given
enough spotlight. There could have been tons of wind-switches, but
there were only a few. Other thing that I missed - barely no timed
switches and events? Really takes away some challenge and timing
skills. Guess they went for a game that could be more attractive for
younger audiences =3=

Graphics: 8/10
Taking in account the
DS's limitations, yeah, the graphics are very good. Nothing to, in
general, jawdrop at, but very good in the platform they were made for.
Also cute.

Music: 6/10
Some nice themes but nothing too worthy.

Gameplay: 8/10
Still very fun but the difficulty was toned down too much. Great bosses!

Story: 7/10
Many years have passed since the Phantom Hourglass (100, I think) and Link is now... a train engineer. And he's going to get his engineer certificate from Princess Zelda. When he meets her, she tells him to go to her room, later, because of an important situation - the Spirit Tracks are vanishing. A long time before that, Malladus, the Demon King, was sealed in the Tower of Spirits, and the Spirit Tracks locked him away. With the Spirit Tracks disappearing, there's obviously something going wrong. In their trip to the Tower, they're attacked by counselor Cole and a guy called Staven and steal Zelda's body, but leave her spirit behind. Now it's up to Link to go save her body and stop Malladus from resurrecting.

Truth be told... it's not a great story. So why the 7/10 score? Because it's enough to glue you to the game, is quite nice and has some interesting parts. It does its job well.

Addiction Factor: OVER NINE THOUSAND!!! /10
Of course, even with the toned down difficulty and all that, it's still going to glue you.

Replay Value - Low
When you finish the story, you probably won't go back to
the game, unless you want to find all the stamps for Niko's Stampbook
and make a couple sidequests like catching bunnies for a Bunny-Maniac
who loves frolicking* with such rodents.

*since I had never heard that word, I searched for its meaning
"2. A gay, carefree time." Well. Guess that explains the ridiculous outfit that guy is in.


Final Verdict
8/10 Good Game