With Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, Nintendo have been trying to make Zelda more accessible to the huge audience on the DS platform. In many ways they have succeeded, but it comes at a cost to those who love the Zelda series for their sense of adventure. With Spirit Tracks, the overworld is reduced to a series of connected points – those who like dungeons will find much to enjoy here, but those who like to simply explore a world of possibility, you’ll have to wait for the next console Zelda – Skyward Sword.

Spirit Tracks follows the story of a young boy who saves the world from utter destruction. We’ll call him Link. He’s about to become a train engineer, and to do so he must go to the castle for an initiation ceremony involving the Princess. During the ceremony, Princess Zelda slips him a letter telling him to come see her secretly. It turns out the tracks that the trains ride on, the Spirit Tracks, are disappearing. On their way to the Tower of Spirits to investigate this, the dodgy Chancellor (who wears two hats, literally), somehow separates Zelda’s body from her spirit. It turns out he needs her body for the Demon King to manifest in. For once Zelda plays a starring role in a Zelda game – she is your companion in the quest to get her body back and destroy the Demon King.

The main structure of the game is similar to most Zelda games: do some exploration in the overworld to find and get equipped for the next dungeon, then explore the dungeon, get a new item, beat the boss and start the search for the next dungeon. In Spirit Tracks, however, most of the overworld exploration is removed. Instead Link drives a train to each place. There is still some exploration in the sense of driving around the tracks to find new stations, but it’s not the same as finding a little cleft in a rock somewhere that leads into a little mini-dungeon. You also have to do a lot of waiting around while the train gets to its destination. While you’re on the train you can control the camera and watch the world go by, although it’s a very sparse world because of the DS’ capabilities (or lack thereof). You do have some things to do – fight off the odd marauders, find bunnies hidden behind rocks, dodge the evil trains and adjust your speed or blow your whistle (particularly important if you have a passenger), but it’s not really enough to stay interesting, especially when some train trips can take four minutes or more.

Once you arrive at a station the game switches to a fixed isometric camera, the same used in Phantom Hourglass. In fact, the game engine seems identical to that game’s. In the overworld there are a bunch of things to do – quests to transport passengers to other towns, or, later, to transport goods from one place to another, but they’re all essentially travelling from one spot to another – not very exciting. Some of these quests advance the main plot or are needed to get to the next dungeon, while others are simply for a reward. Unfortunately the rewards are not particularly compelling – most quests give you a gem that makes a new bit of track appear, and often those new tracks don’t have much of interest on them (except maybe a bunny). Sometimes they have warp gates, which make travelling a bit quicker. The gates are linked in pairs, so you can only go to one location from one location, and you have to find both gates in a pair before you can activate them, so they’re really useless until much later in the game.

Fortunately you can write all over your maps, so you can record where each one goes, because they don’t have any indication on them. Making notes on maps is one of the best features these DS Zelda games have added to the mix, and I hope all future Zelda’s have a similar feature. Other rewards in the game are treasures, which can then be traded in to get new parts for your train. The new train parts seem to mainly be for interest, so the impetus to collect treasures is not very strong. All in all, the overworld is the weakest portion of the game, and one of the least interesting ones in any Zelda game I’ve played.

The dungeon structure is a little different to most Zelda’s and an improvement to Phantom Hourglass. There is again a big central dungeon (the Tower of Spirits) which you have to explore to find a stone that will re-activate some new tracks. This time you don’t have to start at ground floor each time, a great improvement. In the Tower of Spirits there are a lot of stealth-type puzzles, similar to Phantom Hourglass, but because there is no repetition they’re a lot more palatable. Zelda is able to get into the Phantom guards (because she’s a spirit) and use their abilities, which makes for some interesting puzzles – some guards have a fire blade, others can teleport, and others can roll around like a giant metal boulder. You control Zelda and Link – Zelda by drawing paths on the touch screen and Link by touching in the direction you want to go. You can switch between characters by touching an icon on the screen. For the most part this works well, but it’s sometimes a little frustrating when you find yourself moving the wrong character or not able to control Zelda accurately because as you draw the camera is moving.

Once you’ve activated a portion of the map its overworld time and exploring to find a Protector. Once you find this character you have to play the Spirit Pipes along with him (or her) to activate the track to the dungeon. To play the pipes you move them with the stylus and blow into the microphone – a really clever simulation of playing the pan pipes. These tunes can be tricky if you’re non-musical, but with a bit of practice they’re all possible. Now you head to the dungeon, which follows the normal path – explore, find the new item (boomerang, bow, some other really cool ones) and defeat the boss. The dungeons are very clever – they are varied and have some great puzzles. The bosses are also fantastic.

Spirit Tracks is a solid 20 hours, and while it isn’t the strongest Zelda game around (in fact, it’s one of the weakest) it’s still a great handheld adventure. I found it totally absorbing for the first 10 or so hours, and after that the train sections got a little tiring (although I still found myself doing all sorts of side quests for completeness’ sake). The Tower of Spirits has some great puzzles but got a little bit tiresome because controlling two characters got frustrating and some rooms took ages to get past. Nevertheless, it is well worth the effort to finish as the later dungeons and the finale are all a lot of fun.

It certainly is an accessible game – you are exceptionally well guided as to what to do next at each step of the way (at least you are in the overworld – in the dungeons you’re on your own), and you won’t find yourself at a loss for where to go. Of course, this means you don’t get to explore very much, and you might find yourself dreading travelling around the overworld because it’s so time-consuming, not very interesting, but still demanding of your attention in case some baddies come. This tedium drags down the game a little, but the great dungeons and puzzles make up for it.

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