Spirit Tracks Rail Diary: Day 7

Dear Rail Diary,
today I've finally beaten Spirit Tracks. It was about time. :D

Well, I accomplished to do, what I intended to do last night before I visit the final boss. I got the final Heart Container and I managed to get that last treasure chest in Hyrule Castle town. As for the Heart Container at Beedle's, he really has bad offerings in this game. Next to the two treasures, which he sells every day, he only offers a purple potion, a red potion and bombs. Well, I made Link drunk of purple potions and got the Heart Container. But some of those prize postcards or a golden potion would have been nice. About the treasure chest in Hyrule Castle town, I did look that up and the solution made me just say "why didn't I see that?". It's actually quite obvious if you look very closely at the map. I wished I hadn't looked the solution up, because if I would have figured out by myself, I would be very proud now. :D But at least I was able to solve all the other tricky puzzles in this game. And in this department Spirit Tracks really, really shines, it offers some clever puzzles, that require good creative thinking to solve them. I didn't have this "I don't have any clue how to solve this" feeling since Link's Awakening and N64 Zelda days. You know, where you would run around and try simply everything, but you can't come up with the solution. I had at least three of these moments in Spirit Tracks and I'm not someone, who sucks at puzzles, for example the ice block puzzles in Twilight Princess were a piece of cake for me. But if you remember my Difficulty of Zelda article it's exactly what I wanted for a new Zelda game. You could actually create puzzles that are really hard for longtime Zelda fans and easy to solve for new Zelda gamers. Because as a Zelda fan, who has played most of the games in the series, you're used to certain patterns and puzzles and you knew the solution to most of the puzzles in a new game like Twilight Princess in advance. But you can actually create puzzles, that hide the solution, if the player is thinking in those strict Zelda patterns. And some of the puzzles in Spirit Tracks are really awesome, especially in the later sections of the Spirit Tower. Aonuma promised this in one of the later interviews and looks like he kept his word.

And today was the today. I finally have beaten the game and the final boss. I kicked this moment down the road for a while, actually since Monday, and played lots of sidequests instead, simply because I didn't want this game to end and I still wanted to have something to look forward to. And this is a VERY good sign, if I actually do this. I will put the next paragraph and the screenshot in a spoiler box, just to make sure you don't get accidently spoiled. (The screenshots are actually made by ZeldaInformer, my train is golden by now. :D)

Okay, seriously... That was probably the most annoying final boss fight in any Zelda game. It's like they managed to take the most annoying things from the entire game and put a large concentration of it into the finale. I've constantly whined about those bomb trains, so you could imagine how much fun the first part was. Not very much. I know, I know, I actually should love the part, because it's the first time you get to kill those Phantom trains. It was somehow like Pacman on train and the looks were very cool. But the trains were actually faster than you and I died a few times by overestimating the time those Tears of Light would last. Or the trains would suddenly take turn in the middle of the tracks and run into me. Hello? My main problem is, that you don't just loose one heart, it's an instant Game Over and you have to start over again, if you make one single mistake. It's just cheap. Then I died once more during the chase battle, because the tracks suddenly disappeared at one point (if you take too long), so I had to repeat the first phase yet again. Thank goodness you could save after that or otherwise I would have lost all motivation. Well, the chase battle was actually really cool and badass if you knew what to do, but I could have passed on repeating the first part multiple times.



Next phase was Phantom and Link, but not a cool head-to-head fight like Staven/Byrne, but a cheap puzzle fight, where you have to start over and over again, if you screw something up, which also isn't too much fun. Cole is sending rats at Zelda, which is her greatest weakpoint, and if you miss to hit one of them, he will be able to control the Phantom. Actually the sequence wouldn't be too hard, if my touchscreen wouldn't have gone totally mad during this fight. It screwed up every time those train sections were starting to move, so I couldn't throw the boomerang to free the Phantom from Cole's strings until I was back at the start. And I had problems hitting the rats, because the aiming was off. It was like the entire input area moved to the side. I don't know if this is a bug, a problem with my screen protector or supposed to happen. But the game works perfectly fine everywhere else and if this is really supposed to happen, then it's an aweful and terrible idea. I was a big fan of the touch screen controls since the start, I didn't have any problems with the hourglass drawing in the final boss fight of Phantom Hourglass, but this sequence was a pure nightmare for me. I just made it with tons of luck. But there's no one out there reporting similar problems, so it might be just my Nintendo DS.

Next phase. Of course the annoying stuff wasn't just over yet. This fight was a test, if you are by now perfectly capable of striking your sword without accidently rolling even once. Well, I got the drill and didn't have problems with the rolling, but it was still a tricky sequence, that I needed to repeat many times. But you're not loosing much health and that way you can practice it until you get it right.

So, now the question is, what could be more annoying than death trains and messed up touchscreen controls? Of course! A session on your Spirit Pipes. Ugh. However, it was the title song and therefore somehow naturally to play and even fun. I noticed, if you move the Spirit Pipes faster, you can easily skip over the notes, which helps a lot. And this sequence was more forgiving, I played some wrong notes and it still gave me an "okay". The Dune Sanctuary Song was way more fussy. So, against my expectations this part went really smooth and well.

After all that annoying fuss and touchscreen troubles the real battle finally started and it was really awesome (loved the music!). Finally a fun fight, why not from the start? It's very similar to the final fight in The Wind Waker. Malladus, who looked like a mix between Ganon from Twilight Princess and Cole, was jumping around and Link had to distract him, so Zelda could shoot Ganon, errhhh Malladus with the Light Bow. However, this time, you're controlling Zelda, too. It's more fun than it sounds. You have a Light Bow icon at the bottom of the screen and the upper screen shows you Zelda's viewpoint. You just have to tab the icon as soon as she has a clear shot. You can move her around too, but it isn't really necessary, so you can concentrate on Link alltogether.

The final cutscenes were quite epic, but a little disappointing, because we aren't any smarter than we were before. Is Malladus now Ganon or not? You'd say no, but he sure resembled him, the idea of the big face sphere and the design of the beast were very similar to Twilight Princess, just a little more greenish. But we don't know for sure. It's left open to interpretation pretty much like the ending of Phantom Hourglass, which gave you the impression, that everything was just a dream like in Link's Awakening and that the Ocean King is the Windfish (just in the other timeline). But you can't be sure about that either and there are still Zelda fans, who say, that's ridiculous. So, there will probably lots of debate in Zelda Forums, who Malladus really was. Was that really Ganon or just a simple Ganon clone to fit the train story? Or maybe a reincarnation of Ganon, that isn't aware of its earlier self (yet)?

But hey, the Lokomo weren't half train half human after all. They are just too old and lazy to walk. The scene also slightly adressed the topic of characters being reborn. It's said that the spirit is persistent and that the person will come to live in another time again without his previous memories. It could explain all those multiple Links, Zeldas and Tingles over the ages. And there are three different ending scenes, which depend on the choice you've made, when Zelda asks you, what you want to become. I watched the other two on Youtube, because I don't want to play that fight again right soon, but none of them is actually special.

Don't get me wrong, I loved how they pulled the fights off. The use of the characters (and especially Byrne's tragic death in the cutscenes) was really well done, the music was great and it was all quite epic. I'm just totally pissed right now, that my touchscreen went so buggy during the Puppet Zelda part. I have to figure out, why's that and try it again later.

I didn't have the chance to play the multiplayer mode yet and I doubt, that I will ever have the chance. See, I'm not someone, who always whines about missing online mode, because he doesn't have any friends or something. I'm perfectly fine with games like Wii Sports Resort or New Super Mario Bros. Wii not having online functionality, because those games are all about the local multiplayer experience and it's really easy to find someone to play those games with you. Everybody loves the Wii. But none of my friends or colleagues are interested in Zelda. I don't even know anyone, who does have a Nintendo DS. So, how am I supposed to play the multiplayer, Nintendo? This is not Japan, where everyone runs around with Nintendo DS systems and plays Zelda on the streets. I wouldn't mind the missing online too much, if it didn't affect the singleplayer mode in a way. But you're supposed to trade treasures to complete your train car collection, but you can't trade treasures without the online mode. Remember that you would need to find someone, who also plays the game and who also desperately wants all train cars. Go figure. Online it would be not a problem thanks to countless Zelda freaks crawling internet boards, but offline here in Europe or the States? Good luck.

So, what's left to do is lots of treasure hunting. I got enough of the 500 rupee treasures, I mostly need treasures in 150 or 50 rupee category. The easiest way to get 50 rupee treasures is blowing leaves away in Mayscore/Whittleton. And the fastest way to get 150 rupee treasures is the sword pratice minigame in Hyrule Castle, just make 60 hits, score a treasure, repeat. I even got my first Dark Pearl Loop there, just eleven more to go... The pirate archery minigame and the goron target range are also very good for treasures, but they take too much time to complete them. I want lots of treasures in a short time. The whip minigame is faster, but you have to concentrate more. In Phantom Hourglass the archery minigame was the most effecient way of collecting ship parts, but here I haven't figured the best way for me out yet. But one thing is sure, it's going to be a long, boring and repetitive process. Thanks, Nintendo... Ah, and I haven't beaten the third level of the Take 'Em All Down minigame yet, where the secret boss awaits me (yeah, I know already).

It's a hidden Dark Link!!! How AWESOME is that?! Together with all those nice minidungeons the game offers some of the best sidequests in the series. Nice. But I haven't seen him for myself yet, so I'm not sure, if it's really Dark Link or simply a Link doppelgänger like those in the Palace of the Four Sword. But it's definitely a big motivation for playing through the entire level.

This was (probably) the final entry in my Rail Diary. I hope I didn't bore you too much and I will write a real review for Spirit Tracks this weekend.