Got all the train cars--a Herculean feet. Officially out of things to do, other than finish the rabbit quest, which I'll get around to eventually.

Unlike, Mirkon, I thought the ending kind of sucked a lot. The boss fight was essentially a series of semi-clever minigames, but never once felt like a real battle. In fact, all of the boss fights have felt that way. The only boss fight that feels like a real sword fight was the optional boss at the end of the "Take On 'Em All" game in Hyrule Town.

I also hate that it didn't ask me to save after beating the boss, or acknowledge on my profile that I had beaten the game, considering how so much of the game functions like a checklist of achievements. The menu is literally just a tons of different ways of representing a checklist--not that that's a bad thing, it's fun to fill up all the checkboxes. It's just lame that there's no "beat the boss" checkbox.

I'm still playing it though. I really really like the train stuff. I got all of the Force Gems, which means I've completed the train tracks. I also got the golden train and have almost all of the train cars, I'm only missing 3 and I'm working on getting them. This is a huge feat, as the game expects you to trade with other players to get the rare resources needed to build certain cars, so doing it on your own is more difficult. Or at least, more repetitive. Getting a rare treasure of a certain class just means doing the thing to randomly get a treasure of that class more times.

Either way, I've been having fun sucking the last bits of life out of the game. Cargo-delivery quests are infinitely repeatable, and are one of the best ways to get treasure, so I've been doing those a lot. I also train around to different shops every day to see what's new, and I'm so close to getting Beedle's Diamond Club Card. I'd hate to stop playing now.

I just got to the Fire Temple, and so far, I really like it. A lot. Maybe more than Phantom Hourglass? It might be right behind Link's Awakening as one of my favorite Zelda games.

I like Zelda, and I'm happy when I complete a Zelda game, but they're often long arduous processes and much of the time spent is frustrating and annoying. I don't want to re-play Ocarina of Time because I can't even really think of a single temple that isn't exhausting. So far, this game has never felt 'exhausting', I think that's because the challenges are more broken down and linear. Rather than having to spending an hour in a dungeon, you spend 20 minutes each in 3 short dungeons. Like popcorn, each unit is easier to digest and it makes the game as a whole harder to put down.

I also like the relative linearity of it. Metroid Fusion and Metroid II were my favorite Metroid games because they were structured so that you were always directed to the next place to go, and could choose to do side-quest things if you wanted to. That format, IMO, is much more enjoyable than wandering around aimlessly trying to separate side quest stuff from the main adventure. I know many gamers disagree and are annoyed with the current shift, but it's actually working out pretty nicely for Brad.

I also like the train. I think I like it more than sailing! I like that you don't have to chart your course, which was annoying in Phantom Hourglass, and that you can just choose to switch tracks with a lever on the bottom of the screen. Which makes me wonder why they didn't just include an on-screen helm in Phantom Hourglass! The first few train segments were relatively breezy, but I've found the train portions to be the most challenging parts of the game. Transporting the Mega Ice to the Gorons was really fucking hard, and I'm intimidated by the idea of getting 10 ice cubes there (as per a side quest). Getting the keys from the flying elephant monsters was really fun, even if part of the clue was lost in translation; By "make a sound of an animal they don't like" I think they meant "choo choo" as in "chu chu" which is an onomatopoeia for the sound mice make in Japan, but not in America, because I'm pretty sure Japanese people just made that up. Because mice don't make that sound.

I'm also really looking forward to the side quests. I'm slowly recalling really getting into the side quests in Phantom Hourglass and getting 100% of everything. I like all of the side quests so far. Flagging down Beedle is always fun, and especially rewarding once I realized the bomb bag was entirely optional and that Beedle is the only way to get it. I love the treasure and the optional train upgrades and how it affect's the game's economy. Rupees were a bigger deal in Phantom Hourglass than they ever were in any other Zelda game, and it feels the same here too. The train sidequests are also fun driving people places safely and comfortably in a toy train is weirdly satisfying in a disturbingly wholesome way. Like watching reruns of The Patty Duke Show on the Christian cable network, which I do some times, for some reason.

Speaking of identical cousins (...Patty Duke reference...) I really like how characters are directly related to characters from Phantom Hourglass. The fact that Niko is the same Niko, albeit 100 years older, is awesome. I also really liked meeting Linebeck III and visiting Linebeck senior's grave; it reminded me how awesome he was. The story so far is pretty light hearted, not much plot has happened, just living out a necessary plot point in the overall Hyrule history (the founding of the new land after the flood) but I'm hoping for some sort of twist or revelation by the end.

I feel like I tore through half the game in a day (I basically just started today) but I've been loving every second of it. I'm hoping it keeps the same smooth pacing and difficulty curve near the end, and that the side quests are fun enough to merit actually doing them.

Thank goodness. My completion estimate from yesterday was on the high side; and like magic, the remaining half-or-so of Spirit Tracks (including an additional dungeon after the Fire Temple, plus some absurdly difficult final floors in the Tower of Spirits) was everything I could hope for from a great Zelda game. Thrilling boss fights; devilish dungeons; even the story picked up quite a bit. I'm still hesitant to chugga-chugga-chug along for the game's sidequests, but who knows, maybe I'll come back later.

It's pretty clear to me what made the difference in ST's latter half: more dungeon, less train. I could go on; but it would only belabor my point from yesterday. Not to rain on Aonuma's parade, but trains pretty much stopped being the coolest thing ever when I was ten. Although I won't deny there is a certain fun factor to pulling the whistle.

Anyway! The last several dungeons and other gameplay sequences more-or-less redeem the menial parts of the game's first half. So while it doesn't end up being one of my favorite Zeldas, I'm glad I stuck it through.

Better than: Okami
Not as good as: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
I wish I could: Just get off the train and walk

P.S. Spirit Tracks does a bit of gap-tying between Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass and the rest of the series. Don't expect anything significant, though.

P.P.S. Click to read spoiler

This is the third Zelda in a row where one of the final battles is with the floating, possessed body of the princess. What's up with that?

Maybe it's my fault, that even going into this game with tempered expectations, so far I've been disappointed. Or maybe it's the last few Zelda games' fault, for being so goddamned good. In any event - Spirit Tracks is not living up to what I expect from a modern Zelda game.

The train stuff is just as boring and painful as I feared it'd be. Traveling in Phantom Hourglass (and likewise, Wind Waker) could take some time, but there were always surprises along the way: ships, islands, squids, and other miscellany, that you could spot on the horizon and set sail for at your pleasure. Travel in Spirit Tracks always goes from point A to point B, with nothing inbetween but stretches of uninteresting track, and semi-random enemies to tap on.

Nineteen times out of 20, the only surprises along the way are emergency detours, to avoid crashing into, uh, evil trains. Thus making the trip even longer. Meanwhile, you can shoot bombs at rocks. Sometimes a rabbit will pop out and you can catch it for a sidequest. That's about it.

In general, there's no sense of adventure. The game so far - I estimate myself at around 70%, now - is all but entirely linear. Opportunities to go anywhere I haven't been directed, are rare exceptions. Now that I've got a freight car on my train, and a whip for getting past big holes in the ground, some more are opening up; but just getting around is such a pain, that I've all but given up on sidequests at all.

Meanwhile, the rest of the game is following Zelda tropes a little too closely. The first treasure, the Whirlwind (blow into the microphone to shoot a gust of wind), is of extremely limited utility; after that I found the Boomerang, and Bombs, which work just as they did in PH. This game's musical instrument is a flute, which is neat because you actually blow into the mic to play it, but the thing is almost never used at all. It wasn't until the Whip that any of the items felt new. (Plus, it allows me to pretend that Link is Indiana Jones, which is pretty cool.)

Tragically, the dungeons have also been extremely underwhelming. The first and second temples were maybe 10-20 minute affairs; the third one, length- and difficulty-wise, felt more appropriate for an introductory dungeon. Meanwhile, the Tower of Spirits apes PH's Temple of the Ocean King - multiple floors of Phantom-dodging, which you return to after each Temple to push forward a little farther. The Tower has some inventive puzzles that revolve around using Link and Zelda (possessing a Phantom armor suit) simultaneously, but these are all too brief compared to the rest of the game, and it wasn't any sort of challenging until the last few levels I was in.

And I still don't like the controls. I'd argue that matters have actually gotten worse since Phantom Hourglass, since now while you're shooting at something from the train, or trying to pan the camera, it's possible to accidentally switch the tracks or stop, which is bad.

What do I actually enjoy about Spirit Tracks? The story, though largely disposable so far, has more than a few nods to characters and elements from Phantom Hourglass - I'm interested to see if these come together in the end. When Zelda participates in the dialog (which is only slightly more often than trips to the Tower of Spirits), she's amusing and fun. The soundtrack is excellent; the full-speed train theme might be one of my favorite pieces of music from the series. And really, even if it's bad for a Zelda game, in general Spirit Tracks is better than the average action-adventure.

To be honest, though, I wasn't excited about it at all until the last dungeon. That's several hours of routine, average adventuring. If it wasn't a Zelda game, I probably wouldn't have kept going.

Yes, keep your expectations in line with what you thought of Phantom Hourglass. Near as I can tell, the only notable differences are the Phantom and the train.

The Phantom, which looks like a wounded enemy Link might have picked up off the side of the road in PH, is a fun addition to the dungeon play - you can order him around to do stuff, like kill enemies you can't attack, or walk through lava while you hitch a ride on his helmet. His large presence on the screen makes the touch control a little less convenient than it used to be, but not so much that you can't get used to it. "Control multiple guys" puzzles are not new to Zelda, but they always result in really clever dungeon designs, and this implementation looks to satisfy.

The train, on the other hand, seems like a miss. Train segments play out in basically the same way as the boating from Phantom Hourglass. Except it's on, well ... rails. You can speed up, slow down, stop, reverse, and pick directions to go at rail intersections, but you're still stuck to a literally golden path. I'm thinking that at some point you must gain the ability to ride anywhere, because otherwise the map doesn't make a whole lot of sense; and taking away the free-roaming aspect of sailing doesn't really seem right either.

I guess another thing to mention is that the item I got in the demo required me to blow into the microphone to spew out some wind power. Looks like Spirit Tracks may be taking more advantage of the DS's extra hardware features than its predecessor did.