My Thoughts before the hands on: After hearing about the announcement of a new Zelda game for the Nintendo DS, I became immediately excited and couldn’t wait to see what the game was actually about. After sitting down, and reading up on the information released through various sources, and watching a trailer a few times; I can say that I am honestly disheartened by the path the game is going. I know I can not accurately judge a game I have not actually played, but I can at least apply some educated guesses to Spirit Tracks. So lets take a look at the previous game first.
Phantom Hourglass was a game released on the DS, using the same style as Wind Waker from the Game Cube. It used full touchscreen controls and featured very small “Islands” generally consisting of either a town or an entrance to a dungeon. The game revolved around a lot of empty sea space, which you actually didn’t get to physically play with. You were allowed to draw a line on the map letting the game actually move around for you. Your goal as the player was to keep an eye out for enemies and shoot them down with the canon. I found this to be really boring and counterproductive for the game, I would of liked to have had the ability to hold down A to move, guided the boat with the stylus and tapped to shoot.
Now after looking at Spirit Tracks, the game seems to have done exactly the same thing. Instead of letting you explore a wide space of land it seems like the design is to cruise around on top of it with a train. This seems to further dumb down the game play and remove the ability to even choose where you want to go, limiting you to just track changes, and totally killing the explorative feature of the franchise all together.
Of course there is going to be dungeons and most people say that is where the meat of the game is, but to be honest once you finish a dungeon you don’t go back into them exploring. I feel like the Zelda franchise on the DS is becoming a shell of what it formally use to be, and I’m not sure if I am being too harsh comparing it to games Links Awakening, the Oracles or Minish Cap. After the bitter taste left in my mouth by my stylus, and playing Phantom Hourglass I can say I’m not expecting anything good from Spirit Tracks, but I’ll buy it anyway.
I just worry that there is a lot that can be done with the Zelda series, and that they are just slowly making it more and more new gamer friendly. Removing elements that once made it great, these may just be fears I have, but I wonder what you guys really feel about it? Do you see my point, or do you think I’m just rambling and completely wrong.
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