Message #208068

[Ddude The Insane]

I apologize that I've neglected this topic so terribly. However, this post will soon contain reviews of Metroid Prime Trilogy, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, and possibly more. Stay tuned!

EDIT1:

Review: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS Systems.

Game Background: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is produced by Nintendo. Duh. =P

 You're Link, a young train engineer's apprentice. On the day the game begins, you are being promoted to Royal Engineer. After an old man, whose name I forget, tells you an ancient story about Hyrule, you head off. When you arrive, you bump into a strange man wearing two green Bowler Hats.

You meet the Princess, who promotes you to engineer (with Chancellor Cole, the bowler hat dude, continually telling Zelda to hurry up). She then secretly instructs you to meet her in her room, and gives you a map. When you get to her room, she asks you to take her to the Tower of Spirits, where the train tracks across Hyrule originate from. She thinks something's amiss, due to the tracks dissapearing.

While on your way, the tracks dissapear from beneath you. A evil flying train appears in the sky, and Cole, riding on it, reveals the bowler hats are covering Demon Horns. He, with the help of his powerful assistant Byrne, force Zelda's spirit out of her body and take it, believing it is the only way to ressurect the Demon King, Malladus.

Then you wake up and-*stops spoiling the game*

Opening Thoughts: I'd never played a Zelda game before, *ducks to avoid the noxious gas bombs being thrown at me by Zelda diehards* so I thought this would be a good jumping-on point.  *gas bombs stop coming* The concept seemed pretty cool, and I've heard Zelda is an excellent series. I had high expectations for this game. Very high expectations.

Review:

Alright, I'll start with Music.

The Music is excellent in this game. I love the main theme you hear while riding in the train. The Flute function is pretty nice, although it's a bit tricky and it doesn't always work perfectly. After using it a little, though, it gets pretty fun.

8.5/10

Graphics:

I've always prefered a bit of a cartoonish look to my games, so cell-shade animation is welcomed by me. Although the cutscenes are a bit iffy, the graphics of the game itself work pretty well.

8.3/10

Gameplay:

Ok, maybe I'm just biased because I'm new to the series, but I must say the gameplay was impressive. The Train function is pretty nice, although it feels a bit linear. I also wish there weren't so many enemies while you ride on the train >_>.

Combat seems to work pretty well. Both characters move very well with the stylus (not like Scribblenauts >___>). Link steers well and Zelda, while her movements are questionable somtimes, is for the most part pretty good. The bosses are all equally epic (except Frooz, he's just...weird), particularly the lava guy. The Final Boss, Malladus, is pretty good, although it feels like you finish the fight with him rather quickly (although you do end up taking a lot of damage).

The storyline was well-written, and from what I've heard, it isn't exactly your standard Zelda (although the Cell-Shade ones never really are). It seems like Link transitions to being a warrior a bit quickly, though. Not that I want repeptitive tutorials and such, but it would  have helped if he had a bit more training in his background.

The characters are all well-written, particularly Zelda and Cole. Zelda has her funny moments, and Cole makes for a pretty good villain.

Final Thoughts:

Maybe if I had more experience with Zelda, my rating wouldn't be so high. But I still think this is an excellent game, and I especially reccomend it to those who want to try out a Zelda game for the first time.

Music: 8.5/10
Graphic: 8.3/10
Gameplay: 9.4/10

Overall: 9.1/10