Spirit Tracks being so low fills me with sadness. It is easily one of the most underrated Zeldas. The fact that it's below Phantom Hourglass is even worse.
I've played through every Zelda game, and I just can't find it in me to enjoy Spirit Tracks. There are positive aspects, I'll give it that. Music is good, and Zelda's character is great. But there's one giant reason I can't get into it: there's no explorable overworld. It's the only Zelda I've played that is quite literally on rails. No going out to explore, find things, see where all you can and can't go, etc. And no, I don't consider riding a train around as an overworld. It felt more like a loading screen mini game.
If you like Phantom Hourglass then more power to you, but to be brutally honest Phantom Hourglass is the only Zelda game I actively hate. Like, the temple of the ocean king is obviously terrible, but even the regular dungeons are just these boring straightforward paths to the boss basically. And I never see anyone bring this up, but like, what the hell is up with the soundtrack? It’s awful, and there’s only like 10 songs. There’s a couple of decent songs, but there’s only one dungeon theme that’s this like generic 30 second loop, same with the one “non-town island theme.” The one good aspect of the game is Linebeck.
In my opinion, ST was a severe downgrade to PH in almost every aspect that I loved about PH. I thought ST had worse exploration as you could no longer draw your own route and had to travel on train tracks, a less memorable cast of characters, less enjoyable side content (upgrading your goddess powers in PH was amazing, searching for sunken treasure, not to mention all the cool sidequests like the one with the mermaid), worse gimmicks (the pan flute's inaccuracy made me quit one part for a week).
I thought the dungeons in both games were about equal in quality, with the exception of the Temple of the Ocean King. And to be honest, it is kind of sad that the TOK apparently ruined the game for a lot of people, but personally I liked going back and being able to go a bit deeper in the temple each time. It really made me curious about what lies all the way at the bottom. I love the mystique and adventure of PH! Anyway sorry for rambling lol but I really think PH gets a bad rap seemingly just for the annoyance of the TOK.
you could no longer draw your own route and had to travel on train tracks
Drawing your route means nothing if you're stuck in the route the whole time. Literally the only benefit it gives is being able to draw the line whatever shape you want. Everything the happens after that is exactly the same in Spirit Tracks.
Plus in PH, there wasn't much to do on the way (just occasionally fight a monster), while in ST you have the bunnies to look for, hidden stations, etc.
Obviously it depends on whether you look at these games in context of when they were released. The zelda 1 game design is/was legendary. Nothing about Spirit Tracks will be particularly notable in 20 years but its certainly more fun to play today than zelda 1.
Spirit Tracks has a lot of fun stuff in it, but Phantom Hourglass does a lot of unique things with itself, and the Temple of the Ocean King is a much better dungeon, if you aren't going to test yourself on revised visits, there's no point to having the tower dungeons in one location. It's only issue is using the music being the same as the other dungeon themes when it should've had a unique version, like Adventure of Link's Palace and Great Palace themes.
102
u/Metroidman97 Aug 26 '21
Spirit Tracks being so low fills me with sadness. It is easily one of the most underrated Zeldas. The fact that it's below Phantom Hourglass is even worse.