At the point of writing this, i have reached the last spirit tower bit, and the game seems to be winding down. i don't want to give the ending away and, while i still have the info in my mind, I will review this.
The legend of zelda is a series i've held very close to my heart. the first zelda game i had played was oracle of seasons for the game boy color. it was fun, inventive, and lasted me forever. having said that, i've played most of the 3-D games all the way through. Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS is the sequel to Phantom Hourglass, also for the ds, though Sequel is a loose term.. the game happens.... a odd 100 years (if niko being alive is a reference) after the events of PH and as my friend pointed out to me,a LOT of things have changed. anyone who's played wind waker, the game before PH, will have known that the three goddesses of the zelda mythos, Din, Fayore, and Nayru, Flooded the world some time after the events of Ocarina of time. the current geology of the world has changed again, this time separated into 4 different realms.
the game begins with you going to get your engineer's certificate from princess zelda. while this may sound odd, the spirit tracks connect not only the realms, but are practically the only way to get around.
Long story short, the kingdom's chancellor cole, betrays zelda and reveals that he was some kind of monster all along. he zaps zelda with a spell that separates her soul from her body, which makes a ghost, and takes her body to have the evil demon king malladus be reincarnated in zelda's body.
Let me just reiterate this. A evil demon king will be reincarnated inside a princess. WTF nintendo?
Ok getting back to it, -i'm not mentioning the spirit track's perpous be cause frankly it will take me all day- zelda accompanies link on his journey because he can see her... for some reason.
i actually liked having zelda along for the ride. Zelda, as a rule of thumb, is usually a Damsel in Distress character, only shown for a short amount of time but still looming over you as you're quest goal. In this game the later part is true, but the whole " short amount of time" has been replaced with WHOLE GAME in big bright letters. which is good. the reason why i liked tetra, till PH anyway, was because she messed with the mold of the classic female protagonist princess. that part of the character, again untill PH, has been taken in on ST and the mold has been broken now. I could not listen to someone call zelda in this game a Damsel in Distress without laughing, because in this game, zelda is more of a heroine. She's not the stereotypical "bad ass action girl" but more of a character that longs to be returned to normal, but at the same time knows she must do whats right, even if that means she cannot return to normal.
Having looked over my work, i'v noticed that i haven't even started on gameplay yet so here we go.
The main part of any zelda game, the combat, works exactly how it did in PH. tap the enemies to jump slash, slash the screen to slash, circle link to spin attack, ect, ect, but the game doesn't play how PH did... if that makes sense. the items are different, though they work the same, sept the boomerang and the bow, which ARE the same. the different items are, whirlwind, the only completely original item which allows you to blow into the microphone and cause a small whirlwind to fly out and stun or kill enemies, the whip, which allows you to grab things and fling them, as well as swing across gaps like a grappling hook, and the sand wand, which allows you to cause sand to shoot up, like that one wand in OOS. that being said, it works fine.
Fans of the boat in PH, which is all of 5 people, will be happy to hear that they have been given even less control and are in more danger if they wanna go somewhere. The train section is a mess to control, a worse mess to defend yourself in, and moves the "avoid the phantoms" bit to everywhere. instakill bomb trains lurk the area's tracks. and while most of them won't leave a set area, a few armored trains will, prompting you to run like demyx from a groundshaker, and that's just not fun.
the tower of spirit bits are similar to the temple in PH, but better.
once you collect 3 tears of light, which you get by sneaking around a floor or two, you can attack phantoms from the back to stun them and allow zelda to jump in it, giving you control. it's more fun than PH because, you don't have to go down all the floors you went through, something that annoyed me in PH.
the animation is cel-shaded, of course, but it works. there are many characters from the last two games, and it makes it seem like this is a large adventure, spanning generations. zelda has always been like that and when you have a game,where your goal, to rescue the princess, can be done with the rescue by your side, you get the feeling that you are the character. You are link, fighting to defeat the evil demon king malladus. You Are traveling along side the princess, as she longs to return to her body. You are the one who plays the duets with the lokomos, and restore the spirit tracks. And in the end You Are the one who saves the day. it's the type of game that once the credits roll, you put down your ds, and shout, feeling exactly how the characters do. You saved the land, returned zelda to her body and finished off malladus for good. It's how i feel, it's how you'll feel. Play this game, and live an adventure
Brad "animalbrad" Harris
-0.9 need to edit, then it will be finished
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment