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.

Progress: Opened the Fire Temple

Rating: Good