The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Accidental Innuendo: "Hey, Link! Tap me! Tap meeeeeee!"
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: The trailer and plot summary released in November of 2009, which caused one article writer at Zelda Informer, who had dismissed the game as a tired retread of Phantom Hourglass almost as soon as it was announced, to issue a public apology to Nintendo for ever doubting them.
    • Not to mention that the fact Zelda is an actual playable character and she helps Link throughout the entire game made lots of fans go nuts. Specially shippers.
    • Linebeck is in the game. Sort of.
  • Angst? What Angst?: The guard hanging around Disorientation Station is surprisingly chipper when you tell him that the friend he was looking for died in the station's maze. While he at least says that he's going to live life to the fullest in honor of his buddy, his initial reaction to the news can basically be paraphrased as "Well that sucks."
  • Anticlimax Boss: The second phase of the final boss almost never attacks you and does piddling damage when he does. It doesn't help that the Chancellor Cole fight immediately before was both harder and much scarier.
    • The same goes for the game's Bonus Boss Dark Link, who's fought at the end of the final level of Take 'Em All On. While he comes at the end of a brutal boss rush and is pretty aggressive, his attacks don't do a whole lot of damage, he leaves himself open fairly frequently, and can't take many hits before dying. And if that didn't make him easy enough? You get a ton of free hearts just outside his room, too.
  • Breather Boss: Cragma's sandwiched firmly between Phytops and Skeldritch, the former being fairly tough and annoying to fight while the latter is That One Boss. Unlike them, Cragma is a fairly basic boss whose attacks are slow and easy to dodge or prevent, and pretty infrequent at that.
  • Broken Base: There's a mild one surrounding the game's setting... or to be more specific, its name. When the previous incarnations of Zelda and Link named the new land they discovered Hyrule, was it a touching tribute to the forgotten kingdom left at the bottom of the sea in Wind Waker and a good way to keep its memory alive? Or was it disrespectful towards King Daphnes' wishes for them to leave the past behind and find a truly new land to call their own?
  • Catharsis Factor: Did you hate having to plan your train routes around the unnerving Demonic Spiders that are the Dark Trains? Have you found yourself sandwiched between two of them and thus forced to watch as you died an inescapable death? Have you sworn at those horrible Armored Trains when they proved themselves damn-near impossible to get off your tail? If you answered yes to any of these questions, odds are you'll be cackling like a madman once you start demolishing the stupid trains that made your life hell when you enter the Dark Realm just before the final boss fights.
  • Demonic Spiders: Dark Trains. They're invincible, and mercilessly track you down. Heaven help you if you're sandwiched between two of them on the rails. And they kill in one hit. You can slow them down temporarily with five cannon strikes (useful if you're reduced to reverse-running from one), but if you attempt to do so, watch out for the other one circling behind you...!
    • Then there's the armored versions of them. Same one-hit-kill if you strike them, but they'll actively pursue you, going so far as to turn around on the track to continue to pursue should you manage to fake them out, and unlike their blue cousins, can only be slowed down very slightly with each hit. You finally get to kill those bastards in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. It's sweet to see them destroyed by you running through them.
    • Really, a lot of the enemies you encounter on your train can end up being this in the right circumstances. Snurgles (the flying elephant guys) can be hard to track with the camera due to their crazy movement patterns, Sir Frosties (the snowmen) take two shots to kill and often pop up right when you're turning around a corner (and thus making it hard to hit them) and on rare occassions will absolutely swarm you, Tektites crawl around their tunnels quickly and in hard-to-track patterns before launching themselves at you, and Malgyorgs (the sand sharks) never. Stop. SPAWNING. Since your train can't take many hits (especially if you're carrying a passenger, who can angrily leave even if you don't die outright) there's a lot of pressure to not let these guys get the jump on you.
  • Ear Worm: The Overworld theme a.k.a the theme that usually plays while riding on the train.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: This game's Zelda is one of the titular princess' most popular incarnations thanks to her spunky go-getter attitude, adorable demeanor, and her ridiculously cute Ship Tease with this game's Link. While the game she hails from is far from the most popular Zelda game, even its most outspoken detractors consider this Zelda to be one of the best-written versions of the character in the franchise and love her chemistry with Link.
  • Epileptic Trees: Thanks to his final form heavily resembling Demise's true form and the fact that he's explicitly called a Demon King, it's widely believed that Malladus is supposed to be a reincarnation of Demise's hatred much like Ganondorf. Some however believe that it's all a coincidence, since Ganondorf was still alive and active while Malladus was alive but sealed away. With that being said, there's nothing outright saying that only one incarnation can exist at a time...
    • Alternatively, Malladus isn't Demise's hatred incarnate. It's Cole! Yeah, he's a tiny, yappy, smug little prick who isn't much of a physical fighter, but consider this: Malladus' Demise-esque final form is a result of him possessing Chancellor Cole, who himself is explicitly a wrathful and malicious demon. He also infiltrated Hyrule's court, is well-versed in black magic, and is an Evil Redhead, all of which are traits he shares with Ganondorf.
  • Evil Is Cool: Byrne before his Heel Face Turn. He's basically Hyrule's answer to Darth Vader, fights like Vega from Street Fighter, and is an imposing physical threat responsible for one of the game's best boss fights.
  • Fan Dumb: Possibly the largest backlash since The Wind Waker. Some of the objections were petty, of course, and included:
  • Freud Was Right: Anyone else feel something with the very end? Namely that Link drives his sword (an ever popular symbol for this trope) into the Big Bad's head, and then you must rub the screen. Zelda then comes along to help, er, rub Link's sword. Then when the sword actually pierces the boss' skull they give out a rather... ecstatic cry.
  • Goddamned Boss: Quite a few fights can really drag on for a bit. Which is a shame, because many of these fights qualify as some of the franchise's best when everything goes according to plan.
    • Cragma's weak spots usually aren't hard to hit, but the exception is his eye. For such a big and obvious target, lining up your shot can be a lot tougher than it looks. And if you run out of arrows trying to hit it, he'll knock you off the minecart track you were riding, forcing you to dodge several of his attacks, pick up the arrows that they create, and then take a different mine cart up to his eye all over again.
    • Byrne, mainly because he spends a lot of time out of reach and blocking your attacks. It's also surprisingly hard to line Zelda up with him and get her to interrupt his charge attack once that becomes the only way to open him up to damage.
    • If you're at least good at dodging his rocks and lasers, Skeldritch can qualify as this as opposed to That One Boss thanks to how finnicky the Sand Wand is when you try to use it to move the rocks he shoots onto the catapults in his arena. And when he does his long-lasting, sweeping laser attacks, he can end up destroying the rocks you've got in reserve, kicking you back to square one.
    • Every single phase of Malladus' fight is this. Whether it's trying to lead Zelda towards Malladus while Cole keeps summoning annoying ghost mice to scare and possess her, having to protect Zelda from a storm of meteors as she slowly charges up magic, trying to pull off the hardest Spirit Flute duet yet, or trying and failing to get Zelda to line up her shots with Malladus' back, it's like the devs went out of their way to make every aspect of this guy a real headache to deal with.
  • Love to Hate: While not the series' most popular villain, Chancellor Cole is still well-liked for being an entertaining baddie who manages to be a surprisingly savvy and effective threat despite his Smug Snake trappings.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Chancellor Cole. For a guy who seems like he'd be an overconfident Smug Snake, he's actually fairly smart as far as Zelda villains go. In order to resurrect Malladus, he realizes that while he needs Zelda's body to serve as a vessel, he doesn't need her to be alive. And thus he decides to forgo any sort of complex master plan and isolates her before simply killing her, separating her spirit from her body while he resurrects his master. Much like Ganondorf in several games, he actually wins and gets exactly what he wants. At least, he does until Zelda takes her body back and kicks Malladus out of it, which causes the Demon King to possess Cole instead. Still, he did accomplish what he set out to do all the same!
  • Memetic Mutation: While at first, several topics used the pre-existing "This topic sucks and is now about trains" meme to discuss the game, it soon became known as "Soul Train" over several boards.
    • Ever since the last trailer, the new meme seems to be "The Phantom wears a dress."
    • The Demon Train was also known at one point as the "Ganon-train" due to how similar it looked to cel-shaded Ganon. Of course, Ganon never appears in this game, but the name has still stuck.
  • Moe: Played for Laughs whenever Zelda possesses a Phantom. For the rest of the dungeon, you're followed around by half a ton of loudly clanking armor that recoils at mice, acknowledges your orders with adorable squeaking noises, and makes girly poses whenever you talk to her. Even the other Phantoms notice that she's "CUTER THAN USUAL".

Random Phantom Guardian (to Zelda): SOMETHING'S DIFFERENT ABOUT YOU TODAY.

  • Polished Port: A minor example, but the Virtual Console port on the Wii U defangs a lot of the frustration behind certain sidequests, such as the Dark Ore delivery (or any delivery quest, really) or the rabbit hunt since you can create save states that cut down on the tedium of having to make long train rides back and forth to certain locations if you mess up.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The Lokomo songs can be annoyingly touchy, both in requirements and in controls (the mic seems to make a lot of double notes from a single blow, and it's a real pain in the ass to hit two notes not next to each other without hitting any of the ones in between). The duet with Rael in particular is infamous for the trouble it causes players, and it isn't uncommon for people to spend over an hour trying and failing to hit all the right notes.
    • Some people have noted that Phantom Zelda's AI has certain weaknesses that can make controlling her and Link in tandem a rather annoying task, especially in midboss and boss fights.
    • The train in general is often considered to be this by many players, even those who like the train as a concept. It can take a long time to reach your destination, and it doesn't take long for treks across Hyrule's realms to become boring and repetitive. Even worse? There's no fast travel option. Sure, there are gates you can activate that act as shortcuts between realms, but it's rare for them to be placed in truly advantageous spots, and there's still a lot of boring driving to reach your destination anyway.
  • That One Boss: Fraaz. He's surprisingly hard for being only the second boss in the game, and he's the most Dangerously Genre Savvy enemy in the game to boot; his main form will aim where the game "thinks" you'll be when his shots reach you - he's the only non-overworld boss in this game to do this accurately - and after the first form cycle, he'll destroy the torches you were using against him. (Phytops will also try to "lead its target" with its goo shots in some parts of its fight but, unlike Fraaz, if you keep moving in the same direction Phytops will usually miss.)
    • With that being said, Phytops isn't a boss to take lightly. While his poison bullets aren't too hard to dodge, they're not the main threat of his fight: that would be his tentacles. When he lashes at you with them, he does so quickly and with a flurry of strikes that tend to be annoyingly hard to dodge. Getting hurt is bad enough, but due to how skinny the walkable paths on his arena are, a tentacle slap can send you hurtling into the abyss for extra damage.
    • While the Best Boss Ever in many player's minds, Skeldritch is still a massive pain in the ass thanks to how finnicky the Sand Wand can be when you use it to move heavy objects around. While you're trying to corral the boulders he shoots at you onto catapults, you're trying to protect them from other boulders that will break them and trying to protect yourself from getting squashed flat while dodging his lasers that flip-flop between being hilariously inaccurate or dead-on with no real consistency between shots.
    • It's only natural for the Rocktites to be That One Boss since they're the King Mook of the Tektites. They're an obnoxious hybrid of The Juggernaut and Advancing Boss of Doom, and require you to constantly shoot them in their weak spots while they scuttle around the tunnels you fight them in with surprising agility before they ram your train for unavoidable damage.
    • The three-part final boss requires some crazy nimble reflexes with your stylus, likely enough to induce arthritis. This applies to the Chancellor Cole fight, guiding Zelda up to Malladus while destroying Cole's magic mice, and batting away Malladus' fireballs while Zelda charges her magic. Thankfully, the final scrap with Malladus proper is pathetically easy.
  • That One Sidequest: The Dark Ore sidequest. You have to carry some ore that melts in sunlight halfway across the world map, and the only way to keep your cargo intact long enough is to go through a tunnel - inhabited by a Rocktite. Made tougher by the fact that you're also harassed by smaller ones. And getting hit causes you to lose some precious ore, so the bottom line is that you have to fight one of the tougher bosses in the game and take no more than one hit. There is a bit of a Guide Dang It cheat, though... The boss appears as soon as you enter it after unlocking the track, but only in the direction you need to take with the ore. You can beat it, then go pick up some ore and deliver it at your leisure, since the Rocktite won't ever respawn (the smaller enemies do, but they aren't as bothersome without the big one to focus on).
    • Hunting down rabbits for the Rabbitland Rescue guy. There's fifty of them all across Hyrule, with ten in each of its five realms. While they aren't too tough to find for the most part, actually catching them can be annoying since you're forced to do so through a brief timed minigame, and if you can't catch the bunny you're after before time's up, it'll leave the map until you get off your train at the nearest station and return to its hiding spot. Certain rabbits are ridiculously tough to catch thanks to their spastic movement patterns, and you'll find yourself seriously wanting to fling your DS out the window after they escape your grasp for the fiftieth time.
  • Toy Ship: Even some fans who are diametrically opposed to Shipping Link/Zelda will acknowledge the adorability of their bond in this game.
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