Spirit Tracks is the second game of the franchise to reach the Nintendo DS therefore it marks a rare occasion when Nintendo will take a second crack at a handheld in order to build one more Zelda adventure. As a natural consequence the game is bound to have many improvements, developers will have more time to work on design aspects they wish had been more polished on Phantom Hourglass and will also get the chance to listen to fans complaints and address the most valid ones. Here are some areas that need improvement:

Mean of Transportation

Phantom Hourglass tried to improve on the main source of mixed reactions provided by the fantastic title that was The Wind Waker: the sailing. Not only was the distance between the islands vastly shortened, but Link also steered a motor boat this time around erasing any need to constantly change the wind direction. Another improvement was the ability to draw your route with the sylus making your boat automatically follow a determined path.

However, the brand new sailing was much less compelling than its Wind Waker version mainly because enemies would constantly re-spawn on screen to try to destroy your boat, completely ruining the sense of automatism that developers tried to achieve because even though you could set a course with the stylus it was nearly impossible to take your eyes away from the screen and let the game do its job without having your boat explode.

The train could pretty much end up being a land version of the boat, with little to no differences, or it could be a much finer mean of moving around the land's big overworld. Whether or not Nintendo took this opportunity to erase a flaw instead of painting the boat as a train and replacing water with dirt remains to be seen.

Indiana Link and the Temple of Doom

The wonderful joys of playing a Zelda game, you explore a beautiful compelling overworld, enter a dungeon, beat a boss, collect a item, make a glorious exit, do more exploring and go back to another challenging new dungeon, the key word here being new. The Temple of The Ocean King defied the very basis of the franchise's two-decade old gameplay, as players had to go through it more than five times during the adventure while always replaying the very same sections with each entry before being able to go deeper into that evil place.

When removing the annoying backtracking and the frustration of being obliged to go through extremely tough floors you wished you would never see again, The Temple of the Ocean King is actually a breath of fresh air in the series as it is different from pretty much every single labyrinth that had ever been created by the level designers behind the franchise. It mixes fantastic environmental puzzles with stealth gameplay, and it can actually be fun at first, but backtracking, why'd it have to be backtracking?

The bad news is Spirit Tracks brings yet another temple that works in pretty much the same way as The Temple of the Ocean King did, however the good news is you will only have to play the same old sections over and over again if you feel like fully completing the game, a goal I assume will become rather frustrating due to that added twist.

On the weeks leading up to Zelda releases it is easy to capture a different feeling in the air. Gaming boards are heating up with discussions about the title, bloggers air their expectations and report their adventures while waiting on mile-long lines to be one of the first people to buy the game and, most importantly, there is that unique feeling that a one in a million gaming experience is about to come out, an extremely polished game produced by one of the business' greatest developing studios.

However, there is something strangely different about Spirit Tracks. Instead of riding a massive wave of expectations the game arrives on a humble hype train and the only figures you can find aboard are dedicated Nintendo fans. Spirit Tracks marks the first time Nintendo releases two totally different Zelda games for the same handheld system, a big statement on the success the Nintendo DS has enjoyed on the market.

The fact the title is a portable adventure is indirectly connected to the level of hype the game has received, however the reason behind that lack of expectations is not what most people would assume: the game's limited scope. The Zelda series has had its share of portable releases and not only did all of them show amazing qualities, but they were also hyped like there was no tomorrow even though the degree of excitement was obviously lower than of the series' big home console releases.

This time around there has been little to no talk on Link's second double-screen adventure and Nintendo and its fans are to blame. Most games fail to raise awareness either because of a poor marketing scheme or due to the developer's or series' unknown name, Spirit Tracks clearly doesn't suffer from any of those and so in order to understand the game's unusual low profile nature one must return to the source of the problem, the game's announcement day.

The game was revealed earlier this year, on Nintendo's big E3 conference. Back in that day more than three years had passed since the last console Zelda had hit store shelves and based on the series' average gap between home console releases fans and press held the announcement of Zelda Wii as an absolute lock for the show. After all an early 2009 announcement would probably make up for a mid-2010 launch and that would generate a four-year spam between two Zelda home console releases, a rather unusual gap for the franchise.

There was another strong evidence to support that theory, and that was Phantom Hourglass. The Nintendo DS had already gained its obligatory Zelda game and given Nintendo's track record of releasing only one franchise title per handheld (the Oracle twins being the exception) all life signs of the franchise were pointing towards the small white shinny box, a platform that had only received a Gamecube Zelda port: a game with tacked on motion controls used to move a few more Wiis around on its launch weeks.

Come show time that was not what happened though. Spirit Tracks was introduced not as a massive announcement, but as one among many other Nintendo DS upcoming releases and reactions all across the media ranged from total disappointment to mild excitement. Spirit Tracks ended up sounding like a big thud of failure when a boom of excitement was expected. Fans were silly to take evidence as certainty and Nintendo came short when a Zelda Wii was more than overdue.

The lack of explosive reactions upon the game's announcement has led the title to its current low profile and ironically all the wrong decisions made by company and fans alike may end up existing for the best. Being a rocket scientist is not necessary to understand how a great game benefits from nearly null expectations and chances are Link will ride a humble train into retail and leave on a fancy locomotive, riding positive comments from both fans and media. After all, we can only be pleasantly surprised.

I am not sure whether or not some of you noticed it, but there is a brand new Zelda game coming out in just a few weeks. Spirit Tracks is hitting shelves on December 7th and in a shocking turn of events I just noticed that ever since the beautiful day on which the game was announced halfway through this year I have never written a blog talking about it. An even more astonishing fact if you consider that all my posts talk mostly exclusively about Nintendo.

In order to make up for that I decided that while I patiently, or not so patiently, wait for the glorious arrival of an inexpensive New Super Mario Bros. Wii copy to my country I would entertain myself by writing a series of three or four blogs focusing on the next Zelda epic produced by Nintendo. I got some ideas floating around as to what I should talk about, but I am still not sure which ones I will use or how many posts it will take to cover them all.

As usual, any suggestions would be appreciated.