Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks (Choo Choo Chosen One)

Let's Plays Completed Let's Plays
#21

Hey, you know those hell trains that chase you to the ends of the earth? What if they couldn’t die?

Anyway, the undersea track was my favorite place to play keepaway with the Dark Trains when I was younger. They’re in the perfect spot, in that I don’t think you need to go to that area after the first time, and the Armored Trains consistently spawn. Contrast that to most Dark Trains, where they might not spawn when you want to goof off but will absolutely interfere when you just want to get from point A to point B.

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#22

Onwards, to more Zelda! Let’s do us a dungeon!

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [15] Phytops

Video Length: 33:21

A little longer than normal since I never really found a good breaking point. When your words are “after the next room let’s call it” and you don’t mentally realize the next room is the boss room, you tend to do silly things.

Speaking of silly things, for some reason parts of this dungeon just completely escaped my brain completely during the playing of it. How badly do I do? Well… not actually, it’s really the last room that makes me stumble, but it is DEFINITELY a stumble. I’m not even particularly sure why, I think it’s just that something clicked wrong with me. AT any rate, let’s talk about the dungeon shall we? The first major puzzle is trying to find a way to get the boulders to stop falling on our path. The first real puzzle however is connecting information from one floor onto the floor above it… which in retrospect makes the two major puzzles in this game kind of iterative. Wow I’m dumb.

With the path opened up by hitting the switches in the right order, we’re able to shut off the boulder stream and continue on to the miniboss of the dungeon, a Snapper. And our reward for killing the strange bird man? His whip! The whip is probably the centerpiece item of this game, the one that they put the most focus on. It’s genuinely just really cool, because it does much of what the boomerang does but more controlled and capable of dealing actual real damage. The things it is used for are kinda varied, from throwing large metal objects at enemies who can’t die otherwise, Indiana Jonesing across gaps, or just feeding swords to fish headed statues. It’s a pretty good dungeon item!

And after taking care of the final puzzle, it’s time to get the Big Key to the key block… only for Keymaster’s to get in our way. To put it bluntly I don’t like this bit since it’s basically impossible to get it on the first try, just because of how many of these jerks there are. But I manage it, and go off to fight the boss, Phytops! Phytops is… an interesting boss, in that the lead up to it is far harder than the boss itself. Taking out its arms so you can whip your way up its home is way more dangerous due to having to be SO close to the edge and the threat of poison goop knocking you off. The fight itself is ramrod simple. You grab spikes from his vines and throw them at his face, breaking off the defensive plant layer. Then do it again to hit his eye to stun him, so you can go in for the kill. Easy peasy.

And that’s it for today! I hope you all enjoyed this one. I’ll see you all next time, take care.

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#23

Late video because I was fucking slammered last night in terms of sleepiness.

The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [16] Bird O’ Clock

Video Length: 23:42

In this episode, we do some quick stamp collecting at the Ocean Temple, Ocean Sanctuary, and the village whose name I forget. Of course I say “quick” but in the case of at least the village, quick is anything but what it actually is. With our whip we can do a lot of cool stuff, and unfortunately calling in Carben’s bird friends is one of them. It’s… not a very good call, because unlike what you’d expect these are not guys we swing from, but instead things we hold onto as they transport us. This isn’t necessarily bad, except… as you can see in the village, sometimes it’s unclear what the right bird is!

To put it mildly, it was a little frustrating, and it kinda negatively impacted me for the rest of the video. Not in like a signifigent way, but enough to make me ramble on a bit about how the train portion of the game is kinda dull. Which don’t get me wrong; I like the train riding, and it does have depth, it’s just that each realm has its threats, and it never really changes things up, and it seems at least to me like they always show up in the same exact spots. It is the unfortunate curse of trains; they are on rails, so things stay perhaps a bit too consistent. Phantom Hourglass’s steam ship was kinda awful and rough to deal with, but there was some degree of variety there. For good or ill.

That all aside, we end off at the Tower of Spirits, getting ready for our next excursion into the place. I hope you all enjoyed, I’ll see you all next time. Take care!

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#24

crackles knuckles time to climb us a spirit tower again.

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [17] Teleportals

Video Length: 31:27

Bit of a long one, due to my complete and total inability to understand exactly one (1) puzzle. In this time, we climb up to the latest block of the Tower of Spirits and begin to cut our way through it’s puzzles. Phantom Eyes are back, and they respawn now! Both a good and bad thing in my opinion, though combining the Phantom Eyes seemingly exclusively with Warp Phantom’s cuts down on their danger signifigently… but then the fact that this has no time limit means they can be stringent with the safe zones, making them more dangerous again. A lot of stuff to consider! Annoyingly the Phantom’s attacks still send you back to the start of the room, which doesn’t really make sense anymore with the time limit being gone.

Anyway, we deal with a fair number of puzzles here, all of which are rather elaborate parts of one big chain, and some of which I either missed or did not understand because we couldn’t get that chest on the first floor! The one thing I can elaborate on though is Zelda’s Warp Phantom possession. That’s pretty cool, not giving us full range to teleport like the actual Warp Phantom’s, but giving us a version that emphasizes it’s use in puzzle solving! And speaking of puzzle solving… the one I did at the end there I genuinely do not know if I did the intended way or not. I realized during editing that I probably could have used the pots I smashed, but… otherwise, I’m not sure!

Anyway, that’s it for today. Hope you all enjoyed, I’ll see you guys next time. Take care!

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#25

LATE BIDEO ZODI BAD!

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [18] Go Go Goron

Video Length: 25:27

In this episode we finish up the spirit tower chunk we’re in and head off to the fire realm. We meet Gorons, lava, and battle tanks! I don’t remember any of the actual details beyond like, the scantest amounts since oooops I forgot to edit and upload and post this video today since I dead ass thought it was Thursday this morning.

Hope you all enjoy! Take care.

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#26

It’s time for further zeld.

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [19] Ice and Embers

Video Length: 35:04

In this exciting video, we do the needful to make Mega Ice accessible, hauling an anouki all the way to the wellspring station. Because we don’t want goo covered ice for… reasons I cannot understand. Then we get the Mega Ice ourselves so we can transport it to the Goron Village. Twenty units in total, and it’ll start to melt once we’re out of the Snow Realm. If we take any harsh turns to fast we’ll lose some ice, as well as if it we take damage from enemies. This isn’t, necessarily, a bad minigame sort of activity… where it not for the fact that in terms of side quests, this is like 80% of them. It’s either this or transporting a person from one location to the other, and often times doing one is just something you have to do in order to do the other. It’s a level of variety that is… bad, for game enjoyment I think.

Making matters worse, after we DO bring the Mega Ice to Goron Village… the Goron’s are lazy and don’t actually finish their job, leaving another poor Goron homeless until we can bring another batch of at least ten Mega Ice units. How cruel. We tell the man we’ll do this, but that’ll be for later; we have a Locomo to find.

We make our way over to the Fire Sanctuary through the Elder Goron’s house, fighting off falling rocks and cool Fire Baba enemies, until we get to a puzzle that has no real clear way to solve it, solved only because my first guess was right. Then we meet Embrose, the next of the Lokomos… and his monstrous song. I realize it may no look like much, but as you can see from the video length it takes a while to finish his flute segment, and I get a LITTLE saucy about it. I do finally get it, and with that the path to the Fire Temple is opened. We’ll deal with that next time!

I hope you all enjoyed. I’ll see you on the next one~.

#27

So like, in general, it must have been The Worst for QA when they had to do the Spirit Flute, since it sucks ass. I can’t imagine what it must have been like when they reached the point where there’s a gap.

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#28

I have to imagine the instant they saw the Spirit Flute their response was “oh no we can’t have this. Even if it worked good we can’t HAVE this.”

It went down hill from there.

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#29

Gon-goroooon, time for a new Zeldo

The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [20] Temple of Fire

Video Length: 22:01

In this video, we return to Goron Village to investigate how to open the Fire Temple. A relatively simple thing, hunting down Snurglers and honking at them real hard. But the execution of this is actually really good, if I do say so. I like this one! It’s not the relatively simple “just drive to them” of the Forest and Snow temples, and not the agonizing long form hell of the Ocean Temple.

Once the keys are obtained, we can go into the Fire Temple proper, which is probably my favorite dungeon? What can I say, mine carts and gamera style turtles are the best. Also we get the Bow, which is almost always one of my favorite items in these games. The bow is just really fun, and in a game controlled by touch it’s actually rather effective since there’s not MANY ways you can mess it up.

A bit of a short update, but that’s how things go sometimes. Hope you all enjoyed, I’ll see you all next time!

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#30

Let’s continue us a dungeon, shall we?

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [21] Cragma

Video Length: 24:59

In this episode, we continue to push through the Fire Temple. It’s honestly rather simple a dungeon; standard “hit these in order” puzzles, some trick shot arrow orb puzzles (the trickiest of which involves making use of lava geysers, which is cool) and generally just dealing with basic enemies like Stalfos and miniboss-turned-enemies like Heatoise. There isn’t much to talk about with this dungeon, beyond the fact that it’s just really well made. The final puzzle involves timing mine cart track switches to get both you and the boss key to the boss cube at the end of the dungeon at the same time, and that’s honestly rather slick and cool. That being said I do however have one question; how do I get that stamp machine? I have no idea!

As for the boss, Cragma is actually really cool a fight. He’s relatively simple, much like his own temple, and the use of mine carts makes him feel really dynamic as you make your way up his body, shooting him in his glowing weakspots to bleed him dry of lava. The only real negative of this fight is that if you DO mess up and run out of arrows while on the track, you are forced to take damage and that sucks. There should be a way to refill while up on the tracks, and it should be more that if you’re out of arrows he can start to catch up and threatens TO hit you. That being said you also only have to do two loops and that’s an absolute godsend, AND your progress is saved even if you run out of arrows and get knocked down which rules. It’s almost like this game has good boss design or something.

With Cragma dead, the Fire Temple Force Gem is restored, and seemingly the last piece of the Tower of Spirits is back where it is meant to be! Which means that, on the surface at least, we’re going to the end game! I don’t imagine it’ll be that simple though, for a number of reasons. Ah well; I hope you all enjoyed, I’ll see you guys next time!

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#31

Ooops a late as hell video because I forgot to record due to being completely consumed by writing recently. Sorry about that!

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [22] Wrecking Ball

Video Length: 28:36

In this one, we get us a stamp and then cut our way through to the top floor of the Spirit Tower… or at least, begin to anyway! We get a little hung up because these puzzles are just long to execute due to the game being rather slow.

But hey, we get to play around with our good good Goron friend again, though in the form of Zelda possessing a massive suit of armour that can just turn into a giant boulder. It’s honestly pretty cool, but is… a little lacking in use puzzle wise.

Hope you all enjoyed, bit of a quick one today but given the situation yeah, oops my bad.

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#32

It’s time for a birthday Zelda. Woohoo~

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [23] Bryne

Video Length: 41:19

Kind of a long one today, but consider it a make up for last time being so late. Cause that is, partly at least, why this is so long. The other reason it is long is… well, it’s time to do one of the worst puzzles in the game. Now I’m sure there’s a way to do it (I had DataNinja do some cyber sleuthing to figure it out) and the guide suggested way of doing this feels… not correct? Regardless, I did it the way I did it (twice!!) so I have no regrets.

That said, the real meat and potatoes of this one is what happens AFTER the hell puzzle; we finally confront Byrne in combat. It is probably one of my favorite fights in the entire game, with you dashing around avoiding his spirit wave attacks either through dodging or using Zelda as a shield. Because yes, she’s IN this fight with you! Which should have been done way more often, if I do say so myself! After he leaps around a bit, he flings out his grapple claw, preferring to aim at Link. Dodge at the right time and you’ll throw him down.

Once he’s had enough, it’s time for phase two! This is a hard phase since… truthfully I’m not sure what to do. We can clash against him with our sword, kinda like how Zelda can with Gyozords, but Zelda is… a bit slow on the uptake for swording him in the back and he can quickstep away. It seems kinda he kinda has to do his super charge move, and we just have to piss him off enough that he uses it. Once he does, Zelda can catch him and we can spin around to stab this man in the back.

Which is an interesting thought; I think in the entire Zelda series, aside from the Gerudo’s in Ocarina of time, this is the first time we’ve ever like, used our sword on a living human being, right? I mean she he’s a Lokomo so he’s kind of a fairy elf, but still! At any rate, we get this wonderful scene using Zelda’s Lullaby, then walk up to the top of the tower o face down against Malladus and Cole.

It goes as you’d expect, Malladus being unable to properly control his shiny new body, and them having to hitchhike a train ride to somewhere safe while they wait for him to regain his full strength. Darn. Anjean tells us about the secret macguffin we need to save the day, and shows us the way to it. Woohoo!

And that’s the video for today. I hope you all enjoyed, this one was rather lengthy and full of chaos. I’ll see you all next time for… something else entirely.

#33

Happy belated birthday!

Byrne is “What if Spencer from Bionic Commando was just very anime?” and it makes for a really fun fight. Unfortunately, I don’t remember it being in the boss rush so you only get to fight him once unless you decided to keep a separate save file just to fight him.

The following cutscene rules and I wish there was more time dedicated to these two doofuses.

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#34

Thanks!

I guess that explains the weird proportions on the arm. It’s full of his wife (or mom I guess, Byrne strikes me as an angsty immortal teenager)

#35

Took a bit of a break and didn’t really say why. It’s a number of things, but suffice to say things are good. That being said… Zelda time.

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [24] Derailed

Video Length: 46:02

In this episode, I attempt to prepare to do every single sidequest in the game. It takes… exactly one sidequest taking almost an entire hour despite not one single thing happening for me to tap out way, way harder than I’ve ever tapped out of anything before. I kinda feel bad about it, but my Minish Cap copy with the Golden Tingle Statue suggests that no, I should just move on and accept that I do have a limit when it comes to repetitive nonsense.

So yeah, not the greatest video in the world. I have done some deliberation with the council and now know the side quests I WILL be doing, and will be doing them next time, just so I’m a little bit more prepared for the upcoming end game. I will also take some time to talk about the things we could get for beating every single identical sidequest in the game.

That all being said… I hope you do enjoy. I’ll see you all next, for what may be the beginning of the end. Take care.

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#36

Whoops, sorry, my notes to you didn’t mention to you that the station near the Snow Temple was unlocked by doing the sidequest for the Fence Anouki - I’d just put them in the order where they’d be unlocked at that time. Sorry for the confusion.

So, fun fact: If you don’t destroy the pirates quick enough when you have a passenger, they’ll come up to your ship and initiate that Minigame that you had to play to keep Gage safe when transporting him back to the sanctuary.

Yeah, that kid is… annoying. He wants to go to Beedle’s (which is annoying to chase down), but you’d think with ‘fly with the birds’ it would be the place where you… flew with the birds.

Special thing about the Shield of Antiquity! It can’t be eaten by Like-Likes!

Only the purple potions auto-revive (and they tell you that specifically). Red and Yellow ones do not.

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#37

Sorry for the missed videos lately. Life stuff, like friends needing emotional support and me eating shit and busting up my rotater cuff in my arm means Zodi can’t really do a video. Dentist adventures as well, and possibly getting a new job to boot!

Rest assured, I’ll be doing my best to get Zeldo all squared away. It’s just been a hectic time.

#38

Finally, we resurface!

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks [25] Back On Track

Video Length: 21:18

Fresh from dentist nonsense, general dealing with life, and the existential horror of what is coming up in game next, it’s time to resume train time. Today covers going through a minor side quest to open up access to the Pirate Hideout, and collecting two remaining stamps so that we’re prepared for getting all the stamps.

Not the longest video in the world, but rest assured. Friday’s will make up for it. I hope you all enjoyed… next time, we go to hell.

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#39

Embrace Eternity.

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Spirit tracks [26] Rael Roaded

Video Length: 38:30

In this episode… we begin our journey into the Sand Realm. We need to deal with malgyorgs, the evil land sharks that threaten to ambush our train basically almost constantly throughout the area, and need to solve a stupidly obtuse puzzle that is not explained very well at all! To the point where my own personal thoughts clashed so hard with the clues I was being given that I actually had to look it up to be sure what, exactly, I was intended to do here.

With that, we meet Rael, the final Lokomo, and truly enter hell. I there was any doubt, ANY doubt that this mechanics was Just Bad… let it be erased here.

I hope you all enjoyed! I’ll see you next time… for more Hell Flute.

#40

Oh, right. Hahahahaha. I forgot the sand sanctuary stamp was there. You need to after successfully fluting, do Rael’s sidequest once. That will allow you to get the stamp. I’m sorry, this part of the game is kinda fuzzy, comparatively, so it completely slipped my mind.
…oh, I see you saw.

By the way, you can blow the whistle to make the sand sharks jump out, rather than having to wait for them to jump at you.

Oh man. 30 minutes of video left after meeting Rael…

The game is super finnicky on whether or not it accepts double-blows. I personally wish it leaned a bit more on the casual-acceptance side. It’s a very big gripe I have.

Oh dear, I’m going to wake up one day with a knife stuck in me somewhere, aren’t I? :stuck_out_tongue:

Oof. All of this… it genuinely pains me to see you go through this.
…clearly the difference is the engineer clothes. :stuck_out_tongue:
(Disclaimer: I’m pretty sure it has no change to the mechanics.)

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