The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Spirit Tracks is a game with good ideas and concepts, but sometimes poorly executed due to its control scheme. There are several situations where you'll deal with the imprecise touch based controls, leading to a sluggish gameplay experience. That is greatly felt on the Snow Temple, where you have to freeze the water with the boomerang several times , and on the Tower segments where you have to (very) slowly move one character at a time to the places you need to be and also on some moments that you're required to blow on your mic to play the flute

That said, everything else on this game is on point, the level design is nice, the character design is well made and well thought out, even the Realm transitions are very neat, the soundtrack is amazing and there are cool details like the overworld song synching to the train sounds. The game's world is alive and diverse, with events happening in parallel with the player's actions, characters going on and about and even some out of the way unique stations with minigames and mini dungeons with rewards
The story is good, the "twist" of having Zelda actually helping out and playing a bigger role on things is an interesting and needed touch for the franchise

The train driving, which is the main mechanic, is well toned. It isn't too complex nor too simplistic, casual/Zelda players will get to enjoy it as much as Densha de Go! [電車でGO!] fans (those will feel very familiar with obeying the speed limit and whistle signs while having passengers). The side and fetch quests of this game are the most fun I've ever played on a Zelda game, I loved spending time taking people to places they needed/wanted to be and delivering goods by train

It is overall a neat experience, although frustrating on some specific parts, that would perform better as a main console game

OST is amazing! Love driving the train around. Love Zelda's character design. And I found the story cute. Brings back lots of fun memories whenever I think about this.

Princess Zelda's eccentric attitude was the best part of Spirit Tracks, that's thematically superior to Phantom Hourglass but functionally recycled the same tricks (dumbed down stylus-enabled Zelda gameplay, annoying world traversal, gradually unlockable hub dungeon, overdose of combat rooms), carrying out minor tweaks and QoL updates at best. The trickier late-game puzzles were a pleasant surprise, but the rest are rather forgettable, with only the Snow and Sand Temples showing a bit of inspiration. Considering its similarities to PH and its 'new' possession/companion idea (adapted from Wind Waker), this series has a strange obsession with repeating itself.

This game is more interesting than wind waker in my opinion. Wind waker is so easy, and so much of the appeal is the new HD graphics that look amazing. Now, wind waker has spirit tracks beat in the music department. But, spirit tracks definitely has wind waker beat in game mechanics.

There are far more puzzles and interesting ideas that wind waker is missing. Additionally, there is much less wasted time in this game, sailing and using the wind waker was not nearly as rewarding as using the train or the panflute.

The items in this game are pretty traditional by Zelda standards, but they are much more fun than any of the items in wind waker, even if they aren't new.

I love the way this game adds onto itself to allow you to progress further. The bosses are also well thought out and there is much less grinding, spirit tracks gets to the point. I enjoy having a more linear layout when getting from one place to another if it doesn't mean sailing over and over.

There aren't many collectables, which in my mind is fine, I would rather the time spent making collectables is spent on gameplay that everyone will inevitably have to do to complete the game.

I also love having Zelda as part of the gameplay instead of seeming like a side character as with every other Zelda game.