The Spirit Flute: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks’ Worst Feature
I’ve almost completed The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for DS, and I am absolutely loving the dungeons and puzzles in Link’s newest adventure. But there’s one aspect of the title that is absolutely frustrating, the title’s musical element that is known as the Spirit Flute.
As has become the staple of the franchise, Link is bestowed a musical instrument early on in the adventure. Rather than acting as a mode of travel, as the original flute did, the Spirit Flute is integrated into the gameplay at the deepest levels. Following recent instruments from the franchise the Spirit Pipe can be used to unlock secrets, locate treasure chests, or move the story forward. In fact, it’s required to move the story forward. Unlike previous instruments, the Spirit Flute is the first piece of musical equipment that gamers have to actually play, in the loosest sense.
There’s no faking it. You can’t just hit a button sequence and have Link whistle a perfect harmony. Players must actively move the flute around with the stylus as they blow into the microphone in the correct tempo. Theoretically it’s not that difficult, but due to having adult sized hands, and apparently a DS Lite, I was at wits end during a few duets. First off, the most natural position for your hand to guide the flute happens to be directly in front of the microphone. Obviously such an obstruction will ruin a piece, forcing me to keep my hand at an awkward angle.
The other major issue is that the microphone in a DS Lite is incredibly finicky. You can blow too hard, you can blow too light. You can create false-positives by taking breaths in between notes, or even ambient noise (tapping the stylus on the screen) can set off the microphone. I talked to numerous people who’ve played the game and all DSi users had to say was that the songs became more difficult as the game went on. That is certainly true. However, all DS or DS Lite owners mirrored my frustrations, or at least admitted to failing the songs repeatedly before nailing them.
Had the “Practice” stage educated players on their fluting, it would have reduced our collective stress. Instead Practice offers gamers nothing but an uninterrupted stream of the correct music being played. No tips, tricks or pointers of any kind. Why not have the Lokomo‘s explain what was done wrong, or at least some produce some graphical or musical response when failing?
There’s three logical explanations to the frightful fluting. The equipment could be of differing quality across the revisions, the age of the DS and DS Lite microphones has come in to play, or I suck at blowing.
Yes, I suck and blow.
Have you had any trouble?
