Puzzles in Spirit Tracks will be more challenging this time around
“One of our lead planners for the game is a programmer, so he has a different, more scientific or mathematical approach, so to say, to creating puzzles. Development team members, including [senior Nintendo developer] Mr. [Takashi] Tezuka and myself, actually got stuck in several places. So the dungeons and puzzles pose a different type of challenge than what we have utilized in previous games, and will certainly require longtime Zelda fans to approach each challenge differently. I believe that the latter half of the Tower of Spirits dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — [which] players will revisit throughout the game — has puzzles which require a different type of approach from those of previous games.” – Eiji Aonuma
There’s no doubt that the puzzles in the previous DS game, Phantom Hourglass, weren’t all that challenging. The DS was used in some clever ways, such as closing the system to make a marking on your sea chart, but I never really felt like I was stumped. However, it sounds like Spirit Tracks will be an overall more challenging game and I’m all for that!