| Helios said: With Spirit Tracks, the essence of the concept that made the original so great is gone; just what is the point of a central dungeon if the player never treads a section of said dungeon more than once? Its purpose is reduced to a narrative convenience - a structural component that does nothing in-and-of-itself to further the story or game play. |
I have no objections in particular to the rest of your post, save what would amount to subjective bickering. This segment gets to me, though.
The only quantifiable difference between the Tower of Spirits vs. The Temple of the Ocean King is a lack of (necessary) retreading; this I will freely grant. More, there are some aspects in which I prefered the TotOK (it is maybe the best dungeon ever, taken as a cohesive whole), which has to be acknowledged. However, I don't see how the lack of retreading subtracts from its value as a dungeon, nor how it reduces the status of the temple to a "narrative convenience" in a way that any other temple in the series is not. I mean, the distinction here can't be down to the integration of disparate gameplay concepts, because the ToS has that in spades.
What do you mean, here?
