In the passenger car, Link, Zelda, Anjean, and Byrne prepare for the final battle. Anjean wants to come to help, but she’s still injured, so Byrne, barely holding together himself, volunteers. Link and Zelda look at each other and wordlessly agree that the two of them will be fine on their own. Anjean agrees to this, and creates a Phantom for Zelda to use. As Link and Zelda prepare to leave, Zelda asks Link what he plans to do after everything’s finished. Link can say he’ll go back to being an engineer, stay a warrior, or that he doesn’t know. The two of them climb atop the demon train, and Malladus awakens to begin the final battle.
The first phase of the battle has Zelda marching toward Malladus. Complicating matters is Cole, who summons rats, which brings Zelda to a stop. If one of them touches the Phantom, Cole takes control of it until Link can break his strings. (It’s easiest to use the boomerang for this. On my first run I did it with sword, which put Link in the Phantom’s range. That hurt, a lot.) Halfway up, Malladus begins shooting a laser attack that Link has to hide behind the Phantom to avoid. Finally, Zelda gets close enough to Malladus to grab a hold and restrain him until Link can shoot him with a light arrow and drive him out of Zelda’s body.
As Malladus loses his grip on Zelda’s body, Cole flees, and Zelda tells Link to do the same. Link instead runs toward Zelda, but then the Demon Train explodes. Link comes to in time to see Malladus’ spirit driven out of Zelda’s body, and Zelda immediately flies toward it… and through. Repeatedly. Cole yells for Malladus to hurry up, and just as he’s about to reclaim Zelda’s body, he’s stopped by Byrne. Byrne tells Zelda to focus, and Zelda prays to Tetra for a blessing, and finally returns to her body. Link runs to catch her, and the hero’s theme plays… only to stop abruptly when Zelda lands on his head. Zelda doesn’t seem to mind the rough landing too much, because it means she’s back, and she gives Link a hug.
The nice moment is interrupted as Malladus destroys Byrne for his interference. Cole starts encouraging Malladus to drive Zelda from her body again and retake it, but Malladus decides to claim Cole’s instead. The form he assumes calls pig demon Ganon to mind, but he says Cole’s rejecting his spirit. He doesn’t have much time… but he can do some damage before he fades.
The second phase of the Malladus battle has Zelda charging up her power while Malladus spits fireballs at her. Link needs to deflect them… and now, after two games of generally getting along with the touchscreen controls, is when that skill abandoned me. Deflecting the fireballs often drops hearts, and I had two potions (plus the Song of Healing, which I assume would work here, if I actually remembered it), so I was never in any real danger of dying, but it took me an hour to get through this without the game interpreting what was meant as a slash as wanting to run into the fireball (bad) or roll out of the way so it can hit Zelda (also bad). Oddly, the times when Malladus spits out a bunch of fireballs that need to be deflected with a spin attack were never so hard.
Once Zelda’s charged up, she and Link play a Lokomo duet of the game’s title theme – her singing, Link playing the Spirit Flute. The tune is five notes and has two jumps, so it was a little tricky, but I got it faster than blocking the fireballs. Once it clicks, they’re joined by the five sages from the sanctuaries. This causes a weak spot to appear on Malladus’ back, starting the final phase: Link gives the bow to Zelda and distracts Malladus so she can shoot him in the weak spot. Every now and then, Malladus collapses, and Link can whack him until he breaks off a horn. The third time, Link instead starts pushing the Lokomo Sword into a gem on Malladus’ head, and Zelda comes over to help. Eventually, the gem breaks, and the demon king is no more.
With Malladus gone, light breaks. Anjean comes out of the Spirit Train, and knows that Byrne’s sacrifice is what he wanted… and pulls together his spirit so he can eventually reincarnate. However, after seeing what Link and Zelda are capable of, she knows the Lokomos can leave the world in their care, and the two start fading off into the heavens, joined by the other five sages. As Link and Zelda watch them go, they join hands.
The credits show, in illustrations, life returning to normal in New Hyrule. Highlights are Zelda returning to the castle and reuniting with Teacher, Niko telling the Spirit Tracks story to Aboda’s children, and a final illustration from the game’s title sequence of Link driving the Spirit Train while Zelda flies alongside it, revealed to be a picture on Zelda’s desk. As she works, if Link knew what he wanted to do when peace returned, she hears a sound from the window – a train whistle for engineer, or swords ringing against each other for warrior. She runs over to the window to wave (if Link’s training, the sounds indicate he gets distracted and knocked down). If Link said he didn’t know what he was going to do next, Zelda simply looks out the window and smiles [1].
Spirit Tracks took Phantom Hourglass and refined it, fixing my two big problems – mostly bland dungeons and a disappointing soundtrack. I liked the Temple of the Ocean King, but the Tower of Spirits worked well, too. On the other hand, I think this game made me mad at it more than any other – dodging the demon trains got old, and the new treasure system (with some things made annoyingly rare to encourage trade) is a mess. But what I think stands out the most for me about this game is Zelda finally taking a central role in the series named for her, easily becoming my favorite version of the character yet.
[1] Seeing all three endings requires doing the whole Malladus fight three times. Thankfully, I had a much easier time with the fireballs the next two tries. I think I let my frustration get inside my head the first time.
