The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks is set centuries after Wind Waker and when they found a new place to live. Being used to use giant ships and flying across the world to go from island to island, it make sense that they would invent trains to do the same thing on land.
That is not the issue, the issue is that the rest seems to be largely the same except for "suddenly trains".
And it wasn't even invention, it was some gods give them bloody trains and that's it.
This is what I don't understand. It's supposed to be a game. For me exploration is very much alive in Skyward Sword, maybe it's not the kind of exploration you demand. I'm talking about exploration of the game's mechanics, it's like a sandbox in that sense you can do so much. For example when you ask questions that naturally arise such as
"what happens if I slash this pumpkin" -> "ok, it breaks as expected" naturally followed by
"but how about if I stab it" -> "holy shit, I can grab a pumpkin with my sword and I should be able to... yep I can also throw it like a projectile lol"
That to me is exploration and whatZeldaNintendo gaming is about. Skyward Sword is one of the most satisfying games because of this high level of interactivity, there are so many creative ways you can dispatch enemies in. Experimenting with your tools and skills is so much fun in SS' dense areas, there's a point of interest anywhere you look.
Yeah, no.
While experimentation is pretty big in SS, it's really not the same as exploration.
You're playing on words more than anything here.
I'm not saying that SS is bad, I really liked it and it's one of the most challenging Zelda to dates (even on normal!).
The world building however is a huge missed opportunity and makes the universe of Zelda look really small with how you barely explore more than 3 locations.
What's worse about SS is that, it's not technically incompetent or anything it's just that they arbitrarily decided that the sky was totally disconnected from the rest of the game and you could only interact in ways designers wanted you to interact.
I mean flying in Zelda is a pretty awesome concept and what we got was basically the lamest possible way to implement the idea.
And they used cop out like in nearly all Zelda games between WW and SS!
Again at least ALBW and TP did the overworld right, so I don't think they're incapable of delivering.