Day 7: The Dark Palace Is Well Named
Well folks, there's only one dungeon left, and that's the Dark Palace. The Dark Palace is the Lorule version of the Eastern Palace, so it has a similar layout, but it's a shadow dungeon, so it has a really neat gimmick: there are several rooms that have paths and walls and other important stuff that only appear in complete darkness, but you need light to see the baddies and switches and that sort of thing.
The gift in this dungeon was a second Master Ore, which let me upgrade my Master Sword again (it IS gold this time!). Getting the Master Ore, however, required the use of a walkthrough because it was very unintuitive; you have to hit a switch that does something, but also does something else off-screen and only for a limited time. You can only luck yourself into finding it.
The boss was a version of Helmasaur King laced with rupee ore, so rupees explode from him with each sword strike. He's a pain, but with blue mail and a super-duper sword, it didn't take long to take him down. Doing so freed Gulley, which allowed the Sevensage (as he calls them) to bestow the Triforce of Courage upon Link, as if it weren't inside him all along. Then they tell me to go to Lorule Castle to defeat the Great Demon.
Now I'm sure you'll notice as I did that I didn't fill any empty spots and I'm nearing the endgame. So I decided to use a walkthrough again because I'm not above that, and I discovered that I COULD HAVE HAD THE PEGASUS BOOTS A MILLION YEARS AGO. Remember the thief that stole the whatzit and sold it to the shady merchant? Well, he's been hanging around Kakariko the whole game and he runs whenever I try to get close to him. I assumed I needed the Pegasus Boots to catch him, but I get them from him. Laaaaaame.
Anyway, they filled my last gear space and I was able to find the rest of the Maiamai, allowing me to get my ice rod and sand rod upgraded (completely unnecessary but still nice) as well as a spin attack. Overall a fun and rewarding sidequest, I must say. I also learned that one of my item spaces is for a fifth bottle, which I would've eventually figured out had I just kept giving the Great Rupee Fairy rupees like I knew I was supposed to. Frankly, I think five bottles is a little unnecessary, but maybe I won't when I fight Ganon.
The end is nigh.
Day 8: The End Is More Than Nigh
This is it, the home stretch. It's been a long, hard battle, and the only thing standing between me and victory is Lorule Castle. And Lorule Castle is pretty cool.
Like many final dungeons, it's castle-shaped and is a final exam of all the skills you learned over the course of the game. Unlike most though, it doesn't telegraph this at all. It's not like Ocarina where it's nearly divided into the different regions. Many of the tests are even optional, mainly for chests and especially for this dungeon's prize, which I'll get to in a second. Lorule Castle also has some pretty cool puzzles. One that sticks out is a room filled with lava, with posts that shoot up when you get close to them, some of which go higher than others; these posts are used to get around the room but also to position some spike balls, which means you have to keep up with the rolling ball so it doesn't end up in the lava but you can't go too fast or the older posts will disappear. And you can't always walk in a straight line, so there's a lot of strategy involved.
The dungeon's prize is the Red Mail, which cuts my damage in half again. So for those keeping score at home, I'll be going into the final battle with seventeen hearts, five fairies (equivalent to 25 extra hearts), and taking a quarter of the damage I would with my green tunic. #overkill
After making my way to the Lorule Castle throne room, I met up again with Princess Hilda who told me the story of how Lorule fell into such disarray. As you might imagine, they had a Triforce too and it caused just as much trouble as Hyrule's. The Powers That Be decided to fix that, however, by destroying it for good. This was a bad idea. So you can see why she needed my help...and also why she enlisted Yuga to break into Hyrule and steal their Triforce. Whaaaaaat? PLOT TWIST! At this point, she gains the Triforce of Wisdom and then calls forth Yuga -who's now inhabiting Ganon's body - to take my Triforce of Courage.
This starts a pretty great final boss battle. In the first stage, all you have to do to defeat him is hit him with your sword a bunch of times. This is made more difficult because he's constantly swinging and stabbing his trident, and it took a lot of my hearts, but I did it. After that, Yuga double-crosses Hilda by stealing her Triforce of Wisdom and turning her into a painting! DOUBLE PLOT TWIST! This gives me a supercharged Yuga to fight, but this is when he breaks out the ever-present energy volley stage; it's tough, though, because it's really fast. Hit him with it once and he merges into the wall, which sucks because none of my items will work on him. So Zelda bestows upon me a new item, the Bow of Light, which *will* work in painting form! This begins stage three, which alternates between shooting at him on the wall, and volleying his energy. It's trickier than it sounds because he'll catch any arrow you shoot at him and eventually he'll start shooting two energy balls at once.
Once he's defeated, I rescued Zelda from the painting and she started to have a heart-to-heart with Hilda suddenly getting ready to attack. It looks like she's about to reveal herself as the Secret Final Final Boss, but she's stopped in her tracks by Ravio, of all people, who appears out of nowhere. As he takes off his bunny mask to talk down Hilda, we see that he's none other than...the Lorule version of Link! TRIPLE PLOT TWIST! He ran away from Lorule because he was too cowardly, so Hilda didn't have a hero to help her and had to resort to other means. Hilda has a change of heart and sends Zelda and Link back to Hyrule, where they wish on the Triforce to restore the Lorule Triforce. Awwwwwww.
Final Verdict: This is not my favorite Zelda game, mainly because the Hyruleans and Loruleans are not fleshed out enough for the most part, and at times it's almost TOO similar to Link to the Past. That being said, it is definitely my favorite handheld Zelda game; it has a great story when it takes the time to dwell on it, it has a lot of original gimmicks and puzzles, and even though it's basically just a Link to the Past remake, it's a very well done one. And as I said in Part 1, this is a great first Zelda. What I mean is that it's a great example of what the series is without anything that makes it an oddball, such as weird settings (the Great Sea, anywhere not Hyrule, etc) or gimmicks (turning into a wolf, riding a train everywhere, etc) or whatever (so NPCs with character, too dark, etc). In fact, this is arguably the quintessential Zelda game, or at least A quintessential one.
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