The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - A Mostly In-Depth Review, Part The Last

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.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - A Mostly In-Depth Review, Part 3

Day 5: Beyond the Desert

Now that I have the Sand Rod, the very first thing I did was tackle the Desert Palace. And I have to say, it uses the Sand Rod *very* well, particularly in conjunction with Beamos; twice you make a sand column rise under a Beamos, one just renders it harmless by having the beam pass over you, the other makes the beam repeatedly hit crystal switches for you. The Desert Palace is also the first dungeon with an item, the Titan's Mitt! This lets me lift huge rocks. It was nice to see, because the game felt weird without it. Unfortunately, the dungeon let me down with an easy and boring boss, but the boss had a nice design at least.

With the Titan's Mitt in(on?) hand, I decided to travel around Hyrule and Lorule to find and flip all the giant stones. Of course, the game being what it is, I accomplished a lot of other stuff along the way. I found enough rupees to buy the Tornado and Fire Rods, and found enough Maiamai to upgrade both of those items. Ravio decided to close up shop since he was out of stock, but now he's literally just laying about my house. What is the deal with this guy? I also had enough rupees to buy the mysterious item from the Running Man, which turned out to be a Golden Bee that I gave to Bee Guy in exchange for a Bee Badge; the Bee Badge not only makes bees not sting you, they'll also follow you around for a bit and attack any nearby enemies, and that's pretty cool. Finally, I had enough rupees to buy the Scoot Fruit (warps you to the beginning of a dungeon) and the Foul Fruit (stuns all enemies on screen), which filled up two of my remaining four item spaces. I knew about these items basically from the beginning, but I forgot about them because I knew I'd never use them.

I also visited the Lorule Death Mountain because apparently I hadn't yet (it's made of ice), and would've gone ahead and did the Ice Ruins dungeon but I didn't have the fire rod at the time so I couldn't get in. There's this weird island with a piece of heart that I can't get to on either world, so that's frustrating.

Finally, I decided to make my way through the Dark Palace because I was tired of that section of Lorule not having a weather vane I could fly to. Dark Palace is a very dark, very heavily guarded area that you have to sneak around without getting caught. I should've gone through it earlier because it turns out to be a great place to get cash: there's a lot of green, blue, and red rupees sitting around, and they reset every time you get caught.

Another thing I should mention: the Lorule blacksmith saw my badass sword, which made him happy and now he wants to make it even more badass. That requires two more Master Ores, one of which I found already. Will I be getting a golden sword? Only time will tell.

Day 6: The Ice Almost Ruined Me

Since I didn't start playing until late, I decided to only do one thing today, and that was beat Ice Ruins. As the name implies, this is an ice dungeon, but it's not your standard one with sliding puzzles and the sort. There is some slipperiness, but mainly for treachery. The main gimmick here is traveling between floors, either through an elevator system or falling to the floor below (or the one below that). There's also a neat thing where pulling switches will make a chunk of floor advance to a different part of the dungeon where you'll need it later. It can never move back, though, so that can make things tricky.

I got another prize in this dungeon, but it was gear so I still have two item slots left. The prize was a Stamina Scroll, which is a fancy way of saying my stamina bar increased. I was really hoping for Pegasus Boots, but what can you do? And the boss was another one that was easy to figure out but tough to accomplish; this game has had a mostly good run with that so far. All in all this was a very interesting and fun dungeon, and arguably too difficult: I went through all four fairies my first time through, three fairies my second time through to figure out the stuff I missed, and two or three on the boss (it says a lot that there's actually a fairy fountain in the dungeon). It was also the only time so far I've looked in a strategy guide - not for anything essential - and there's still one door that I never figured out how to open. But that's ok.

So that was going to be it for the night, but then I realized that I had 79 Maiamai and wanted to find one more so I can upgrade my sand rod, but it seems like everyone I found needs the Pegasus Boots to get, and that's really frustrating. So I decided to venture into the Swamp Palace just long enough to get the prize if there is one. We'll get back to that.

The Swamp Palace, despite its name, is your standard water dungeon: you swim, use your hookshot, and change the water level. It does seem to be unique in that each floor has its own separate water level, but that's more odd than anything, really. Even the boss, Arrghus (or a close relative), is basically just Barinade. The Swamp Palace is nothing you haven't experienced before.

How do I know what the boss was? Because it turns out there was a prize, and that prize was...Blue Mail. It cuts my damage in half, which is nice, but it's still not Pegasus Boots. WILL I EVER GET PEGASUS BOOTS? It also replaced my green tunic on my gear menu, so I still have an empty spot there.

An empty spot there, two empty spots in my items, and only one dungeon left that I know of. I feel like I'm missing something. I also need a second master ore and have no idea where to get it. And Irene mentioned being able to hold apples in my bottles, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen an apple. What's she on about? I'm sure it'll all work itself out, these guys are professionals, but I hate when I don't even have a hint of what's to come.

Next time: Dark Palace

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - A Mostly In-Depth Review, Part 2

Day 3: The Lost Woods and a Found World

Now that I had obtained all three Pendants, I needed to make my way to the Lost Woods and get the Master Sword. The Lost Woods are the same as always, with the added gimmick that groups of poes show up and one of them will tell you the right way if you can keep track of it (they spin around and jumble up and that sort of thing. Once you find the Master Sword, though, you can break through the evil that has been encasing Hyrule Castle for most of the game. It *is* the Blade of Evil's Bane, after all.

This leads to the next dungeon, "Inside Hyrule Castle", which is pretty neat. Yuga absconds with Zelda and you have to chase him down through eight floors of castle. Yes, despite what it looks like, Hyrule Castle is basically a skyscraper and this is made abundantly clear in certain areas when you go outside the castle walls and can just barely make out the buildings on the ground below. There's also one part that looks like it's right above the Sanctuary and graveyard, so it's not just tall but expansive to boot. At the top I found myself in an office of some sort, but no one was there. There was a mysterious crack in the wall though, so I decided to go through it and found myself in a strange dimension.

I finally caught up to Yuga and Zelda, and Yuga revealed that he had already captured all Seven Sages! I couldn't make out who all of them were, but I definitely spotted Irene, Gulley, Rosso (the miner who gave me my power glove), and the Zora Queen, in addition to Osfala (Sahasrahla's son), who I already knew about. If you'll notice, these nearly perfectly map onto the sages from Ocarina. I say nearly because Zelda isn't one of the sages in this game and because I don't know who the rest of the sages are, so there could be some overlap.

Anyway, Yuga uses the Sage portraits to resurrect Ganon, and we learn that Yuga just wants to be pretty and will wipe out the beauty from the world if s/he can't be. It's sad, really. But before Ganon is completely reborn, he's stopped by Princess Hilda, who then scatters the portrait so Yuga can't find them. Hilda, she tells me, is the princess of the world we're now in, which is called Lorule. Lorule! Amazing. Lorule is a mirror universe of Hyrule, connected through cracks. Lorule is darker, the baddies are meaner, and so are the people. Hilda wants me to track down the portraits and restore them before Yuga can, and she helpfully marks on my map where she sent them. Thanks, Hilda!

Lorule has been split apart by all of Yuga's shenanigans, so the only portrait I can access at the moment is in Thieves' Town, the dark Kakariko. I don't know if you know this, but thieves love to sing, and paying attention to their songs helped me to finagle my way into the Thieves' Hideout, aka Lorule Dungeon #1. Before I get to that, though, I should point out that Talon's milk bar counterpart in Lorule is Ingo, which I think is funny, and there's this weird masked man called the "guru" who's attracting followers, which I think is weird. I thought it might have something to do with the Majora's Mask on my wall at home, but it doesn't seem to.

The conceit of the Thieves' Hideout is that there's a girl imprisoned there and I have to lead her out. It's your basic escort mission with the added bonus that she can step on switches for you, and I liked it. I also found something called Master Ore inside, which I later learned I can use to upgrade the Master Sword...if I find another one. Lame. Anyway, to exit the Hideout I had to go through the boss room, and I just knew the girl was going to turn into the boss, but she didn't. The boss fight was really interesting in that you're able to merge (ie, become a painting) on the boss's shield, which confuses him and allows you to get behind him, and then he eventually sizes up and tosses it away. What's also interesting is that a heart container didn't show up when I killed him; instead Thief Girl - which is really her name - led me to a house next door, where I found a heart container and a portrait of Osfala, who turned out to be a Sage and not just the descendant of one. But since I've been calling them sages this whole time, it doesn't really matter.

After that, I just did some exploring and prep. I found a fourth bottle, rented a Sand Rod from Ravio (Osfala had it but he doesn't need it anymore), and learned from Ravio that I can buy his items now so bought about half of them; it's all I had money for, because his prices are steep. But since I owned items now, I could get Mama Maiamai to upgrade them, so I upgraded my bow, hookshot, and boomerang. I can also upgrade my hammer, but I have to find eight more Maiamai first.

I also opened a few more cracks - they're technically already open but they don't show up on your map until you use them once - and made it possible to get to the second dungeon by helping some turtles get back to their mother. Finally, I paid for the privilege of using the Big Bomb Flower, which is exactly what it sounds like and is unlimited use for a one time fee, and found a fun Octoball minigame that would be funner if I knew how to aim better.

Since I already opened up cracks to these areas, tomorrow I'll be tackling the lake and swamp dungeons. After that? Who knows.

(And since I forgot to mention it and now can't fit it in anywhere, I'll just put it here: I learned that Irene isn't named Maple because the witch is! And that makes sense because they added Maple to the Link to the Past game boy advance remake, so I assume it's the same character.)

Day 4: A Duo of Dungeons

So...things didn't quite go according to plan. I did get through two dungeons today like I said I would, but they weren't the two dungeons I thought they were going to be. Here's what happened.

I started out by making my way through the Turtle Rock dungeon, which is a fire dungeon despite being in the middle of whatever the Lorule version of Lake Hylia is called. It has some pretty neat puzzles involving freezing lava with the ice rod, but it's also the first place the depthiness really tripped me up; there were ice and fire wizzrobes, and I knew I needed to use the fire and ice rods to defeat them, but I didn't realize they fired vertically instead of horizontally like you'd expect (meaning they made an ice cube drop out of the air or flames rise out of the ground). I figured it out eventually of course, which made it occur to me how to hit some out of the way crystal switches. So I get to the boss, which is a lava turtle, and everything's going fine until he kills me, which makes me lose all my rented stuff...which at this point was just my rods. Kind of a huge setback. And I was out of money from buying all my other tools.

So I decide that since I'm going to travel around rupee hunting anyway, I can also spend that time hunting for Maiamai and opening new cracks (I'll go ahead and tell you that I found enough Maiamai to upgrade my hammer and bombs). Along the way though, I found myself in the Skull Woods dungeon and really had no reason to not go in. So I did. And it's a good thing too, because I found the second master ore, which allowed me to upgrade my sword. (I'll also note here that I got a Hylian shield somewhere, but can't remember where.) And before I went into the dungeon, I came across the famous Running Man, who offered me an item for 888 rupees. I tried to buy it even though I needed the money for rupees, but I didn't have a free bottle. So whatever it is, it goes in a bottle.

The Skull Woods dungeon is your basic shadow dungeon, with wallmasters and gibdos and the like, but this one had the twist of having to use the wallmaster to solve certain puzzles (making it hit switches and the like), which is a neat idea. The boss was basically a giant wallmaster wearing a gauntlet and with an eye on its palm. And again, it was easy to figure out but still challenging. Beating this guy let me rescue Impa's portrait, and now I'm confused. If Impa is the Shadow Sage, then which one is Irene? I guess we'll find out.

After that I returned to Turtle Rock and the boss was a breeze this time, partially because of the upgraded sword and partially because there weren't wizzrobes hanging outside the boss's door, taking away my hearts. I rescued Seres's painting and I don't know who she's supposed to be descended from either. Maybe Zelda, but then that would leave Irene descended from Nabooru and that doesn't seem right. Maybe I'm way off on this whole thing.

At this point, I was going to go ahead and knock out a third dungeon tonight, the Desert Palace, but then I remembered I was still missing the Sand Rod, which is necessary to get in. So I went back to rupee hunting. Some things of note during this period: the Lorule version of Dampé is a ghost and I don't know what that's all about; I found a Hynox in a cave and he kept giving me money to go away, but then he got mad I took so much of his money and now tries to kill me whenever I enter the cave (I don't know if I can remedy this at all); and I accidentally entered a place called the Great Palace, which I'll go into detail about later but suffice it to say that it's CRAZY.

Next time: Desert Palace for real this time, and I'm just gonna wing it after that.

Questions: when am I gonna get my Pegasus boots? I know they're coming. Why do I not see the seeds of a trading quest? After the boots, what are the other three empty spots in my items for? And what about the three empty spots in my gear? Why don't the Gerudo get any love? And wouldn't it be nice if they explained where the Ocarina races have disappeared to?

Hopefully some of these will be answered in my next entry.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - A Mostly In-Depth Review, Part 1

A new Zelda game has been released and that means it's time for another Mostly In-Depth Review. If you haven't started playing it yet, I highly suggest not reading this because there's a lot of great stuff in this game and here there be spoilers.

Are all the Johnny-come-latelys gone? Good.

As soon as you turn on the game, you see three spinning Triforce pieces come together and hear the Link to the Past theme play. This game, if you didn't already know, is a sequel of sorts to A Link to the Past, and if you refuse to press A when prompted, you'll get a nice recap of that game's events, accompanied by some nice paper-cutout-esque images. I guess I should go ahead and point out that A Link to the Past is one of only two Zelda games I've never completed, and it's because I don't really care for it. Some of you readers may be fainting from the blasphemy right now, but I just think that while it perfected the gameplay of the franchise, it hadn't quite nailed the story, background, and characters yet. But that's that game.

Before we officially get started, I should point out that when you start a save file, it's automatically named Link but you have the option of changing it. That's what most people use anyway, so I dig it.

Day 1: In The Beginning...

The game starts out just like several of its predecessors: Link is having a portentous dream and suddenly wakes up, he's a smithing apprentice, and he's late for something (in this case for work). He's woken up by his friend Gully, the son of his employers, who leads him to work because he's still too groggy to find his way there (along the way, also showing him the new save point, which is basically a Majora's Mask owl statue in the shape of the weather vane in Kakariko Town), which is a serviceable explanation for being railroaded. When we get to the shop, the Captain of the Guard is leaving with the shield he just bought, but forgot his sword, so it's up to Link to bring it back to him.

Now that I'm free to roam, I decided to explore as much as I could. "As much as I could" turned out to be a lot, in that I could basically go to every area except Lost Woods, Death Mountain, and Zora's Domain (I should note that the overworld map is almost exactly the same as Link to the Past, a first for the series, so all of these locations are in the north). Most areas had stuff blocked off of course, but it was still pretty wide open right from the get-go. And there were only a couple enemies here and there, all easily avoided or defeated by thrown bushes. It was while doing this, I noticed a joke I thought was clever: all the houses and shops are locked up and the few people you run into mention how early it is. Even Dampé calls you weird for being up so early. So it turns out you didn't even wake up late, just later than your boss would like! It was also during this initial exploration that I met a fortune teller who told me I came too early and I'm not supposed to come until I met the bunny. Ok, weirdo, whatever you say.

I finally made it to Hyrule Castle, but the Captain had already left to go to the Sanctuary. Officially it was to talk to the Priest, but Dampé thinks it's just an excuse to see the Priest's daughter, Seres. Dampé's pretty hilarious in this game, you guys. Either way it doesn't matter because there's a shriek from inside the Sanctuary, which means I have to take Dampé's lantern and travel through the catacomb under the graveyard to get into the Sanctuary the back way. Inside, a bad guy named Yuga - who's clearly a Gerudo but hasn't been called one yet - turns Seres into a painting and kidnaps her because she's a descendant of one of the Seven Sages. We've seen this rodeo before. On the bright side, the Captain fled in terror so I get to keep his sword. Yay! But Yuga knocks me out. Boo :(

Not to fret, as a passing salesman named Ravio found me and brought me back to my house, which, I'll go ahead and mention, has Majora's Mask hanging on the wall. Why? I have no idea. But I digress. I let Ravio stay there in gratitude, and to repay me, he gives me an heirloom leather bracelet that's really stinky. Before I can give him anything as thanks, he tells me to go talk to Impa and Zelda what happened, and for some reason I listen to this guy even though he's dressed like a purple rabbit. But as you know if you've read my Skyward Sword review, Zelda Can Wait.

Instead, I go re-explore with sword now firmly in hand. There are more villains now - still all easily defeatable - and they're in a nice, cartoony deformed style that really works for me. I guess all the characters are (sorta halfway between the Link to the Past sprites and the Wind Waker, et al., models), but it really stand out for the baddies. Also, all the buildings are open now, so I get to talk to people! I got a net from a nice guy in a bee costume, a shield from a shop, a bottle from a salesman, a new item called Hint Glasses from the fortune teller, and a piece of heart from the bottom of a well (using a cucco and very strategic floating; who says you need a power bracelet?). I also met a band in the milk bar who will play a random piece of Zelda music for ten rupees, and I think they may have been sirens because I almost just spent the rest of the night listening to them.

After that I got around to telling what happened to Impa and Zelda, and Zelda gives me a pendant that she says has been in her family for generations and has been entrusted to her since she was born. A baby isn't the first person I'd consider worthy to protect an important-sounding pendant, but that's why I'm not king of Hyrule. The pendant, by the way, feature a particular symbol that used to mean "Tune of Currents" but which now has been used in so many contexts that it really just means "1 of 3". At least we know what we're in for.

Zelda tells me to go to Sahasrahla - who some(magic)how is still alive - who tells me to go find his son at the Eastern Palace, but before I can do that, I have to borrow a bow from my houseguest. The bow, and all items I get from him, from the sound of it - come with a meter that depletes as you use it. It refills over time so it's more like stamina than magic, but it's a little weird. It doesn't really get in the way though, so whatever.

I meet the guy at the Eastern Palace and, long story short, he's a Sage descendant too! Now, I happen to know that Sahasrahla was not a Sage, so my theory at this juncture that almost everyone I've met so far in Hyrule is descended from the Sages in some way. At least that makes it easy for Yuga; no need to spend countless hours in a Hall of Records like the Penguin in Batman Returns. Anyway, I have to rescue him from Yuga.

Eastern Palace is quick and easy and really only there to get the player used to thinking three dimensionally. There's a lot of going over and under things, and it's easy to miss a lot of stuff if you're not paying attention. The boss, Yuga, is too easy to even talk about, but you ultimately lose: Orgus or Olrus or whatever is turned into a painting and so is Link! After Yuga disappears though, Link gets saved by his smelly bracelet gift and now he has the power to become a painting at will. This lets him reach new areas and protect himself from tricky platforms, which is really neat, but it also uses the stamina meter so I'll have to be careful. There's clearly something more to this Ravio guy and I can't wait to find out what it is.

Sahasrahla was disappointed I didn't save his son, but after seeing that Hyrule Castle is sealed off by some weird energy, he realized that Yuga is trying to recreate what Ganon did, so he decided to help me try again and save all the other Sage descendants as well. He also let me know that the 1 of 3 pendant is actually called the Courage Pendant and marked on my map where to get the other two. What a mensch. I know what I'll be doing tomorrow, though!

Day 2: Link Smith, Junior Explorer, and the Remaining Pendants

If I have a chance to explore in a Zelda game, that will always take precedence over advancing the game, and two things happened that made me put off heading straight to the Tower of Hera, which I totally had planned to do, you guys. The first was that I realized I could become a painting on ANY wall, not just dungeon walls, and the second was that I happened upon my house and saw that Ravio had hung out his shingle...by which I mean a huge purple banner.

I went inside and saw that he had a ton of items set out and we worked out a deal that let me rent them all for him, and also get an explanation of how renting works; basically, anything I rent I can keep until I die. Pretty good deal, I must say. And since that gave me access to the bomb, hammer, ice rod, fire rod, hook shot, boomerang, and tornado rod, which gives me plenty of room to reach new areas and find lots of stuff (and only fills up half my items menu!); I got six pieces of heart and about a million rupees for my trouble, and also found a couple neat treasure hunting games.

Another thing I did was meet a new character, a cool witch's assistant who gives me a bell that lets me warp to different weather vanes. Very helpful. But this gives me an opportunity to talk about a fault I have with this game: certain characters are obviously recurring, but don't have the right name. For instance, the Witch's assistant is clearly Maple from the Oracle games, but her name's Irene. The bald mustachioed milk bar owner is clearly Talon, but is just called "Milk Bar Owner". But oddly, Dampé is Dampé. I don't get it. It's not a big thing, but it sticks in my craw.

Anyway, I made my way to the top of Death Mountain to find the Tower of Hera. Along the way I got a power glove to lift rocks with, found some shiny rocks that spit out rupees if you hit them, and also some rupee-infused boulders that the volcano spits out. Neat stuff. It's Just Death Mountain, there's not a whole lot to say...yet.

The Tower of Hera is easy, but it further expands on the gameplay introduced in the Eastern Palace. Most of the things I remember from the trailers came from the Tower of Hera, so I think that says a lot. The boss is just a Moldorm, so there's not much to report there, unfortunately. Just hit the tail a bunch of time until it does. I got a Pendant of Power for my trouble.

Going east past the Tower, I cross a broken bridge with the help of my handy-dandy hookshot and come across my first true surprise of the game: lynels! Lynels are these lion centaur things, and they really shouldn't be a surprise because they were in Link to the Past, but they've never been in a 3D game before so I just wasn't expecting them. These lynels breathe fire though and are a pain to kill (haven't actually been able to yet) so it's a cold welcome. But after I make it past them, I start seeing signs for Rosso's Iron Mine, so I decide to check it out.

As it turns out, it's less of a mine and more of a giant, mountain-deep pit filled with lava, and you have to descend it by riding moving platforms and then making leaps of faith onto lower ones. There's also multiple paths to take, so you'll have to do this more than once to get everything: one leads to a piece of heart that's almost more trouble than it's worth, two lead outside, and a third also leads outside but to an area that you can meet a mountain climber. Jumping ahead a bit, I eventually found a message in a bottle in Lake Hylia from said mountain climber, requesting premium milk because he sprained his ankle, so I had to go through this rigamarole AGAIN to bent it to him. He let me keep in the bottle. Ridiculous.

After meeting him the first time, it was time to go to the House of Gales in Lake Hylia to get Pendant 3 of 3. I knew I needed the Flippers but couldn't figure out where to get them, and it took me way longer than it should have to realize I needed to go to Zora's Domain. Frankly I just forgot about it. On my way there, I run into a guy - literally - who has just stolen a stone from the Zora Queen, and without it she gets mega fat. Now, I've previously met this thief in Kakariko and I should've known he would be up to no good when I learned his name was Shady Guy, but Link likes to look for the best in people. Once I get it back, I bring it back to the Zoras and the Queen becomes hot...well, as hot as the fire-spitting River Zoras can look anyway.

They give me the flippers and I head for the House of Gales, but on the way I find two bottles for a total of three and meet somebody called the Maiamai Mother, who sort of looks like a pink octorok wearing a spiral shell. She's lost her children - all 100 of them - and she wants me to find them. Will do, ma'am, but it's going to take a while so it's not a pressing matter. She was kind enough to give me a map that shows how many Maiamai are left in each area of Hyrule, which is very helpful.

The House of Gales is the first themed dungeon, and it's also quite puzzle-heavy, as wind dungeons are wont to be. This means it's my current favorite, and it also means it was more difficult than the previous two dungeons, which is good. The boss was also neat. The way to defeat it was easy to figure out but challenging to accomplish, mainly because it was zooming around and trying to knock you off the platform you're both on. But the platform wasn't so small that getting knocked off was inevitable. Overall, it was a great boss experience.

Defeating it granted me my third pendant (wisdom), which will allow me to go to the Lost Woods and obtain the Master Sword. But that can wait until tomorrow.

Initial verdict: very impressed. It's too early to say for sure, but I think this is shaping up the be the new quintessential Zelda game.