Okay, the vacation’s over, it’s time to get back to work figuring out how to save Clock Town. After grabbing some rupees in case he needs them (there’s a silver rupee in a chest in town that’s pretty easy to get to with the bunny hood), Link and Tatl head south to the swamp. Tatl sees a carving of the Skull Kid with her and Tael on a tree near the swamp entrance, providing a perfect segue to a flashback of how the two of them met the Skull Kid and became his friends. After a few scenes of the three playing together and making the carving, we see the Skull Kid steal Majora’s Mask. The whole thing makes the Skull Kid look a little more sympathetic, like he’s just one more person who needs saving from the mask’s evil power.
On the road into the swamp, there’s a heart piece in a tree for Link to collect, and Tingle’s floating overhead just waiting to be shot down for his chance to sell a couple more maps. His introduction speech is getting really old, and I’d admire Link’s patience with him if it wasn’t apparently supposed to be shared by the player. A little farther into the swamp Link meets Tingle’s father running a tourist center and complaining about his son. Outside the swamp, there’s a Deku scrub wanting to move to greener pastures, and I didn’t start the trading sequence so I’ll have to come back to this in a bit.
The swamp’s water is poisonous, so instead of Link swimming to explore, Deku Link hops between lily pads to go deeper into the swamp. He passes by a potion shop to find a Lost Woods-esque area called the Woods of Mystery. A monkey offers to show Link the way through the woods if he can keep up, and leads Link to an injured witch, Koume. Link doesn’t have anything to give the witch to help her, so he has to double back to the potion shop, where Kotake, Koume’s twin sister works; Kotake gives Link a potion to help Koume. Link brings the potion to Koume, and gets to keep his first bottle as a token of gratitude. Koume returns to her job at the tourist shack; as Link exits the woods, a bunch of monkeys ask him to help another monkey who’s been taken prisoner by the Deku scrubs.
Link returns to the tourist center, where Koume gives him a boat ride deeper into the swamp, and a pictograph box to take a picture to enter in the center’s contest. She drops him off at the Deku Palace, which will only let him in if he’s wearing the Deku mask, and even then only to see the monkey’s humiliation. Apparently the Deku scrubs believe the monkey kidnapped their princess and may have eaten her, but the monkey insists that the princess’ is in trouble and it’s not his fault but someone needs to help her out. Before leaving the throne room, Link uses the camera to take a picture of the Deku King. As Link leaves the throne room, the monkey’s brother comes to him to suggest sneaking into the cage using a magic bean to reach the upper level of the palace. The bean salesman is hiding in a hole under the palace gardens, which Link has to sneak through or the guards will throw him out. Beans work differently in this game because we don’t have seven years to wait for them to grow; spring water will immediately do the trick. Also hidden in the gardens is a heart piece.
Link leaves the palace, goes around the side, and finds a place to plant the bean. Then he sneaks back into the palace and uses flowers to platform over the gardens and work his way into the monkey’s cage. The monkey explains that he and the princess went to the Woodfall Temple to try to cleanse the swamp, but the princess got captured and he escaped, only he can’t convince the Deku scrubs that’s the truth. So he teaches Link the Sonata of Awakening, the song to open the temple, and unfortunately Link’s playing it to confirm he knows it attracts too much attention. Link is thrown out and the scrubs begin to prepare to punish the monkey.
There’s nothing Link can do for the monkey right now, so he heads for the temple. It’s a lot of platforming and enemies who like to knock Link off platforms. Before Link enters Woodfall, an owl (Kaepora Gaebora?) comes to him to teach him the Song of Soaring, which will let Link teleport to any of the owl statues around Termina that he’s activated. It’s a much more useful quick travel system than Ocarina of Time had. In Woodfall, there’s another heart piece just waiting to be claimed, and an owl statue conveniently located by the temple entrance.
I’m going to wait for a fresh cycle before trying to tackle a dungeon, so let’s wrap some stuff up and reset. Link uses the Song of Soaring to zip back to Clock Town, and gets the Moon’s Tear and trades it for the flower title deed. Then he teleports to the swamp tourist center and gives the deed to the scrub, who trades his flower’s deed for it. Link uses the flower to get on top of the center where there’s another heart piece, and goes inside to enter his picture in the contest. The man is impressed by Link managing to get a picture of the Deku King and awards him another heart piece. Then it’s back to Clock Town, put rupees in the bank, and play the Song of Time to start anew.
Next: Save the princess, save the monkey.
