The central tower of Ganon’s Castle is protected by six barriers, one tied to each sage’s element. There are six halls off the central room, all based on things Link has seen before: lighting torches and fan puzzles (Saria/forests), platforming over lava (Darunia/fire), blue fire and sliding blocks over ice (Ruto/water), hidden platforms and Lens of Truth puzzles (Impa/shadow), lighting a sun face and another bombchu puzzle (Nabooru/spirit), and more Lens of Truth tricks and rolling boulders (Rauru/light). The shadow hallway also has one last treasure for Link to find, the golden gauntlets. Now he can lift truly massive pillars, although he can’t hold them very long.
The barriers are dispelled, but before going up, there’s one last thing Link needs. Outside, on the castle grounds, behind a pillar he can now lift with the golden gauntlets, is a cave where the sixth and final great fairy lives. This one is the Great Fairy of Courage, and grants Link enhanced defensive capabilities, which will make the last fight against Ganon much easier. Also, in the central room of Ganon’s Castle, there’s a hidden room with some business scrubs that will sell Link useful items at a reasonable price and a bunch of fairies so Link can heal up and fill bottles before the final charge.
The first batch of enemies to attack Link as he ascends are fire keese, which is just mean. Then it’s pairs of dinolfos, stalfos, and iron knuckles. Fortunately, the iron knuckles can be singly activated rather than having to fight both at the same time; I would expect they’re like the dinalfos and would both attack Link at the same time, which would complicate things. After the iron knuckles comes the boss room. The first room is mostly empty with a giant pillar in the middle and some jars hidden around. On the other side of this room is a long stairway with organ music pouring in as Link heads to the top.
When Link arrives in the top room, he discovers that it’s Ganon playing the organ, and I finally realize the music is a version of Agahnim’s theme from A Link to the Past. Given the connection, that’s appropriate. The fight against Ganondorf [1], Great King of Evil, is quite reminiscent of Phantom Ganon from the Forest Temple. The biggest difference is that the timing of the sword swings doesn’t need to be as exact as it did there, and I wonder if the reason I was having so much trouble getting Phantom Ganon’s attacks to reflect at just the right angle is because I kept him Z-locked, and Navi can’t get close so that doesn’t work here. Between the new ease of reflecting attacks and Biggoron’s Sword’s extra damage, Ganon goes down fairly quickly.
With Ganon defeated, Zelda is freed from her crystal. There’s no time to celebrate just yet, because the tower begins crumbling. Zelda leads the way down the stairs, and her running animation looks a bit goofy. It’s mostly a straight shot down the tower; the stalfos from earlier have come back, and Zelda’s surrounded by fire until Link can deal with them. On a bridge just before the last hallway out, there’s a ReDead just waiting to stun Link with its scream. As Link and Zelda get out of the castle, Link stops to watch as the tower, and then the whole castle, collapses.
Just when it looks like Hyrule is safe, Ganon rises from the rubble in his more familiar pig demon form. He creates a ring of fire around himself and Link and kicks the Master Sword to the outside. I haven’t used the Master Sword since I got Biggoron’s Sword, so no big loss except I have to go back to the inventory to re-equip it for some reason. This is a fairly simple battle in theory, but working it out while dodging Ganon’s attacks is pretty rough. Anyway, the pattern is to stun him with a light arrow, then whack his tail. About halfway through the fight, he gets distracted enough for Link to take up the Master Sword. Eventually, I ran out of magic, even with him spilling decanters when he destroyed some of the last remnants of the tower, and had to resort to running behind him and hitting his tail before he could turn around. Another bunch of hits later and Zelda holds him with her magic, allowing Link to put him down for good.
Or not; as it turns out, Ganon’s still not dead. But he is beaten enough that the sages can banish him to the sacred realm and seal him there, at least for a time. And then Zelda sends Link back to being a kid, and then the sages continue their duty of maintaining the seal. With Ganon gone and peace restored to Hyrule, everybody gathers at Lon Lon Ranch for a celebration, even the Kokiri, who apparently can leave the forest, at least for a short while, perhaps only now with Ganon gone. In the past Temple of Time, Navi leaves Link as he goes to meet with Princess Zelda, which is where the game ends. I’m left wondering a few things (How far back did Link go? How are he and Zelda going to stop Ganon from taking over? Why did Navi leave? Assuming the third timeline came about on an alternate version of the game where Ganon defeated Link and got the full Triforce, how did the Imprisoning War come about?) that I suppose my best bet for finding answers to is to read Hyrule Historia, and I’m not ready for that yet.
Ocarina of Time is a really good game; I don’t know if I’d say it’s better than A Link to the Past, but it did successfully make the jump from 2D to 3D, so just for that it deserves praise. It also continued the trend from Link’s Awakening of deeper stories and characters (also humor, but more natural), which makes writing about it easier. There were maybe a few too many minigames (bombchu bowling?), but overall it deserves its status as a classic.
[1] Up till now, I’ve used the name Ganon to refer to both Ganondorf the Gerudo and Ganon the pig demon. I don’t know how much I’ll change this going forward.
