My first accomplishment happened at the very start of the cycle: I took the last rupees out of Link’s bank account to stock up on arrows, bombs, and other consumables before Soaring to the top of Stone Tower. There’s no new form for Link this time around, unless you count the Giant’s Mask, found in the dungeon, which makes Link huge so he can fight the boss but can only be used in that one room. Each of the three forms is needed to work the way through the dungeon; Zora Link is needed the least, but that’s okay, after Great Bay Temple I’m happy to let it have a break.
There are a lot of those puzzles using the mirror shield to reflect sunlight onto faces or blocks, and I don’t know what’s changed since Ocarina, but they’ve gotten a lot harder for me. Maybe it’s more need to be precise, maybe the shield’s smaller, maybe I’m just out of practice or don’t remember how hard they really were. They did add a new wrinkle that makes it harder: needing to charge up a mirror with sunlight then reflect the mirror’s emitted light, and that’s not how mirrors work but whatever. Needless to say, I was quite thrilled when I got the light arrows and discovered they were a shortcut to solving those problems.
The light arrows also come up in the dungeon’s signature mechanic: after Link goes through once and gets the light arrows, he has to go outside and hit a mark on the temple to flip it upside-down, then explore it again like that. There are a few rooms inside that have to be flipped multiple times to get through, memorably one with a sliding block that can only go so far on each surface so getting it to its puzzle solved spot is basically “push block, flip room, push block, flip room…,” ending with two more flips to make it onto the platform to leave.
There are a lot of minibosses here. First is a leader of the Garo ninjas, who fights with flaming swords and doesn’t leave himself open to counterattacks when blocked. I found it easiest not to Z-target him, just roll out of the way and thwack him when I had an opening. Eyegores return to the series, now with laser beams, so the strategy is to block those, then shoot the eye when it’s vulnerable – kind of like Hyrule Warriors’ interpretation of gohmas. There’s yet another wizzrobe fight here. And finally, Gomess, whose weak spot is protected by bats. They flee if he’s hit with a light arrow, leaving the weak spot vulnerable.
If Link wants to get all the stray fairies, he’s got to flip the dungeon two more times. Once to collect all the ones from chests he spawned while upside-down that can only be gotten rightside-up, and then one more time to be able to get into the boss room. These forced exits gave me a chance to Soar back to Clock Town and buy Chateau Romani so I didn’t have to worry about magic when using light arrows (or later, the giant’s mask), and between finishing fairy collection and fighting the boss, down to Ikana Canyon to get the final fairy reward, the Great Fairy’s Sword. All this was nearly rendered moot for me by one of the fairies, which requires some very precise goron rolling to get from one button to another before fires surround the second button again.
The boss of the temple is Twinmold, giant masked insect. It’s a pair of giant… well, the name makes me think moldorms, but everything about the design echoes A Link to the Past’s lanmolas. I noted back during The Legend of Zelda that it seemed the moldorms and lanmolas in that game were backward, given A Link to the Past’s boss monsters; now it seems like they have two wormy monsters and just randomly assign names. I even like the name “Twinmola” a little better. As for the actual fight, Link puts on the giant’s mask and hacks away until they die, and this seems to be the intended way for the fight to flow. They didn’t even seem to acknowledge the big guy killing them. It’s a weird, easy fight.
The four giants, now freed, agree to come to Link and Tatl’s aid to stop the Skull Kid. They express some reluctance to do so, and send Link and Tatl back to the world with a parting message, “Forgive your friend.” Defeating Twinmold also lifts the curse on Ikana Canyon, so there are no more gibdos around the music box house.
There’s one last thing to do before resetting time. Back down in the river with the octoroks that make convenient ice cubes, there’s a Secret Shrine behind a waterfall where Link can fight minibosses from each of the four dungeons. Dinolfos are easy, dying in one hit to the Great Fairy’s Sword. The challenge with the wizzrobe is there’s no minimap to track him on. Wart, I’ve decided that the easiest way to fight is to just wade in swinging the sword until it dies. It’s amazing how effective that strategy is against a lot of things. Finally, I continue to refine tactics against the Garo Master. With all four dead, Link is awarded a heart piece.
I’m now ready to go to the final confrontation, but time travel and quests resetting means all those people I’ve helped need helping again. I would bet there’s some kind of magical merging of all the best outcomes, even mutually exclusive ones (although it shouldn’t be that hard to stop Sakon from robbing the bomb lady and then tell Kafei where his hideout is thanks to the magic of time travel; on the other hand, it requires saying something so, yeah, it's beyond Link's ability), but I want to do as much of it myself as I can.
Next: A very busy three days.
