Dancing Dragon Dungeon
With his new member’s card, Link can access the basement backroom of the Horon Village shop. There are a couple Gasha seeds for sale here, but the other two items are more interesting. First, there’s a seed satchel upgrade that lets Link carry up to 50 of each type of seed. Second, there’s a treasure map that marks four squares on the overworld. Before going exploring, though, with the basement’s inventory all sold, the shop owner’s set up a treasure chest game like the one in Ocarina of Time: choose the right chest of two, three times, to receive a ring, with an option to keep guessing for a chance at a better reward. This is a good place to fill in holes in the ring list, and get rings to unlock the “appraised 100 rings” ring.
Two of the treasure map squares can be visited now, where Link can acquire jewels: a square jewel in Spool Swamp in winter, and a pyramid jewel on Mt. Cucco [1]. With the power of autumn, Link can find the second golden beast, a moblin, in the Woods of Winter. Finally, there are two more heart pieces Link can get right now: one on an island surrounded by swirling water in Spool Swamp, and the other on Mt. Cucco near the entrance to the dungeon. Getting to Dancing Dragon Dungeon requires another cucco ride in winter, then changing the season to summer to climb the vines to the dungeon entrance.
It was hard not to notice Capcom’s logo alongside Nintendo’s on the opening screen, and this dungeon features a puzzle type straight out of one of their signature franchises: the Mega Man disappearing block jumping puzzle. Given my shaky mastery of the roc’s feather physics and timing (all too often, I try to jump too late and end up running out of platform), this was not a welcome sight. The mine carts return from the first dungeon, now complicated by having to manipulate switches to alter their paths. The treasure is a slingshot, Link’s ranged weapon for the game, which uses the same seeds Link carries for other uses. The ember seeds let Link light torches from a distance, and the scent seeds finally have a general use as cheep ammo.
The dungeon’s miniboss is Agunima, a wizard reminiscent of Agahnim. He spawns illusory doubles and, echoing Ganon’s final play from A Link to the Past, turns out the lights. Turning back on the lights reveals the real Agunima as the only one to cast a shadow, which, unlike Agahnim, can be attacked directly. With final bosses being recycled from the original game and Link having a ranged weapon now, it’s Gohma’s turn. Gohma’s been completely reimagined, starting with a giant claw that grabs and crushes Link. Once that’s gone, it’s a standard Gohma fight; it summons little enemies and its vulnerable spot is still the eye. Once it’s gone, Link can claim the fourth Essence of Nature, Soothing Rain.
The Maku Tree makes its customary contact, saying that the next dungeon is in Eyeglass Lake. There’s not a whole lot to do before going there, making it more likely I got the autumn upgrade for the Rod of Seasons early. In Horon Village, Bipin and Blossom’s son is having trouble sleeping, and Blossom asks for help. South of the village, there’s a torch Link can hit with an ember seed now that he has a slingshot, which creates a bridge to an island where the third jewel, this one X-shaped, can be claimed. The path to the next dungeon is blocked by the giant mushrooms, so making it autumn to be able to pick them up is needed.
Unicorn’s Cave
The dungeon is called Unicorn’s Cave, which strikes me as a better name for the one with Aquamentus as a boss, but I’m not in charge of naming things. Link gets the dungeon’s treasure, the magnetic gloves, fairly early on, which is important because a lot of puzzles use them. The gloves are basically a hookshot variant, only their polarity reverses so they can also push items away from Link (or Link away from a stationary object, like the big metal slabs I’ve seen in the overworld), and they can do their magic even when there’s an item between Link and what the magnet is pushing/pulling. This does come at the cost of being able to use them as a weapon, but that’s what the boomerang’s for.
The dungeon’s miniboss is Syger, a saber-toothed tiger that rolls around the dungeon and has a weak spot at the tip of its tail. That’s pretty much all there is to say about that, so it’s fittingly paired with a reimagining of the most forgettable boss from the first game, Digdogger. Digdogger’s lost its vulnerability to certain types of sound, but the key is still to use the dungeon’s treasure against him. Namely, there’s a big spiked ball Link needs to ram into the boss with the magnetic gloves (and stop before it hits Link, because it’ll hurt him, too). When Digdogger takes enough damage, it splits into a bunch of little eyeballs, which also need to be run over with the spiked ball. If Link doesn’t kill them all fast enough, the big form comes back, but the little ones stay defeated. After all the little ones are dead, Link claims the fifth Essence, Nurturing Warmth.
For the next Essence, the Maku Tree points Link toward ruins.
Next: Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!
[1] It didn’t occur to me until I saw the four jewels together on a wiki page, but they’re a sphere, a cube, a tetrahedron (pyramid), and an X. Which in two dimensions are circle, square, triangle, and X: the PlayStation symbols.
