Crown Dungeon
Rolling Ridge, the mountain area where the next dungeon is, is the home to Labrynna’s gorons. They seem to be having a rough time, both in the past and future. In the past, their elder has been buried alive, and they don’t have the bomb flowers they need to dig him out. In the future, the moblins Link fought off in Holodrum have set up shop there and are keeping the gorons from growing bomb flowers. Link drives the moblins out, and the future gorons thank him by giving him a bomb flower, and noting his resemblance to the guy who helped the elder out all those years ago. In case it’s not obvious what needs to be done next, the Maku Tree contacts Link to tell him his name’s in the goron histories. So Link heads back to the past, gives the bomb flower to the gorons trying to dig the elder out of his rubble prison, and gets the key to the next dungeon as a reward. Also on this part of Rolling Ridge, Link can find another heart piece, and a tree with Pegasus seeds, completing the seed type collection.
The next dungeon, Crown Dungeon, has two common types of puzzles. First, there are a lot of switch blocks. Second, the treasure is the Cane of Somaria, and there are a lot of new tricks for the simple utility of creating a block to solve. The standard use of setting a created block to hold down a switch when there’s nothing to push or switch hook onto it remains the most common one, but there are a couple extra wrinkles added. In the side-scrolling areas, Link sometimes needs to use the Cane to create a step to reach higher than he can normally jump. Also, there are linked sets of statues, where pushing one moves all of them. With the Cane’s block, Link can block off movement in one direction so he can move the statues individually. Finally, there’s a dark room, where Link can create blocks and push them around to see where it’s safe to walk. The puzzles in this game continually impress me, even if (especially if!) they sometimes frustrate me in figuring out what the heck I need to do.
The dungeon’s miniboss is Smasher, back from Link’s Awakening. There’s an added twist to this fight: every so often, the ball Link and Smasher throw at each other disappears and reappears in a different spot. This makes things a little bit easier if Link’s fast enough to grab the ball when it poofs before Smasher can. The final boss, Smog, is almost a pure puzzle boss. Smog creates walls and splits into smaller versions of itself that move around the walls, and Link needs to use the Cane of Somaria’s blocks to bring the pieces of Smog back together so he can stab them. This starts off easy but grows more complicated as it goes on. After four rounds, Smog is defeated, and Link gets the fifth Essence of Time, Sacred Soil.
Eastern Rolling Ridge
The Maku Tree still senses an essence on Rolling Ridge, so we’re not done here yet. She also says that someone’s come, which as far as I can tell refers to the goron who finds Link and tells him he’s completed a tunnel from the other area of Rolling Ridge where there are minigames to play. There’s no visitor to the Maku Tree, and so Link should continue his quest on the Ridge. First, Link needs to prove himself a goron brother by succeeding at the dance game in the future; the sequences are longer than the ones in the Subrosian dance, but there’s only two moves, and Link stays more or less in place, so the difficulty’s not so bad. Actually, I found it easier to navigate this one by sound, closing my eyes and playing along. When Link gets his brother emblem and the goron who’d been blocking the way moves, the goron requests Link bring him food.
Now that Link can fully explore the Ridge, there’s another heart piece to be had, and a tree with mystery seeds allowing quick travel in the past. There are also three secrets available in the area. One Subrosian gives Link a secret to tell the Subrosian smith, which will earn him a shield upgrade (the Mirror Shield in Holodrum, the Iron Shield in Labrynna). Another Subrosian has a secret for his brother, who challenges Link to cut the grass in his home with the magic boomerang in three throws. Controlling the magic boomerang enough to manage this is not terribly easy, and the reward is barely worth it: bombchus, which, given that they’re only available in a linked game, will only be required for the true final fight, and maybe not even then. Finally, a goron gives Link the secret that will let Holodrum’s Biggoron make Biggoron’s Sword, which unlike the big swords from Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask has enough drawbacks (it’s slow and requires both item slots) that it’s not really worth using.
Next: Saving Nayru.
