North of the village, there’s a pair of caves. One of these is the Hero’s Cave, which only appears in a linked game and requires most of the available items to complete. It requires the power bracelet (or sword upgrade, both of which come later) to even start, so let’s leave it alone for now and head over to the other cave, which is a straight path that leads to the Lynna City Maku Tree. This Maku Tree is female, a fact that’s emphasized heavily by the few facial features it has. I hate this design; looking at it makes me cringe. The Tree starts by recapping what we already know about Veran, and then disappears as something horrible happens in the past. Link heads over a screen from where the Maku Tree was, and finds Ralph waiting by the portal that Veranayru dove into earlier. Ralph goes through the portal to save Nayru, and Link follows.
Lynna Village, 400 Years Earlier
Four hundred years in the past, Lynna City was just Lynna Village. Some of the equivalents of the key NPCs from Horon Village are here: Pippin, Bipin’s ancestor, who gives Link his first Gasha nut, and the Advance Shop, which sells another Gasha Nut and two rings. The city’s all abuzz because of the tower the queen is constructing. Apparently, she has a missing lover she wants to lead home, and so she’s building a tall tower and has everyone in the city working on it. All was well for a while, but then Nayru came and they started working harder and the day never ends so they don’t get breaks for nighttime, so the village is being overworked and is full of piles of dirt, including blocking the way to the Maku Tree. Fortunately, the need for workers is so intense that if Link goes into the castle, they hand him a shovel without thinking anything of it. It immediately proves useful to him, because there’s a piece of heart in the tower area he can get with the shovel.
In the past, the Maku Road cave is a bit more like a minidungeon, with some simple enemies to fight and puzzles to solve. There’s a heart piece along the way, and then Link finally comes to the Maku Tree’s clearing. The Maku Tree at this time is a lot smaller – barely bigger than Link – and she’s under attack by pig moblins. Once rescued, there’s some nonsense about her wanting to marry Link, and she opens up the way back to the village, where Link can now return to his time.
The Quest Begins
The Maku Tree is back to her normal spot, and she remembers her plan to marry Link, only she remembers it as a promise Link made. Her memory’s generally fuzzy because of Veran’s interference in the timeline, so she asks Link to gather the eight Essences of Time [1]. The first Essence of Time is in Yoll Graveyard to the east, and she gives Link a seed satchel with ember seeds to start his way. The ember seeds are needed to clear a few trees out of the path to the graveyard, and then in the graveyard to light the torches to summon the key to the first dungeon, Spirit’s Grave.
Oracle of Ages is a lot more puzzle-oriented than its sibling, and while this dungeon eases into it, there are hints of how things are going to get. One new element is a block with different-colored faces that rolls at it’s pushed. So, it not only needs to be pushed into place but rolled so that the right color is on top when it reaches its destination. The only one of these blocks in this dungeon starts perfectly placed and oriented so that if you just push it directly at its slot, a face with the correct color is up when it gets there. But it’s the first dungeon, so there’s lots of time for puzzles involving that kind of block to get tougher.
The miniboss, a giant ghini, is a fairly direct fight, although it has little ghosts that will swarm Link and limit his movement, leaving him vulnerable to the boss. The final boss is more of a puzzle. It’s a ghost in a jack-o-lantern that creates a body for itself. When the body is hit enough, Link can access the jack-o-lantern, picking it up (the power bracelet is the dungeon’s treasure) and tossing it aside, revealing the ghost. The ghost is now vulnerable so it tries to get back into the jack-o-lantern, but it dies after a few hits, allowing Link to claim the first Essence of Time, Eternal Spirit. The Maku Tree contacts Link to say that the next spirit is echoing from the Western Woods.
Next: Dungeon crashing.
[1] Or in short: World in peril, damsel in distress, eight plot coupons, big bad evil… gal, I guess?
