Now that the seed business with Ambi is concluded, Link can go back to the forest and use a bomb to blast open the entrance to the next dungeon. (It’s a lot less fragile in the past.) The dungeon has a lot of color-themed puzzles: the color cube returns from the last dungeon, and both in this dungeon need to be adjusted so the direct path leaves the right color up. The minecarts from Seasons show up here, with gates that need a color puzzle solved to lift before the cart can carry Link to his proper destination. There are tiles on the floor that Link can change the color of by jumping over once he gets the roc’s feather; sometimes this is the puzzle itself, sometimes it has other effects, like dictating what color statues can be pushed to resemble the pattern of the other set of statues in the room. And there’s a room where the whole room changes color at once, revealing some camouflaged enemies who all need to be killed before they can change again.
Lost in all this is the miniboss, Swoop, who is a straightforward boss that hovers over Link and tries to smash him, becoming vulnerable after making its crash landings but ripping holes in the floor. The end boss, Head Thwomp, may well be the most annoying boss I’ve faced in any Zelda game yet. The mechanic is simple to explain: it sits in the center of the room, spinning between four colors. Link has to throw a bomb into it; if it goes in while the face is red, the boss takes damage. If it goes in on any of the other colors, it uses an attack (always the same attack per color). There have been puzzles involving throwing bombs into containers. Sometimes they’ve even required good timing with which way the container has faced. But they’ve never made a whole boss fight out of it (until now, I mean), and there’s a reason for that. IT’S NOT FUN. This fight is terrible.
Past Inventor, Future Inventions
Link gets the Ancient Wood, the next Essence. The leaf graphics for when the Maku Tree makes contact change from past to present, which is a nice touch. This time, she says the next Essence is on Crescent Island to the south. Before Link does anything else, there’s a heart piece in a cave along a road branching north from the return road across holes he can cross now with the roc’s feather. Southeast of the city, Link can now find his way to Cheval, who’s working on two things: flippers and a rope that won’t decay in water. As Link leaves Cheval’s house, Ralph shows up to tell him that the name appears on a tomb back in the future [1] and gets back to whatever it is he thinks he’s doing. Before heading back, there’s a girl south of the Black Tower who has a secret to being lucky she meant to tell someone headed to Holodrum. Her description makes it sound like it’s one of the pirates.
Link returns to the city and goes through a portal to the future. Bob’s fully grown to an adult; in my games, he became an arborist just like Bipin. In the graveyard, Moosh is being tormented by some ghosts, who Link drives off. In return, Moosh helps Link navigate a section of the graveyard to the northwest, where Cheval’s tomb lies. In navigating the tomb, Link finds Cheval’s inventions, so he can swim and use the rope for whatever it’s going to be used for. There are two more secrets to be found now: First, the mayor’s mother has a secret for Horon City’s Mayor Ruul. Second, a fairy has set up camp over the wreckage of Wing Dungeon, and she has a secret for a fairy hiding in the Temple of Seasons in Subrosia.
With three secrets, now’s a good time to switch games to cash them in. Passing the secret to the mayor upgrades Link’s ring box to one that’ll hold five. The fairy in the Temple of Seasons awards Link with a ring, a lesser version of the Heart Ring, but hey, it’s another box ticked off. Finally, when Link finds the right skeletal pirate, who was left behind when the ship set sail again, the pirate challenges Link to get his ore chunk total to a lucky 777 before giving the rewards. Once that’s taken care of, he increases Link’s bomb capacity to 50. Switching back to Labrynna, Link cashes in the return secrets to be able to carry 3 rings and 30 bombs, and add the ring to his list.
Next: Link loses his stuff.
[1] It feels wrong to me to refer to the two eras as “past” and “present,” so I’m going with “future” for Link (and Ralph)’s native time.
