A Link to the Past: Riddle Quest and Palace of the Four Sword

The main reason I wanted to play this version of A Link to the Past was for the bonus dungeon, unlocked by completing both A Link to the Past and Four Swords on the same save file. There’s also another bit of bonus content, unlocked by earning ten Medals of Courage in Four Swords. Anticipating that I might not be able to do that much in Four Swords, I got a save that has everything ready to go so once I got far enough in A Link to the Past I could do the extra content.

The Medals of Courage unlock a series of riddles. Another brother of the lumberjacks appears in the lumberjacks’ house, and once Link has the bug-catching net, the lumberjack gives him a cage and challenges him to find the item he describes. Sometimes the riddles are fairly simple, like “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” referring to cuccos, but they can also be somewhat difficult to crack, like “It’s moist and fresh…” describing a fish. And sometimes finding or catching the item described can be difficult, like the fish whose erratic flopping movements make them hard to catch in the net. The rewards for this are mostly cosmetic: Link can get carvings of himself, a cucco, and Princess Zelda delivered to his house. After completing all ten riddles, the lumberjack teaches Link the hurricane spin, a continuous spin attack that drains the magic meter. After learning it, I never found a cause to actually use it, but that’s not terribly unusual. This also unlocked the hurricane spin in Four Swords.

The Palace of the Four Sword, which appears in a cracked wall of the Dark World pyramid, is guarded by one of those critters that asks 20 rupees to tell Link a hint. Once Link meets the requirements, the critter welcomes Link to the palace and challenges him to beat it, then poofs out. If Link leaves the dungeon later for any reason, he’s there again, so restocking potions between bosses adds an extra 20 rupee cost.

Branching off the central room are four microdungeons, which each consist of some sort of puzzle, followed by a harder version of one of the bosses Link fought during the quest. The puzzles often require some trick that doesn’t come up much during the quest (e.g., turning at the precise moment a dash starts to bounce off a wall, using beams created by destroying a Cane of Somaria block) or are new to this version of the game (diving underwater, destroying a pot with an arrow). Proper like likes appear in this dungeon, an addition to the game; they also show up around the Dark World shield shop, so if you’re not careful, you can buy Link a new shield and immediately have it eaten.

The minidungeon bosses:

• The Helmasaur King, who’s gained the ability to summon helmasaurs. At the point when the old boss would be defeated, he grows a second mask, and when it’s destroyed, shows a new weak point that needs to be hit with an arrow.
• Arrghus, who’s replaced the cloud of arrghi that surrounded it with baris. Unlike normal baris, the hookshot pulls them toward Link, forcing him to find another way to kill them without taking damage; the silver arrow works wonders here.
• Mothula, who’s no longer surrounded by spikes, but spawns two illusory doubles, making for a very chaotic fight.
• Blind, who first appears as Link’s uncle, and quotes the text used for Link’s uncle’s death in the Super NES version [1]. After the heads are knocked off, Link has to bat them around so they land back on the body. This is my favorite of the four different fights, and I kind of wish this could be backported into the normal Blind fight because it’s quite fun.

After each boss is defeated, Link claims one of four colored swords. With the full collection, he can pass through an electrified barrier to the final boss: four shadow Links, one for each color. Each Link gains an attack: the green one has a Pegasus Shoes charge, the red one has a hurricane spin attack, the blue one can disappear to avoid attacks and pounce with a downward thrust, and the purple one shoots fireballs. After they’re all defeated, the four colored swords merge and Link claims the Four Sword.

There’s a special ending that plays after Link’s victory, showing each of the Dark World dungeons (including the pyramid) and dungeon bosses. In place of the credits, a roll of each item and how many times Link used them plays. This is a good way to see which items are less useful than others (the magic cape gets used twice: once to get the Cane of Byrna, which outclasses it, and once to get a heart piece), reflect on how many times I had to play the digging game for the heart piece, and get an idea of how long the quest was when I see my number of sword uses at 5,556.

In conclusion: I’m glad I did this once, but I don’t think I’ll ever do it again. The riddle quest was fairly meh, and the rewards aren’t really worth it. The Palace of the Four Sword was better, with some fun one-off puzzles and reworks of earlier bosses, but not really worth doing again.

[1] A different translation of the original Japanese version, anyway. Notably, it says “You are the princess’s…” rather than “Zelda is your….”