The Realm of the Heavens is set atop the clouds, with a bunch of places for a careless hero to fall off. Of course, this works both ways; it’s quite easy to knock enemies into gaps or off the edge, too. There are places in the cloud where a Link can fall through to a sub-level; this seems to be separate from the Dark World (which continues to be part of the stages, accessed via portals with Moon Pearls as usual). In a couple areas, high winds threaten to push the Links off the clouds; nearby switches give them a chance to turn off the wind rather than fight it.
Near the end of the level, bridges with colored tiles that change colors appear, where a Link can only step on the tiles when they match his color. Some bridges are four tiles wide and the Links need to form up and wait for the colors to be in the proper order before crossing. One of these is so long there’s barely enough time to Pegasus Boots dash across before the rows change color again. It’s tempting to start dashing before the colors change, but of course it’s entirely possible to start too soon and fall off. There’s also a stand-on-the-four-buttons puzzle with the buttons separated by changing-colored-tile bridges, and one of the buttons is guarded by a Force Like which I’d completely forgotten were in the game as they haven’t been seen since the second level or so.
After crossing the last changing-colored-tile bridge, a pedestal with bombs shows up. Of course, this means the boss fight is a pair of Dodongos, virtually unchanged from the encounter earlier. Once they’ve been blown up, the level’s true boss shows up: a Big Dodongo. There are four treasure chests that spawn at the same time, each holding level 2 bombs, so the Big Dodongo fight is basically the same as the little ones, only there’s only one and both it and the bombs are bigger. Three bombs still does the trick, and the Links are free to move on to the next stage.
The first part of the next stage, The Dark Cloud, is another primarily side-scrolling area. This is divided into two sections. First, the Links need to go horizontally between screens by catching clouds in the bottom right of each screen that take them to the next screen. Then they start climbing, using the cannons to go up because there’s no Roc’s Feathers in this part of the game. The final section involves getting past one last Shadow Link dropping Big Bombs on the screen to send them scurrying for cover, then they catch a portal to the second part of the stage.
The second, longer phase of the stage is more cloudtop platforming. Early on, there’s a huge group of Hardhat Beetles that can be blown up with bombs, which is good because pushing all of them into the gaps would get old really fast. The path branches near the end, with one path’s puzzles being more sky exploration with a fun puzzle of shooting switches to turn off electric barriers while riding on a platform that will run into said barriers if they’re not turned off. (This is the way I went. I'm glad for that choice.) The other way has a long sequence of hidden spikes that only pop out when a Link walks into them or they’re hit with a hammer shockwave.
The boss fight looks like the Big Dark Stalfos fights, only the large seal is gray, and in place of the sacred gem is the Dark Mirror. At first, one Shadow Link appears; once he’s defeated, four more come out. As they too are defeated, another set comes out, and Zelda senses the futility of the battle from afar and teleports in somehow to help. She uses her magic to block the power of the Mirror, and when all the remaining Shadow Links are defeated, she retrieves it. Finally, the Shadow Links are no more, and she creates a bridge across the clouds to the Palace of Winds where the Links will take the fight to Vaati and Ganon.
As the Links step onto the teleportation tiles to end the stage and the Force Gems turn into Force Fairies, I capped the number of Fairies at 99. I have to say that’s pretty well-designed: do well (not necessarily perfect, I know I could have gotten more Gems to turn into Fairies) rounding up Force Gems and don’t have to use too many fairy resurrections and you’ll hit the cap just before the final stage, so all you need to do there is get enough gems to power the Four Sword one last time.
Next: The Four Sword sleeps again… forever! [1]
[1] Until/unless Nintendo makes another Four Swords game.
