The Temple of Time borrows its central puzzle from Wind Waker’s Tower of the Gods: Link needs to lead a statue into a room to open up the way to the boss. In fact, that’s all there is to the dungeon: the statue’s missing from the starting room (which Midna suspects and has Link confirm via wolf), and when Link gets it in place, all that’s left is to run through a hallway of traps and fight the boss. Well, okay, the entrance room is at the bottom of the tower, and the statue’s at the top, so maybe it’s not quite that simple. Other touches also come from the Tower of the Gods: there’s a balancing scales puzzle and Armos and Beamos make up a good chunk of the obstacles. (Thankfully, no water.) As Link starts to head up the tower, Ooccoo explains that she’s been looking for something belonging to her people, and she knows it’s here, in this dungeon.
The enemies in the dungeon give Link a lot of chances to use the sword skills he’s learned. The Mortal Draw is useful against the many Lizalfos. Dinolfos are too heavily armored for it to work against them, but they’re vulnerable to the Shield Bash/Helm Splitter combo. As with the ones from Wind Waker, Armos’ vulnerable point is a gem on their back, which Link can hit with the Back Slice. The Jump Strike is useful against the groups of Baby/Young Gohmas. So, of course, the miniboss is the ultimate sword foe: a Darknut. This fight takes two phases: first, it fights with a giant sword while Link hacks its armor off. This phase was pretty easy: Mortal Draw to hack at its armor, run away and sheathe the Master Sword, repeat until Link destroys its shield. The Darknut then chucks its sword at Link and pulls out a smaller sword for phase two. This one’s faster, and I whittled it down with Back Slices, but I can’t help but think there was an easier way to do that. I wish I could have repeated the fight, because I imagine they’re not putting just one Darknut in the game.
The statue Link needs to bring down the tower has a twin, and with knowledge from Hyrule Warriors [1], I guessed what the dungeon’s item would be: the Dominion Rod, which lets Link control statues. They move with him, and for the big one, Link can swing the rod to swing the statue’s hammer, which can smash enemies, or walls, or traps. This makes the journey down the tower both easier and more complicated. There’s not a lot of collecting going on on the way up, but Link can nab a couple of Poe souls and heart pieces as he works his way down.
As foreshadowed by the presence of Gohma youths throughout the dungeon, the final boss is a twilit arachnid, Armogohma. Previous Gohma bosses have looked like crabs or scorpions, but this one is a giant spider. As is customary with Gohmas, the strategy is to wait for it to open its eye (to shoot a laser, in this case) and shoot it with an arrow. This causes Armogohma to fall from the ceiling and lay dazed. There are statues around the arena, so Link can possess one with the Dominion Rod and have it smash Armogohma with its fist. When Armogohma leaps back to the ceiling, it lays a bunch of eggs which instantly hatch into Baby Gohmas, and killing them all is really the hardest part of the fight. After the statues smash Armogohma three times, the victory fanfare plays… but Armogohma’s not done. The eyeball is still alive, on the back of a spider surrounded by Baby Gohmas. The music turns humorous as what’s left of Armogohma skitters around the room. One more statue smash will take care of that, and the third mirror fragment is claimed.
Midna suggests, considering that the mirror’s creations, Blizzeta and Armogohma, have been abominations, maybe it would be best to destroy the mirror. (She didn’t have such thoughts about the Fused Shadow, even though what it did to Darbus is not any different from what the mirror did to Yeta. Of course, that was back before nearly dying changed her attitude toward the world of light and its people.) But without it, they can’t save the Twilight Realm from Zant, so, that discussion will have to wait for after he’s dealt with, and for now they should go ahead and get the last fragment.
Next: What fun, meow!
[1] Zelda has the Dominion Rod as one of her weapons, and one of the statues she controls is identical to the pair Link has to reunite.
