For a short while between restoring the Spirit Tracks and completing the first dungeon, Link had the tracks all to himself, but they wouldn’t have put learning to navigate around other trains in the tutorial if it weren’t going to be a needed skill. Now, the trains are back, and as Link approaches Castle Town, they become possessed by demonic spirits, turning into Dark Trains that patrol the tracks. Zelda suggests staying away from them, and that would seem to be the best option. When they get close to Link, the music switches from the high adventure rail-riding theme to a harsh train in danger theme, and if they hit the Spirit Train, it’s game over.
In Castle Town, a woman who resembles Jolene is running a game called Take ‘Em All On! This game resembles the Savage Labyrinth and Cave of Ordeals, with a few differences. First, when you play the game, you win or you die [1]. There is no middle ground. (I.e., there are no checkpoints where the game lets you chicken out and go back to the surface.) There are also absolutely no healing items in the game, only what potions Link brings with him. The good news is the game’s shorter than the challenge dungeons; to make up for this, there are three levels of difficulty, each intended to challenge Link at the point in his adventure where they open. This first version has ten floors of easy enemies from the overworld and the Forest Temple, concluding with a rematch against Stagnox. The two worst floors are probably the one with lots of rats and bubbles and the one with two Mothulas. It costs 50 rupees to play, and the reward is a heart container the first time, and a treasure piece on later tries [2].
The Tower of Spirits shows more refinements from the Temple of the Ocean King this visit. Link doesn’t have to go through every level of the Tower again; the central staircase leads to the new set of levels that will lead to the next rail map. That’s not to say there’s no reason to revisit old levels – there’s a conspicuous chunk of the new levels that Link can’t get to on this visit, so there’s some incentive to come back and explore and probably get more treasure.
The central mechanic of this visit to the Tower is that the Phantoms are fireproof. Learning this is a key part of getting the Tears of Light, as there’s a flame jet that Link can only pass when a Phantom’s blocking it. After he gets the three Tears and stuns one of the Phantoms, Zelda takes over and can block the flame jets herself so Link can pass or walk through lava. While in the lava, Phantom Zelda can hunch over so that Link can ride on her shield and then carry him across. (Link riding Zelda isn’t limited to lava – he just needs to get to higher ground than her to jump on.) He’s not necessarily safe riding on Phantom Zelda’s back: there are some flame jets set at a higher height to blast Link off if he’s not careful.
Phantom Zelda’s combat abilities get explored here, too. A puzzle on the fifth floor involves a Spinut that runs from Link or Zelda and has to be trapped between the two of them and run down. On the sixth floor, a Geozard appears, and with Link without a boomerang to stun it from behind, Phantom Zelda’s got to distract it while Link sneaks up to attack. And the two tricks come together with Miniblins mounted on Armos; Link can either try to fight them from Zelda’s back, or blow them off their mount with the whirlwind and defeat them on foot.
Finally, Link and Zelda retrieve the second rail map, revealing tracks in the Snow Realm. Anjean says the next Lokomo is named Steem, and Link and Zelda set out to find him.
Next: Two new collection sidequests!
[1] Link may be spared actually dying and brought back to the entrance and forfeit his entry fee. I don’t know. It hasn’t happened to me and doesn’t seem to be the thing that gets posted to YouTube.
[2] Playing the game again made me realize something that I had managed to overlook in Phantom Hourglass because it was so easy: there are no healing fairies in either game. Purple potions take the place of bottled fairies, but as far as I know there’s no place to go to get instantly healed back up to full.
