With the new rail map, the player can pre-draw the course for the train to take, removing the need for navigation at junctions. With the Spirit Tracks only freshly restored, other trains haven’t had a chance to start roaming yet, so Link can head straight for his destination. The first destination is Whittleton, a village about halfway between Aboda and the castle. Zelda decides there are likely bugs in the village, and she doesn’t like bugs, so she decides to stay with the train, only to realize she’s better off with Link to protect her from the bugs.
The village chief thanks Link for bringing back the Spirit Tracks, and points him toward Gage – down the one path branch that leads away from both Aboda and the castle. That might not have been hard to guess, but the path is through the Lost Woods, so Link needs to learn the secret to navigating it. The two hints the locals can give are to listen to the trees except for one that has no sense of direction and watch the tree branches. The resulting puzzle is fairly intuitive: Before each junction in the Lost Woods, there’s a tree with a prominent branch pointing in one direction. So, Link needs to follow the branches, except for the one he was warned about, where he needs to go the other way.
After passing through the Lost Woods, Link arrives at the Forest Sanctuary. There are a couple puzzles Link has to solve to enter the sanctuary – first running bomb flowers to get through barriers, then identifying which statues in a ring are facing one another. Then Link finds Gage, who explains more about the Lokomo songs to restore the tracks to the Forest Temple. He and Link each have a part to play on their instruments, and so it’s time for Link to learn to play the Spirit Flute. The player needs to use the stylus to slide the flute so the right pipe is centered, then blow into the microphone. Link’s part in the duet is fairly simple, and needs to follow each of Gage’s parts. The tricky part here is learning to coordinate moving the flute and blowing into the microphone. Once the duet is completed, there’s a cutscene of Link and Gage playing together, then the rails to the temple are restored.
As Link leaves the Forest Sanctuary, Zelda notes that a stone is emitting notes, like the howling stones of Twilight Princess. It teaches Link a song he can play on the flute, and once it’s successfully played, the stone blasts off like a rocket, leaving behind a gossip stone. The gossip stone says the song is the Song of Awakening (but it sounds nothing like the Ballad of the Wind Fish), and it can be used to wake up gossip stones and possibly other things. The way to the Forest Temple passes through a long section of forest, and in this section Skulltulas drop down to block the path, but they’ll still flee from the train’s whistle.
Before entering the dungeon proper, there’s another song stone, this one to teach Link the Song of Healing (no relation to the one from Majora’s Mask). It summons a fairy, who agrees to come if called, once, in the proper areas like a dungeon or the Tower of Spirits. So it’s like an extra potion. Inside the temple, there’s a bunch of purple poisonous gas. There are insect enemies called Vengas that leave behind more gas. After the first Vengas encounter, Link gets a way to dispel the gas, the treasure item, the Whirlwind. The Whirlwind is a small fan that works more or less like the Gust Jar from Minish Cap, only it’s operated by the player blowing into the microphone.
As with most of the dungeons of Phantom Hourglass, the rest of the dungeon after getting the Whirlwind is a tutorial on various uses – in addition to blowing away the gas, it can operate windmills and blow items across gaps. Miniboss fights return to the series with this dungeon, with a Mothula that shoots Bubbles at Link. Link needs to use the Whirlwind to blow the Bubble back and stun the Mothula, then finish it off with his sword. And there’s another new enemy, Blastworms, which curl up into a ball and explode after being hit, and Link can direct their explosion where he needs it with the Whirlwind.
There’s a new wrinkle with the Boss Key: As soon as Link grabs it, Key Masters appear and try to separate Link from the key, then return the key to its resting place. (The obvious comparison here is the Zant’s Hands from Twilight Princess.) To avoid them, Link has to walk on a specific path from the key’s resting place to the lock. After a room with a portal to the dungeon entrance and heart refills, Link ascends to the top of the temple to fight the boss.
The boss is Stagnox, Armored Colossus, a giant flying stag beetle. Its weak point is its giant pulsing tail end, which is surrounded by poisonous gas, and that is not a sentence I’m mature enough to write without giggling. There are two phases to this fight. In the first, Link has to circle around Stagnox, made easier by the long windup on its big attack, and blow the gas off its tail, then attack. After enough of this, Stagnox takes to the air and drops a few Blastworms on the arena, and Link needs to blow the Blastworms at Stagnox when it charges. This causes Stagnox to crash with its tail facing Link, allowing him to pummel it.
Once Stagnox is gone, it leaves behind a heart container and a Force Gem. A pedestal rises to house the Force Gem, bringing back more Spirit Tracks, and one of the blocks of levels of the Spirit Temple rejoins the base.
Next: There’s a long black train coming down the line…
