As Link passes through the tunnel to the tracks surrounding the Fire Temple, the camera shows the three keys being carried by the Snurglar birds that stole them. They’re marked on the map, complete with arrows showing which way they’re going at junctions. Taking the Gorons’ advice, Link needs to drive the Spirit Train to meet them head-on, then blow the whistle twice – once short, once long. This stuns them, and then… nothing. They recover and fly off with the key and I’m left wondering what I did wrong. About the third time this happened I shot the Snurglar in frustration and ohhhhhh. Yeah, that makes sense. When shot, they drop their key, and the temple door opens a third of the way. They don’t give up just because Link has the keys; they chase as he rides around collecting the others, and all the way into the temple.
The Fire Temple has lots of lava beds for Link to cross, often by tossing a platform onto a fire jet to give him a safe place to stand as he does. Enemies include Stalfos, returning as they were in Phantom Hourglass (without the hammer to one-shot kill them), and Heatoises, new turtle enemies that either have to be shot with arrows or lured into spinning into the Winders to electrocute them so Link can attack their heads. The dungeon item is the bow, with eye switch puzzles to go along with them, now with the added complication of Link having to pick up and place the arrow cannons so they fire correctly. Finally, for a game whose overworld is all about rails, it makes sense for minecarts to show up again. The stamp station can only be reached by minecart, and the Boss Key puzzle involves Link riding in one minecart while the key rides in another; both have to be guided safely to the end.
The boss is Cragma, Lava Lord, a giant volcanic rock monster. The fight brings together all the puzzle types from the dungeon: After the weak point on Cragma’s stomach is shot, rocks fall from the ceiling. One of them sticks around, so Link has to goad Cragma into smashing it into a platform he can use to reach the minecart. He rides the minecart around Cragma, shooting its various weak points, until he’s cleared them all and has a shot at the eye. This causes Cragma to fall over as Link returns to the main platform to attack the last weak point on top of its head. All easy to describe, and quite fun to do, but I found hitting the eye to be near-impossible. I ran out of arrows on the minecart about five times, and eventually Cragma will grab Link if he can’t shoot it to stop it. Fortunately, the falling rocks drop arrows, so it didn’t become hopeless. Eventually, Cragma is defeated, and the Tower of Spirits is completely restored.
Now that the dungeon’s cleared, the Goron Target Range is open for business. This is the train version of Salvatore’s game from Phantom Hourglass, with Link riding through the targets – blue targets are 10 points, red targets are 30 points and can be hit three times, and Goron targets are –30 points. Some of the targets spin around and have Gorons on one side, so Link has to pay attention to what he’s shooting. The rewards are a choice between treasure chests – one has rupees, the other a treasure of improving rarity as Link does better at the game. This is what I eventually used to farm treasures, and where my patience snapped as I got dozens of Ancient Gold Pieces and Goron Ambers and one fscking Palace Dish.
Back in the Goron Village, now that Link has a bow, he can buy that quiver, upgrading his arrow capacity from 20 to 30. There’s a Goron here who wants to see snow, so Link takes him to the Anouki Village. There, the Goron meets with Kofu (posing as Honcho, for some reason), who wants to move somewhere warmer, so Link brings him to the Goron Village. Finally, a Goron wants to move to Castle Town and meet the princess, so Link takes him, and he runs off to find her. (Zelda wonders if he’ll actually get to meet her, before realizing no, of course he won’t.) And… well, he meets a woman, and thinks she’s the princess, only he’s disappointed she’s not like he imagined, and actually says that so she can hear, and she storms off. Even still, the Goron’s happy to be in the city. Link gets a Force Gem from all three passengers, plus one more for delivering Mega Ice to the fish seller in Papuchia Village. One of these opens a warp gate between the Snow and Fire Realms. With the newly opened tracks, and the tracks around the Fire Temple cleared, Link can round up eight rabbits now, including the last snow rabbit.
Next: Treasure hunters, pirates, monologuing, and big balls.
