Of the seven Lorule dungeons, Link can do six right away. (Reaching the one in the desert requires getting the Sand Rod.) There’s… well, I didn’t find any guidance on what order to do the dungeons in, but I’ll confess I didn’t go to the Fortune Teller to ask his opinion, so I obviously wasn’t looking very hard. I just leaned into the order of corresponding dungeons from A Link to the Past. (Also, there’s seven dungeons and six unused items, meaning one item repeats or one dungeon doesn’t have a key item.)
The weather vane for the Dark Palace is conveniently located after the stealth maze, so once Link makes it all the way through, he can just warp back. The dungeon entrance is blocked shut, so the key item is the bombs. The key uses for bombs are familiar from the many, many games they’ve been in – they can destroy cracked walls and floors, open boarded-up windows, be tossed to reach places Link can’t get to on his own, and be set to activate timed switches while Link gets a head start on where he’s going. Helmasaurs and Goriyas, which appeared in A Link to the Past’s Palace of Darkness return here, the latter as the dungeon’s miniboss encounter. Unlike the Hyrule dungeons, this dungeon has a big treasure chest – but it’s not obvious how to find, and the dungeon and game can be completed without it. The treasure is Master Ore, which the blacksmith can use to upgrade the Master Sword.
The other gimmick to the dungeon is puzzles involving light and darkness. Unlike A Link to the Past, where the lamp always gave light, the one in this game only gives light when equipped, taking advantage of being able to equip two items at once. So, there are rooms where Link needs to have the lamp equipped and light torches to see, but also rooms where Link needs to put the lamp away and put out torches (can be done with the sword, Tornado Rod, or Ice Rod) to see things that the light hides. To reach the boss room, Link needs to open windows and destroy floors to shine the light on four eyes.
Both the bombs and lamp are needed to defeat the boss, the Gemesaur King. As the name implies, it’s a big Helmasaur with rupees studded in its body and mask. It doesn’t appear until the torches in the room are lit, and can put them out by roaring, so Link will need to relight them. Destroying the mask requires bombs and knocks rupees loose (a few with each hit, and a whole bunch when the mask is destroyed). It has a weak point in the center of its forehead, only visible when the room is lit up. Once it’s destroyed, the painting of Gulley falls off the wall, and Link has freed the first Sage – or Sevensage, as Gulley puts it. Clearing the dungeon removes the soldiers from the maze outside, letting Link explore freely.
Although it takes a giant bomb to open the way to the Swamp Palace, the Hookshot is the key item and required to enter. Its uses are also familiar: pulling Link to a distant object (if he’s standing on a raft, the raft gets pulled along with him), retrieving objects, activating switches, and damaging Bari/Biri while they’re electrified. It can also separate certain enemies from their defenses, like Helmasaurs, Shield Moblins, and the Gyorms that appear in this dungeon. The Swamp Palace is also a water dungeon, with the puzzles of directing water flows and manipulating water levels one would expect from that. There’s another semi-secret chest (marked on the map, but getting there is a puzzle) here, this one with Blue Mail which reduces damage taken by half.
The miniboss of the dungeon is Gigabari, a giant gold Bari that splits into fifteen Biri when it takes enough damage. The boss is, as in A Link to the Past, Arrghus; rather than spreading the Arrgi out as that one did, it shoots them at Link one at a time (and they’re easy to dodge or grab with the Hookshot). The second phase is considerably different: rather than skittering across the floor and bouncing off walls, Arrghus’ ground-based attack is to shoot laser beams at Link. The Sage Link frees here is Oren, which I might have guessed – water dungeon, Zora Sage.
As Link teleports out of the Chamber of Sages, a cutscene plays of Hilda admiring Zelda’s portrait. “What is it like to be a princess from a kingdom blessed with so many happy endings? Once upon a time, Lorule was such a place. Once, but no longer. Lorule was just like Hyrule. So very beautiful. So very… promising. We have need of a hero – and your Link is superb. We all deserve a happy ending, don’t we? I can only hope that Link is victorious.” It’s at this point that I remembered Yuga mentioning “her grace” a couple times while rounding up the Sages, and I can only come to the conclusion that Hilda put him up to it to set Link on his quest. To what end… well, if Zelda’s not a Sage, why bring her into it if not for the Triforce?
Next: Two unusual escort missions. (One because it’s fun. (Mostly.))
