Clever endgame subject here

The not so epic conclusion of my Zelda: Twilight Princess play through:

As I finished last time, I was standing right inside the entrance of the Twilight Palace. Right away, I ran into some twilight clouds, that when entered, instantly transformed me back into wolf form. After 3 rooms and as many clouds, I found myself face to face with an image of Zant, the evil king. He did little more than summon some minions and "die." Afterwards, I liberated an orb, a Sol, from what looked like one of those old "grab me and take me back to the start of the dungeon hands." I had no sooner freed the orb, than the hand came alive and started chasing after me. The next segment was basically a mad dash that had me taking the orb back to the beginning of the dungeon while trying to slow down the hand. The Sol had the additional benefits of not only dissipating the twilight clouds, but also acting as "keys" that could activate various switches. It was more interesting than I thought it would be, and was hands down the most unique dungeon (but not necessarily the most fun) so far.

After returning the Sol to the entrance, I was sent after another one, which was basically the same only with slightly different rooms. With both Sols liberated, my Master Sword was imbued with light (Light Sword, whoop!) and gained all the same powers that I had previous used the Sols for (getting through the twilight clouds, etc). I was able to use this to work my way through the rest of the dungeon and finally found myself face to face with Zant himself.

Fighting Zant was sort of a classic throw back fight in which he "teleported" us to various boss rooms and I was forced to use the strategies I had originally used for those bosses (boomerangs, magnetic boots, etc). This part felt a little weak to me, as it was the 3 boss rooms from the first 3 dungeons, the mini-boss room from the first dungeon, and the boss room from the 6th dungeon. It felt a bit disconnected to me... I really felt like they should have gone through all 7 with no mini-bosses. The final part of the fight was a pretty basic sword fight, and with that, Zant was dead.

Now, I'm not enough of a Zelda noob to think that I had finished the game, but I was basically expecting Ganon to come out right then and there and fight me. I was definitely surprised when I was sent to the Hyrule castle. Again, I figured that I was basically going to walk in and fight Ganon, but I was AGAIN surprised when it turned out to be a full dungeon.

I did NOT enjoy this dungeon. While I enjoyed the mini-boss fight from the Temple of Time, I didn't enjoy it enough to want to repeat it the 4(!?!) times that I had to in here. By the time I found the boss room (the dungeon really wasn't all that big), I was VERY ready to be done in there.

The final boss fight was definitely standard Zelda fare. It involved the following phases:

• A classic use the sword to bat the projectile phase
• Use arrows then sword
• Wolf vs. monster
• Horse back
• Mono y mono sword fight (ANOTHER ONE OF THESE?!?)

All in all, it was an okay fight, but wasn't all that compelling. It was NOT hard, and I don't think I ever even went below half life. The final sword fight phase was REALLY long and was downright boring. I can see why they put it as the final phase, but it basically just made it feel like the fight was ending on a low note. The cutscenes and the credits were crazy long and I finally saw that glorious little "The End" text appear on the screen. I felt like the ending was at least satisfying, even if it wasn't all that unexpected.

Expect a full review in my next (and final!) Twilight Princess post.