Water, water everywhere...

When I left off last time, I had just finished up in the Goron Mines. I was soon sent towards Hyrule Castle Town in search of Ilia, the final missing "child" from my home village. The first thing I noticed as I was en route was how much larger this area was than previous ones. The twilight shrouded area covered all of Lake Hylia, the castle/town, the entire Zora domain, and even the surrounding areas.

I eventually found Ilia and even a handy map that directed me towards the water spirit spring. As it turned out, the source of the water for the lake (the Zora domain) was frozen and needed a little thawing. As I had just finished with a fire/lava dungeon, I teleported back to Death Mountain and very easily found what I needed for the defrosting. With the water running again, I visited the water spirit and was tasked with killing more "twilight" bugs. This batch turned out to be the most annoying yet.

As I previously mentioned, the area the bugs were in was much bigger this time. Even having them pinpointed on my map, there was a lot of vertical involved (that the map doesn't show) and there were a couple of them I couldn't seem to figure out how to get to. I spent a pretty good batch of time (1-2 hours) running all over this large region trying to figure out how to get to the last of these bugs. I did manage to find the last one and even made short work of the "boss" bug at the end. With the twilight cleared, my next task was to save the freshly departed Zora queen's son.

I already knew that he was back in Hyrule Castle Town with Ilia, so I ran back over there, something which was more annoying than it should have been because I didn't have the handy Midna teleports as Link. Once there, I learned 2 things:

1) Ilia had lost her memory
2) The Zora prince was dying and needed to be taken to Kakariko Village for healing

I found myself "volunteered" for escort duty and started trotting after the cart. The escort segment was relatively uneventful, except for a particular area where the cart kept hitting a bomb and then looping back on itself... I'm pretty sure it went in a circle at least 10 times. In all honesty, I'm still not even sure why it didn't loop that last time as I didn't do anything special. With the finally prince saved, the queen granted me access to the blue "hero of legend" clothes, which I had correctly guessed I would get for breathing underwater in the new temple. Not in an exploring mood, I ran directly for the temple at the bottom of the lake and got to work.

I found myself VERY underwhelmed by the lake bed temple. I could see right away that I was going to have to play the "redirect water to alter the water level" game and I was not disappointed. I got pretty stuck a couple of times, until I looked up to the ceiling and remembered that I had previously been instructed in the use of bomb arrows. A couple of well placed shots brought down some stalactites (stalagmites?) which I then used for advancement.

The dungeon was more or less throwing in my face the fact that I was going to be getting the hookshot... the connection points seemed pretty obvious. I eventually made my way to the mid-dungeon boss who was a pretty straightforward "kill the minions, then kill the boss" fight. He rewarded me with my expected prize: the hookshot clawshot. I grappled my way around the rest of the dungeon and finished off the boss who had a VERY obvious "you need to hookshot this thing then attack it" mechanic. All-in-all, the dungeon was a big yawn for me.

The dungeon also manifested what I consider to be the two biggest issues with the game so far:

1. The "hot spots" for clawshot attachments are WAY too small. I have a relatively steady hand with the Wii remote, but I had a pretty difficult time getting the cursor to line up perfectly with the spots. The game should really understand that if I'm in the general area of an attachment point that that is where I want to go.
2. Climbing (on vines, ladders, etc) is WAY too slow. I don't have any idea what designer thought "this feels about right," but the slowness is so noticeable I actually cringe when I realize that I have to climb on something. When you add in the fact that the controls often seem wonky while climbing (I'M PUSHING RIGHT! STOP GOING DOWN!), climbing is a chore I go out of my way to avoid.

I left quite a bit behind in the temple (at least according to the chests showing on my compass), but found I didn't care much. I did little more than watch the cutscene that occurs after you exit before calling it a night.

I'm now 12+ hours into the game with only 3 dungeons down. This game is seeming like it is going to be crazy long, and I'm not sure in a good way. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens after the mid-game denouement... hopefully things become more awesome somehow.