Windy Day

More Zelda: Twilight Princess:

As I wrapped up last time, I was sitting next to a broken cannon 298 rupees short of being able to repair it. I did a little Googling and decided the fastest and easiest way to earn the money would be to collect the rest of the golden bugs. The added bonus here is that it also would give me the largest wallet upon completion. Not wanting to spend time randomly wandering around Hyrule, I paid a visit to Gamefaqs and collected the bugs one by one. I was kind of glad that I didn't try to find them on my own, because even with pretty good descriptions, some of them were quite hard to find. Some (those crazy grasshoppers!) were actually hard to catch. With bugs in hand (pocket?) I went back to Agitha and went through the tedious process of handing them all in (one by one). I ended with 600 rupees (where did all those rupees go that didn't fit in my wallet?) and a new 1000 rupee wallet. A teleport, cannon fixing cutscene, and a cannon blast later left me sitting in a pool of water in the City in the Sky.

Once again, the game sort of snuck up on me here. I thought the City in the Sky was a prelude area to the Sky Temple proper. Nope. Once again, I was in the actual dungeon. Right off the bat, this dungeon had me using my clawshot quite frequently. It also made liberal use of the nearby Ooccas (intelligent chicken... things) to perform slow falls with gliding. Other than a VERY frustrating section early on involving a hidden diamond switch, the first half of the dungeon was pretty straightforward. Even at this early point, I found myself thoroughly enjoy the dungeon. It definitely felt like one of the more interesting both in setting and in puzzle design.

Before too long, I found myself in the mini-boss's room. This was a pretty clear fight (especially since he was using a clawshot target as a shield) and didn't pose too much of a problem. Due to my time on Gamefaqs, I knew I was going to get the double clawshot here. What I didn't understand was quite what it was. I had assumed that it was a simply my clawshot but with twice the length, as that was more or less what other Zelda games had done. When I opened the chest and pulled out a SECOND clawshot, I must admit I was a little bit surprised. The surprise faded VERY quickly as my mind suddenly pieced together exactly how I would be using two clawshots in the dungeon. The revelation made me happy.

This second part of the dungeon was one of my favorite parts in the entire game so far. I REALLY like the double clawshot idea. I found myself swinging around in a way that almost reminded me of Bionic Commando. It also made a lot of the remaining puzzles and challenges have incredibly interesting solutions. In one section towards the end of the dungeon, I had to stop a fan from spinning so I could dangle on clawshot #1 between the blades while using clawshot #2 to grab onto a switch. The whole idea/concept just felt really fresh and fun to me, even though it was basically just "another clawshot" dungeon.

The boss wasn't too far away, and I soon found myself on the very top of the city with a dragon flying overhead. This setup instantly reminded me of the 7th dungeon boss in Link's Awakening (on original Gameboy) which also had you fighting a dragon on a tower with the hookshot. Phase one of the fight involved using the clawshot and the steel boots to force the dragon to crash and break off some pieces of the armor. While this phase wasn't all that interesting, phase two was just plain awesome.

As soon as he broke free from his armor, it began to rain. This caused the nearby whirly plants to grow (the ones you can clawshot onto) and fly up. I then had to use the two clawshots to transition between two towers eventually grabbing onto the closest whirly. From there, I could zip between the whirly plants until I got behind him and then clawshot his back. While it was in no way the most challenging boss fight, I would definitely say it was one of the most fun I've had in any Zelda game. I repeated my aerial acrobats twice more and collected my heart container.

Back on Terra firma, I went to the desert to put the Mirror back together and go to the Palace of Twilight. As soon as I inside, I decided that I wanted to collect the rest of the pieces of heart. Why did I decide this? I really don't know. I generally don't like running all over the world doing collection quests and what not, but I sort of felt strangely compelled. I also knew that if I didn't do it now, I definitely wouldn't come back and do it after I beat the game. Lucky for me, Twilight Princess has a fortune teller (one of my favorite features in the game hands down) who, for 10 rupees will show you a picture of a spot where you can get a piece of heart. Since I had pretty much been everywhere by this point, I was able to find each and every one of them without too much grief. All in all, I think I ended up collecting about 15 pieces of heart in the space of about an hour an a half. As far as I know, the final two are in the Twilight Palace.

While this play session involved not one, but two different "go all over the world fetching stuff" outings, I would say it was one of the funnest ones I've had so far. I've basically done everything worth doing in the game (except the remaining Poes which have a bad reward and more fishing) other than the final dungeon. I have about 33 hours of play time. This game is definitely longer than I original expected, but hasn't dragged on even close to as much as I thought it would.

Prepare yourselves: next time I conquer the Palace of Twilight.