Total Playtime: 18 hours

Today’s Session: 5 hours

Destination Point: finished the Forest Temple. Side-questing before the Fire Temple.

 

I’m pleased with the difficulty jump in the Forest Dungeon compared to Child Link’s easy ones. Since completing it, I’ve been side-questing like mad. Heart pieces and gold skulltulas (50 so far) galore! I especially enjoyed the meaty quest for the Lens of Truth since I can now access the Child Link timeline once more. While the concept is very nifty gameplay-wise, Nintendo has a time paradox in their hands. You see, your first encounter with the Windmill Man as a child is nothing special, yet he insists otherwise when you meet him once more as an Adult. He recalls an event in which your child-self plays a song that makes it rain inside the hut, triggering the mechanism of drying up the well. Your adult-self does not know of this event as you actually learn this Song of Storms from him as he recalls it to you. So there’s your gameplay hint; you now go back to him in as your child-self, play the song and recreate the event for the first time, giving you access to the well. Obviously, this doesn’t make any sense at all, but I’ll let it slide. After all, there are many gameplay collectibles which you may skip as a child but get as an adult…in a logical world, going back in time should produce this collectible once more, but in the actual game this doesn’t happen for obvious reasons.

Anyway, the bottom of the well is actually a dungeon in disguise, a challenging one mind you. In fact, it’s the hardest one I’ve faced so far. Took me quite awhile to navigate and complete. The small chests are especially well-hidden. One contained 200 rupees, but I sadly had maxed out. In order not to let it go to waste, I had to restart from my last save to avoid the chest. Following Jarrod’s footsteps, I’d like to advise Nintendo to start showing the actual contents of small chests before obtaining them, or at least give me the option not to pick up the items inside them. Twilight Princess slightly fixed this issue by automatically returning rupees inside the chest if you’re maxed out, but it’s still not good enough.

I also managed to go fishing in my free time. Finally, I caught that 20-pounder which netted me a Golden Scale. Big fishes are so hard to catch. Speaking of which, I’ve never attempted to find the legendary Hylian Loach in the original n64 game, but I may do so here if I find myself bored from the main quest.

Before I continue on to the Fire Temple, I want to finish up the massive item trading side-quest (which has been a series staple since Link’s Awakening). I just realized that I can access Gerudo Valley early and continue the trades using by jumping over the bridge using Epona. I thought I needed to wait for the bridge to be fixed or something. At the end of this quest, I should finally be able to wield Biggaron’s Sword.

Can’t believe that I remember these side-quests a lot more than the actual dungeon layouts.

Later days.

PS: some small notes on the graphics. I’ve been very impressed with lighting as of late. All the shadows in the Temple of Time makes it so ominous. Also, there’s a small blue lantern hanging on top of the Happy Mask Salesman shop which gives off a really cool glow in the wee hours of dawn. Nice work, Grezzo!