The Dungeon Design of Majora's Mask - ALL DUNGEONS Examined

Hello everyone, this is an ongoing series examining

dungeon

design

in Zelda games. We've already taken a look at all of the Ocarina of Times

dungeon

s, so check them out if you want. Otherwise, let's jump to Majora's Mask, first and foremost. The thing to know before jumping into Majora's Mask is that there was a clear decision here when it comes to accessibility. I mean, since this is Link's second adventure on the N64, the developers seemed determined to make this game much more difficult from the start. It's been a long time and that makes sense. Link is already an accomplished hero and since we've been through a full adventure with Link, the game takes a different approach with its story progression and setup, as well as changing the entire structure of the game. to subvert our expectations as Zelda players and does it all masterfully, so there's a bit to talk about before the actual dungeon, so if you don't mind that context, you can skip to the progression section of the video, but otherwise Otherwise, stick around because I feel this information is important to understanding what makes this game tick.

Let's compare the opening of a timeline and the nightmare of Major's

mask

. Leaving Link aside when he wakes up, he is greeted by his friends and has to get a sword and shield before heading out. Until the first dungeon there is a simple to-do list, all of which takes place in his peaceful hometown of Kiri Forest. It's calm and has a very happy and fun atmosphere, but the wonderful childlike feel of this section matches the game's story and character arc. In fact, for Link, this entire setup is meant to familiarize us as a player with our protagonist Link and his relationship with the world around him.

Now in Majora's Mask we are supposed to already know this link version, so the game doesn't need to do it. It wastes time setting that up, instead focusing on his story and world-building right away. We don't need to learn about Link as a character, so we can be thrown into this conflict right away, as Link is essentially mugged and has to chase after Skull. Boy through the Lost Forest, then we take this trip and the skull boy curses us. Link's scream when he first sees the reflection of himself after being transformed into a deu bush is simply heartbreaking.

Let's compare how Link meets his companion when we meet Navi, she is sent by the cutting tree to be Link's companion, they are a Destiny duo and they both agree that Navi is always happy to help and always tries her best to provide you the best information, even if sometimes it also guides you a little in the right direction. However, she is initially one of the villain's companions, but is separated from her brother because she spends too much time punching Link in the face, she only allies with Link out of necessity, so when you ask her for help with things, she responds normally. they're bolder and less helpful, her motivation is simply to reunite with her brother, so when she guides you in the right direction with clues it's only for her own selfish motivations, not because she actually cares about helping you at first, that's even her.

The apology feels very insincere after going through this short section of the tutorial where we learn how to use Deul Link's abilities. We meet the happy skin seller who sets our goal for the game. He explains that something has been stolen from him too. Skull Kid, being the holder of Majora's Mask, make a deal if you can get your Ocarina back from Skull Kid and the stolen

mask

. The happy mask seller will help you return to your highly informed. However, we are told that he will be leaving town in 3 days. so we have to make sure we complete this before the 3 days are up.

There is another reason for our 3 day time limit: the moon will crash and destroy. It's all great and in the meantime, it looms over us as a constant reminder of this. threat now i need to quickly address something about this section of the game because there is still a lot to do before the actual dungeon in my deut tree video. I talked about the overall pacing of that game being nice because it didn't force you to do it. Largely in what I called pre-dungeon tasks, I pointed out that other games particularly Twilight Princess and Sky with Sword were quite notorious for this, but I didn't mention Majora's Mask even though there is a lot of pre-dungeon stuff going on. dungeon the reason for this is because all of this is actually meant to drive the story forward, while hurting the goats is not.

The other thing to note here is that Majora's Mask has a very different overall structure from these other games, so this change in pacing better suits this different structure. Well, getting back to this, the game focuses on world building. The focus here is as much as possible, as we basically have three days in the game to explore the entire Clock Town, meet all its residents, and figure out how to do it. To get to Skull Kid, if you know what you're doing this can be done pretty quickly, so for returning players who don't want to stand around for 3 days waiting for the door to open, you can relax with the Scarecrow here to jump.

Fast forward in time, just a brief mention about Clock Town, which further adds to this feeling of impending doom, you can notice how the music changes throughout the 3 days, during the first day it has a very fairy tale vibe. happy during the second day, when it rains. the tempo increases to add a sense of urgency and by the third day there is a sinister undertone behind the happy vibe of the song. He's cool and I think he perfectly embodies the façade of optimism that many of the townspeople put up while living in complete denial of their own impending doom.

When we confront the skull boy at the top of the tower, he seems to be quite apathetic to all the destruction of the world that's happening here until Tail TT's brother steps out of line to beg us to bring the four of us. Here, from the swamp, the mountain, the ocean, and the Canyon, Skull Kid knocks him aside, further cementing the gossip about which side of the conflict he really belongs to. Skull Kid mocks us and challenges us a little to stop the moon, which we can't do, we're just not powerful. Instead, we have to shoot him to get the acarina out of his hand and grab it quickly.

At this point, the link has a flashback of Zelda giving him the Ocarina before she left Hyrule and teaching him the song of time. she desperately shouts that we need more time if we are going to stop Skull Kid, so since we just remembered we can play the song of time, interestingly the acarina actually changes shape while in our power to match whatever form we are in. we are so when we go to play it, now we have these deu pipes, strange but cool, playing the song will take us back in time to the dawn of the first day, everything restarts and we see the mask seller again, he will be up to the task .

In accordance with his promise, since we regain our Ocarina, he teaches us the healing song that transforms us back into our highly informed state and creates the deu mask that we can use to transform back and forth into our deu form at any time. moment, whatever it may be. I still can't get Majora's mask back, so that reminds us what's at stake here: that mask is pure evil and contains some pretty terrifying dark magic, so now we have this new ability to transform a world to save and an idea. vague How to do it, Tattle fortunately knows the terminal and lets us know that the swamp is directly south of the city, so it's a good starting point.

Before we head there, we can do optional side content, especially since we can time travel at any point. It's totally optional if we want, but some I recommend include getting the Explosive Mask on the night of the first day, which effectively negates the need to stock up on bombs, and the Rabbit Hood on the third day, which increases running speed and the jump distance. It is also worth getting the mask of the Great Fairy, which you will see why soon, anyway, heading south we will find the swamp where the water is poisoned for some reason, which means we need safe passage through the water to reach the dungeon, but the ship operator is not there.

We can find it if we follow the path east and into the forest, where a monkey will ask you to follow it to where Kou is. This is one of those cases where someone we know from Hyrule has a terminal counterpart, but this twin version of Rova. It's definitely not bad, so don't worry, Kou was injured here, so we'll have to go to his sister Kotak's potion shop. Kotake will give you a bottle and a red potion that will heal you. Now Kum will be able to take the boat cruise. a safe passage through the swamp these monkeys will cost us and we will ask for help because one of the monkeys was taken hostage by the deu people, so we will meet in the deu palace, we will have to sneak a little to be able to do it. to find this bean seller so we can plant magic beans and have access to where the monkey is locked up.

This part is very fun. Using the deul link to get out of the flowers and navigate here we will eventually find the kidnapped monkey, he explains. that he is imprisoned here because king deu believes that the monkey kidnapped his daughter, but in reality what happened is that he had gone with princess deu to investigate the temple of woodfall to find out why the swamp water was poisoned The princess is now trapped there. He teaches us the sound of Awakening that will give us access to the temple. Now we can leave the palace further up the main path and up to Woodfall by playing the song he taught us.

He lifts the temple out of the water. Few I know it was a lot, but now we can finally head. to the first dungeon of the game. that are happening here, however, the place seems to have been cursed and is the source of the poisonous swamp water. This dungeon will take full advantage of Link's deu form to fly through obstacles and jump over water without taking damage. There is a pair. Things to note about how the Elder's Mask treats their

dungeons

, firstly, they follow a sort of formula where they have a major central room which is important not just for navigation, as we've seen in some of the

dungeons

in the OV era, but also that you will need to make a change in part of the actual dungeon.

It also has dungeon elements that are all connected or extensions to each other. Woodfall presents us with this idea, which makes the general structure of the game's dungeons easier, but does not skimp on challenges. At the same time it's an impressive balance, this game also adds an extra aspect to the dungeon formula. There is an optional secondary objective of rescuing lost fairies with 15 to find in each dungeon, which will reward us with optional upgrades. This ends up being a good incentive. to explore the dungeon further and is the reason why we need to have the Great Fairy mask which will glow if you are in the same room as a Stray Fairy that has not been found yet, it also attracts the fairies that stay towards you, making them It's much easier to collect, this place has such a creepy temple vibe here too, by the way, the first thing is the music, there's this strange chanting, this tribal feeling percussion and a lot of noise that makes it sound like there would always be something more.

It is dangerous that it is happening around the corner again. I've said it many times, but I'm not an expert in music theory. I can only tell you how music makes me feel and do my best to articulate it, but despite it seeming pretty simple at first glance. This clue has many layers and that goes a long way towards visually enhancing the atmosphere of the dungeon. They also capture the atmosphere of the swamp dungeon perfectly, particularly the use of light or lack thereof in certain areas along with these enemies called bows. No pose gives me the shivers and all this against the backdrop of this Stone Brick Temple which, in my opinion, is perfectly believable in the context of the story.

The Dungeon also provides a great balance between the general navigation challenges that make up the big picture. of the dungeon, the smaller puzzles that help you progress through the individual rooms and a lot of combat when we first enter the dungeons, Foye, we will immediately have two lost fairies to collect, we will have to use Deul Link's abilities to Fly through this room. If you fall, you will quickly be surrounded by these guys, heie jeebies, I say cross and we will be in the central room of the dungeon. There's a platform in the middle of this room with an unlit torch, but it's completely out of Range, so there's not really a way to light it right now, but based on its location, it seems pretty important.

Technically, there are quite a few doors in this room, but they are all locked or inaccessible, except this one at the bottom. You can notice howThey intentionally make you go through another closed door to get to it. The next room is this open rectangular room. There's more to do here later, but for now we'll have to open that chest to get a key and head inside. Next Room, this room locks you in with a quick combat challenge against a handful of these enemies called Snappers. The only way to damage them is actually from below, since they have this turtle shell, so you'll have to go to the deu. flowers and they come out from below, you have to be quite precise with your timing so be careful with that, you can already see from the few enemies we fought how much more challenging this dungeon is from the Deco tree anyway, defeat these Snappers will make us win the dungeon.

The map is off to a good start now that we have the map and a key, the only way to succeed is to return to the central room of the dungeon where we can spend that key on the locked door we passed through earlier and move towards this bridge .In the stairs room there is a little puzzle here where you have to push the block out of the way to make a path, but make sure to go around it and push it again to create a shortcut so you can quickly run and use a Stay to power up the torch at the other end of the room.

Lighting this torch will unlock the door immediately in front of us, so come on, there is a second short combat challenge where we will have to kill these dragonflies which are not too difficult. This will now grant us the compass, which was quick. Now we can go up the stairs, but make sure you have another stick with you which you can use to burn the net at the top of the room to open the path forward. This will take us up a flight of stairs and up to the second floor of the dungeon, this room at the top of the stairs is Pitch Black and gossip warns us that she feels a lot of evil here, the room is small, but honestly, that creepy factor is achieved very well with this setting in the dark with that message and then you are ambushed by more black arches with only their glowing eyes visible chills guys chills there is a single burning torch in the center of the room after the hallway so you'll want Use a stick once again to light all of these unlit torches to unlock the door.

It's quite simple if you stay a moment longer to defeat all the enemies, however, it will reward us with a chest containing one of the lost fairies. The next room is a kind of obstacle course that is built into the concept scene in the lobby where we will have to navigate using deul link to fly, however, this time the platforms are moving and there are a couple of enemy dragonflies flying around the room. room ready to take you down, there are also holes in the floor that will set You back too, so be careful where you fly otherwise you can use Deul Link to take them down before flying up the stairs at the end of the room, take us back to the central room, but now to the second floor balcony that we couldn't reach before.

If you're worried that backtracking will be a hassle, there's also a switch you can press here, which will make a pair of stairs appear to connect this balcony to the first floor. Gossip will draw our retention back to the middle platform with that extinguished torch. From this point of view we can see a lit torch between our position and the unlit one, but we still can't do anything with it. From here there are two more doors that we haven't gone through yet, but as one they are closed naturally. We'll go through the other one, this one is pretty much parallel to our path taken on the first floor and even takes us to the same first room as before, except as expected on the second floor balcony, follow the balcony here and there's other.

The door to the next room is another combat challenge against lone dinosaurs. This isn't something I would have thought about before starting this dungeon

design

series, but the fact that in the first dungeon of the game we're fighting one of these guys just helps to show you how important this game is, the The only instances in Ocarine of Time where we fought dinosaur enemies were in Gudo's optional training grounds and in Ganon's Castle, the final dungeon of the game, even then we were so well equipped that they were barely any challenge here, all we have is the sword Kiri, which is not that powerful, fighting him is more or less the same as fighting Lazalo at one time, but the thing is that in that game you can use Link's Crouch as a kind of Crutch in Fight to block any of his attacks here.

Link's Shield actually scales to his size, so we can't rely on that Crouch, and besides, these guys have a pretty effective fire breathing attack that you can't even block or even get a couple. There are a lot of jump attacks there and you should be fine taking him down. This fight rewards us with the dungeon item. The bow is one of the most important and effective elements in the game. Here in this dungeon it is used in a fairly traditional Zelda way, but the game is not. take advantage of what Link is capable of doing with it, so I think keeping the more established uses of it was a smart choice for the beginning and yes, as expected, it gets used right away.

In the previous room there is ice that we can shoot a lot. familiar territory that will make this platform with a deu flower rise from the bottom of the room we already visited, it will go up and down continuously, which means that if we fall by mistake we will have a good shortcut back, but most importantly it allows us cross the room and reach the next door, the next room brings us face to face with the middle boss gecko of the dungeon, he is a frog, not a gecko, but his name is gecko, just keep going at the beginning, It seems like he hardly challenges at all, but then he summons a snapper to ride him, we already fought these guys so we know what to do, get into the flower deu and time it just right so you can appear under him and hit its most vulnerable part, this will deal some damage and cause the gecko to fall off its mount here, it will be quite evasive crawling across the ceiling, so you'll want to use your newly acquired bow to take it down.

Just a word of advice, in my experience he moves too fast to hit him effectively. he uses Z targeting, so I find it a lot less wasteful to manually aim, but that's just me, either way, if you miss a bunch he'll drop arrows when you defeat him, so the worry of running away is negated quite a bit after some good shots. being defeated and turned into a normal frog remember that for later this fight rewards us with the boss key thanks to the clever design of the dungeon it is a very short backtrack to the central room where we can now use the bow to finally light that torch in In the middle of the room that purifies the water in the temple, the platform also rises and begins to rotate, so now we can use the central torch to light the second unlit torch throughout the room, which opens the final door.

This puzzle strikes me as an evolution of a similar Ocarina idea from the era, side note of the forest temple, there is a button you can press next to the torch to make a treasure chest appear and get another Fairy Stray through the last door we just unlocked, although it's one last room to tackle, although if you want to backtrack quickly, grab the fairies you missed, this is a good time to do it, otherwise we'll find ourselves in this room with all these niches, the layout of the room seems more daunting than it really is, there is a switch we can trip. with the bow to extinguish these flames and then we will need to use the deu flowers to fly across the room and get to the door, pretty easy on pap paper, just make sure you don't miss those last straight fairies in this room, worth it too . using the bow to shoot down all the enemies here before flying to avoid being attacked in the air.

Alright, a successful landing will take us to the boss door where we can face the final challenge of the dungeon. The game wastes no time here. As soon as you enter the room, the dungeon boss, Odolwa, falls from the ceiling and starts the battle. Adula appears to be a giant tribal warrior of some kind. I've heard people compare the design of it to traditional South American cultures, but I can't even. I'm starting to comment that as far as Zelda bosses go, it's a really cool change of pace, although it's not actually a giant monster, it's humanoid and the sense of scale here rivals that of Ganon himself, the fight is also a big shake up because it breaks with the formula established at the time of Ocarina in that you don't have to use any dungeon items, you can use the bow to stun him, but it's just as effective to attack him with your sword now of course, I'm playing the original N64 version. and the 3DS remake changes some parts of this fight to make it more accessible, but I always felt like simply putting a giant eyeball weak spot on it was kind of a betrayal of what made this fight good.

This isn't a traditional Zelda boss, but instead, it's two sword-wielding warriors engaged in a duel, so trying to change what makes it unique to better fit the mold of Zelda bosses is just a letdown, on the whole. my opinion, Adola also has a lot of personality compared to most bosses, since he doesn't. He doesn't fall into the big monster category, he sings and dances around the room, which opens him up to attack. He doesn't pack too much of a punch when he hits you, it's more of a show than a real threat, as he knocks you back a decent distance, but only deals a quarter of a heart in damage.

I can forgive him being the first boss in the game after all, after a few good hits he'll call for backup, causing these little buggers to drop from the ceiling and attack you, but honestly. They are basically no threat, you can kill them for hearts if you need to, but otherwise you can ignore them and try to land the finishing blow, a couple of good jump attacks and Adula will be defeated, don't forget the heart container. and you can recover the remains from ad doa instead of being transported outside. We appear in this ethereal place face to face with one of the four giants who is now freed thanks to our efforts here.

This part is so surreal and the music here is the perfect amount. of emotional weight, it's honestly wonderful, you'll learn the song Oath to Order, but with no idea what it's for other than calling them the ultimate review, you'll now find princess deu here so you can take her home. that she can hit her father and Free the Monkey it seems that everything is fine in the swamp now that the water is no longer poisoned. Don't forget to bring home those lost fairies too to get the upgraded Spin Attack which even works with fast spinning so it's very useful in my opinion, so that's the dungeon overall, there's a lot to talk about here, this one game has a much more developed introduction than the previous game, but if I had to sum it up, there is a constant feeling that we are What we will see throughout this game is fear, there is fear that the Moon will fall, the fear that the princess deu is in trouble, the fear that the monkey will be executed, the fear that the link is cursed, the fear that time will run out with a literal countdown at the bottom of your screen at all times and a lot more which we will see as we cover the other areas of the game, but along with that fear is relief as you work to save all these people, the tension is released when the monkey is freed, the poison disappears and when the princess deu is reunited with his family the dungeon itself is a great dungeon for beginners, you can see by how complicated the layout is here, even in the navigation aspect, they really wanted to keep things fresh and challenging for players who have already played and acarina of time rather than simply a repeat of that experience, it also cements the idea of ​​alternating between Link's deu and high forms, as both are used for many of the dungeon puzzles and, although Deco link isn't as effective in combat since you can't use a sword or bow, they still found a way to time their abilities at least in the mid boss battle.

A couple of details that feel really minor. These moths are the worst, they chase you and attack you if you Having a deu stick on is just a hassle. I also feel like the boss battle could have found a way to make using the deu form more useful. They tried to fix that in the 3DS version, but not very well in my opinion. That's what he said. I usually just keep Link's excellent form throughout the battle, although I think the dekum Mas is used more than enough during the rest of the dungeon and that the boss fight is unique enough to not be held back due to this in general. the game has done a great job setting up its pacing, its formula, and its mechanics, and Woodfall Temple plays aimportant role in the fact that I like it a lot in order to give you an appropriate amount of time, please keep in mind the 3 day time limit.

Here most people will probably go ahead and travel back in time to the first day before heading to the next dungeon. If you do, Pattle will point out that the mountains are directly north of Clock Town, as usual, there are some side quests. You might want to do before you go that route to stock up on some heart pieces. My favorites include the archery mini-games we can do now that we have the bow. It's also worth stopping at the pump shop in West Clock Town and shopping. A bomb bag, if you don't already have it, is just as useful as the blast mask.

Real bombs will be needed for at least one particular part of the next dungeon. If you exit through the north door, you will see that the path up the mountain is blocked. by these huge ice crystals, but now that we have the bow, we can shoot the ice shards hanging above to cause this huge icicle to collapse and clear the way. Great, going up the mountain path is pretty easy, it's such a linear path as there are several instances along the way, however, you'll want to use bombs or the explosive mask to break these big snowballs so you can progress once you're done.

Let's get to the Camino, we will find Mountain Village and this area is safe. It's called Mountain Village, but there's a whole building here, that's the blacksmith, we'll come back to that later, so what's the deal with this snowy mountain? Well, just like the swamp that was poisoned, the mountain is frozen. even though it should be spring, it's so cold, in fact, there are gorons that freeze where they are, including this old Geyer, hey, while we're here, I want to mention the music, something that the Mass soundtrack of Maor does very well. is to have different music for each area, all of which are re-instrumentations of the same song, as the track changes to the field theme after the curses are removed from each area.

I'll refer to these tracks as Cursed Area Themes just for simplicity, Cursed Swamp Music. It had a very suitable track that mainly featured this stringed instrument with a vibrant sound. The Curse of the Mountains theme changes this to Faith, the humming wind sounds like some sort of bells reaching quite a high pitch giving a very thematic vibe. of ice and some piano underneath, all that combined with some choir vocals, it's kind of reminiscent of the Ice Cavern theme. of ocarine of time in this instrumentation, but while the general theme of that track was quite calm, the Cursed Mountain theme does its job by giving us a track that seems to specifically go towards an uncomfortable, desolate and desperate feeling, also a scream to the base.

On this track I think it's a vertical base, it has such a powerful feel underneath all that howling wind and the echo of moving bells. We will have to cross this bridge area from the east side of the mountain and find the way to Gouon. Village, we will find our old friend Kibor Gabora here at the end of The Village. Okay, he also appeared in the swamp to teach you the song of flight, but I didn't mention it in the last video despite my feelings towards this guy, he's actually not too unpleasant, it seems like they really toned it down in this game, you He will ask you to follow him to the shrine on the other side of the Gap and tell you not to be intimidated by appearances and instead trust yourself. feelings, okay Obi-Wan, what this really means is that there are invisible platforms here that you can jump on to cross the gorge and reach the shrine.

If you are unsure about these platforms, their feathers will land in place to guide you. Also, I mention briefly, although we've never actually been there yet. I really like that the stone tower is completely visible from here and looking at the Overworld map makes a lot of sense. It's one of those little details that if they never included it, you would never do it. Don't know it or be upset, but the fact that they did it really shows the attention to detail that makes these games so great. Anyway, in the sanctuary we will find the lens of Truth, which works exactly as it did in Acarina of time, so when we return from The Sanctuary we can now see those invisible platforms, now we will also be able to see this Goron ghost here, it is surprised that we can see him, although he is skeptical and says that if we can really see him we should follow him, there is a small sequence here where we have to follow him to the main Mountain Village area, which is mostly annoying because he moves slowly once he You follow him up this long climb where you will find yourself in his grave.

He explains that he is Darman. Goron hero and who died marching towards the Snowhead Temple to see if there was a way to end the blizzard when said blizzard threw him off the cliff and, until his death, his dialogue here is quite heartbreaking, this line in particular. He always seemed pretty powerful to me, just the way I am. I can only watch as Goron Village slowly buries itself into the ice. He may be dead, but I can't rest. Oh friend, here I ask you that since you can use magic, please bring him back to life so that he can save his people and if you can't do that to at least cure his sorrows somehow, then What we will have to do is play him the healing song, we have this nice scene of Darman seeing himself surrounded by his people as he finds peace in the afterlife and his soul can finally rest, the Goron mask is created that contains his Spirit now , like the deu mask, we can transform back and forth into Goron form at any time.

Goron Link's abilities are pretty much what you. I would expect him to throw powerful punches and be able to roll. He is also much stronger than Link's tall form, as he can push blocks that are normally too heavy. The mask is a combination of the Megaton hammer and the silver gauntlets from Aine of Time. Added a sweet new rolling ability here. A nice touch here inscribed on Darman's tomb is the controls on how to use the scoring and linking abilities, which is a great optional, if not slightly fourth wall breaking, way to do it, the next thing we need to do is move his grave aside. to reveal this hot spring and fill a bottle with hot spring water so you can melt things.

I love this moment of dialogue when you think of this Goron and he realizes that you're Darman, who should be dead, it's a good moment. Comedy, okay, a brief summary of what he's doing. We visit Goran's village and find that the old man's son is crying because he misses his father. We will find his father frozen on the outskirts of the village, here we will take him out and he will show you the first part. Goron's lullaby to play for his son, unfortunately he can't remember the rest of the song, play what we have of the song for the boy and he will teach you the rest while you are here, make sure you light these torches. and break the chandelier to find some roasted rock which you can give to this Goron stranded next to the blacksmith shop to get the donor mask which is for later.

Although frog, now we can head this way. Goron advances along this track and we will find. We are at the top of Snowhead, the source of the blizzard. If you use the Truth Lens, you'll see that there's a giant Gore here blocking the path and blowing wind down the mountain, so we'll have to play with it. in a lullaby to put him to sleep and oh he fell off the mountain, sorry friend, now we can go up the narrow path that winds around this huge structure and we can finally reach the Snowh Head temple when we talk about dungeons in this game .

I hear a lot of people compare the third dungeon in the game, Great Bay Temple, to Ocarina of Times Water Temple, which is based on the fact that they both have a water theme which seems appropriate on a surface level, but in my opinion, when examining the structure and the progression. From the dungeon itself, I feel like the comparison is much stronger for the Snowh Head temple here, like the water temple. Snow Head is built around a large hall of Lime with many floors, basically a large vertical structure, such as is needed to raise and lower the water level.

In that dungeon here you're climbing up and down this huge platform in the central room in order to progress through here, which of course can only be done from certain points in the dungeon. Everything else branches off from this large room as well with tons of doors, there are also some puzzles that you have to start and then abandon until later in the dungeon. It doesn't have a water theme, but I think the comparison is stronger when you look at how you make your way through this place and then face it. the boss on the last floor one thing this dungeon improves over the water temple is that it color codes its doors which is something the 3DS remake would later adopt for the water temple, this goes a long way towards prevent you from getting lost. as you navigate the massive structure, Snowh Head is a huge dungeon, there are five floors and many of the rooms are quite large, as before, there will also be 15 lost fairies to find here, many of which you will want the Lens of Truth. because it's often pretty easy to find the cultural links in the Universe in a dungeon, but Snowhead left me a little stumped at first, there's not a lot of architectural brilliance to write home about, like there was for Woodfall, but in a way that could actually be an indicator to link this to the Gorons not only because the Gorons live on this mountain but because most Goron structures are known to be carved from stone, which seems to be the case also in this place when there are bricks, so It's generally not particularly ornate there either.

There are also a bunch of these switches that you need to use your Goron Punch ability to press as well, so yeah I'm going to stick with that, chances are the Gorons built this place like normal. A quick mention of the music here. Dang yeah. It's not uncomfortable, just like outside we have that cold feeling of the wind howling and on top of that there is a mangled sound. The only thing I can think of is that it sounds like it could be icicles falling and breaking, which is something that happens a lot in this dungeon is the piano, which is quite minimalist, but it keeps hitting these low notes, which adds a feeling of tension that extends throughout most of the track and then there is the main part of the song which is very tense and tense. sensation and it never feels like the tension is released here and again there is a strange loud background noise, I'm not sure how to define it but like falling wood, it gives me the feeling that there is danger to the around the corner, the only other thing is the voices of the choir singing. which thematically ties it in a bit to the Cursed Mountain theme when you first enter the dungeon you will be ambushed in the hallway by a bunch of white arches, we met their shadowy counterparts in Woodfall and they all lived in dark areas, so the impression I have. is that this type of bow evolved to camouflage itself in the snow instead of hiding in the shadows, it is a strange detail, but yes, you will need to use the force of the Goron link to push this large block out of the way that the second part of the lobby. three doors the light blue one on the left is closed the middle red door is frozen over the dark door on the right side is the only viable option a white wolf hose will also ambush you here you can choose to ignore it but I would like to do it quickly Mention how satisfying it is deal a Goron blow to these guys.

The second room has a broken bridge with a ramp that we need to use our Goron roll to jump over before you do. However, there are a couple of missing fairies in the lower section. The room you should take once you cross the bridge. There are two ways to go from here through the side door or up the stairs. It's not necessary yet, but I suggest you go up the stairs to this square room with the chewy bomb. First, there's not much to do here yet, but it's worth stopping to grab the straight fairy and open the treasure chest with the dungeon map that now returns and through that blue side door will take us to the big dungeon.

Central room, there are many doors here, seven, right on this floor, very similar to the water temple. Try not to get overwhelmed here with the sheer volume of options. The best place to start is across the room and through the yellow door. some blocks you can pull have a treasure chest with our first key hidden here while you're here make sure to push the blocks to the other side of the room. A treasure chest will appear on the ledge, so it will be out of reach. but we will come back to look for it later, now that we have a key, we can return to the central room.

You may remember that one of the rooms in the Foye needed a key, so we'll go back there, the red door that's frozen. can be thought of by shooting an arrow atthrough the torch next to it, which gives us a good shortcut between the central room and the hall. Did I mention I love these color coded doors? Because I do well in the hallway, we can unlock the third door and head to the In the next room, this room has huge chunks of ice that have some switches and frozen blocks on them, so remember for later there is a treasure chest here that He will give us the compass.

There are also two white wolves to fight here, but you can do it. take them one at a time as they won't go very far from where they appear before. I mentioned that you'll want real bombs and this is where you need them. There's a Stray Fairy in that box on the shelf. If you want to throw a bomb and time it just so that it explodes in the air to free the ferry, right next to it, between the two pillars, there is also a pretty obvious looking bombable wall, so you can use another bomb or the explosive mask to blow it up . and reveals the staircase to the next room.

The next room has these platforms with icicles, much like how we made our way up the mountain before using the bow to shoot the icicles from the ceiling and clear the way. There is a hidden Al. Cove with a Stray Fairy that you can use the Lens of Truth to see but honestly it's so obvious even without it, not only because of the texture of the wall, but you can even see on the minimap that there is a hidden treasure chest over there. money to grab here, but more importantly break this snow rock to reveal a second treasure chest containing the key you'll need for the locked door at the other end of the room.

Next up is this switch room, a very quick mention but this is The room with the best hidden Stray Fairy that you will only be able to see using the lens of truth if you look up at the ceiling, a huge block of ice is blocking the main path , so to get to the other door. We need to solve this puzzle, there are four switches, but when you press each one down, the other switches will go back up. They are also color coded so that helps, so here is the solution to this puzzle. Hit the first yellow switch which forces the other one.

Two, this allows us to jump across the gap to the other ledge on the other side of the ledge. Hit down on the top green switch which will raise the bottom green one. Now go back to the yellow one we used as a bridge and hit it. Up to here we will go down the one that blocks the door, now we can go back up the lower green that we raised and we will be able to go through the door, no problem, this takes us back to the main central room, but on the second floor. The layout here is pretty simple, including the door we just entered through.

There are four doors in each cardinal direction. The north door is frozen, so only the two side doors remain as before. We need to roll Goron to jump space. We land on the blocked north side, so we have to roll down this slope along the side of the room to reach the east door. Here's a little forgiveness if you fall. There is a kind of safety net that allows us to climb back up. the north side and try again through the east door, we'll be back at the top edge of the room where we got the map, but don't worry about that just yet, we'll have to once again roll Goron to the West End. from the central room and through that door it's time for the mid boss we have a quick combat challenge against a wiiz robobee, it's not too difficult, there are these platforms in the room that it will appear from and try to shoot ice at you, but if you stop in the corner of the room and keep your bow ready, you will be able to shoot him before he has a chance to attack in the second phase of the fight.

He'll have some duplicates running around, but you can use the same tactic to take him down, which is even easier because the real one will show up. appears as a red dot on your minimap, place enough arrows and he will fall. This fight rewards us with a chest containing the dungeon item, fire arrows. I really enjoy having this as a dungeon element because it takes the idea of ​​the bow being the previous dungeon element and instead of throwing something completely different our way, it builds on what the bow is capable of doing by expanding that concept here , Fire Arrows were also very underused in Ocar Time, so it's really cool to see them take the spotlight here.

With fire arrows this opens up many places that we couldn't explore before. If you use them to open the north door in the main room, it will reveal the stairs to the third floor, but there's nothing we can do up there. for now let's back up a bit, you can take a shortcut down and I just found out that if you are curled up in gouon form you don't take fall damage, the next room we want to enter technically has three entry points, there are two frozen. green doors in the first floor Central room or the door in the basement, if you enter the basement door you can unfreeze this flower deu and fly back to the first floor section of the room or you can skip all that by going Through One of these green doors is a bunch of Fizzards that you can shoot with fire arrows.

Defeating them all gives us another Stray Fairy. You'll want to light all the torches in this room to unlock this door which leads us to a door. Outside the central room section from here we can Goron press this switch down, which raises the huge central pillar. Well, here's the part of the dungeon that most players get really stuck on. There are parts of the pillar that you can break to change its height, but you have to be careful when to do it and when not to do it if something happens and you can't progress, there is a second switch in the basement that you can press to reset the pillar too while you are down here, Make sure you grab this Stray Fairy by pressing the button here and grabbing the treasure chest that is somehow not on fire ascending to the top is our next objective, but keep in mind that the dungeon has thrown a lot of inaccessible things at us during our first trip . upwards, so we will want to CATCH all those who have the fire arrows at our disposal.

The first stop I recommend is to go to the bridge room from the beginning of the dungeon and take out the fards here. a treasure chest with a key, if we go back down the hall and through the blue door we can now melt the ice in this room to reveal a push block and a switch by pressing the switch reveals a hidden treasure chest that we will want to use. Push the block to move it into position so we can climb the ledge to the chest to see another Stray Fairy. You'll notice that the opposite ledge has a door, which again you'll want to push off the block and climb up to the door that takes us back. the room where we found our first key so we can jump across the blocks and go up to that ledge and get the treasure chest that was previously inaccessible with another Stray Fairy now if you go into the bomb Che room where we got the map , you can use fire arrows. the frozen eye switch to create a shortcut back to the second floor of the central room, which will be really useful if we end up falling by mistake and have to backtrack.

There is also another Lost Fairy hidden in this room that I recommend taking out of the bunny. Hood four so you don't overshoot your jumps across these platforms back to the floor above, as tempting as it may be, don't break the pillars just yet. Instead, we'll want to return to that closed door on the third floor. these enemies called Eno which are pretty easy to deal with, don't miss the hidden fair here which is pretty obvious, also melt the ice and go up the stairs. In the next room, two Dino enemies will ambush you. These guys are pretty tough.

But if you are patient and time your attacks, you will be able to deal with each one of them. He has a Street Fairy. We will now be back in the central room on the fourth floor, as long as you haven't broken the pillar doll. You will be able to cross and enter the next door, which will lead us to a second mid-boss fight against The Wiz Robe again. This room is larger with more platforms for him to appear on, but don't let that intimidate you. You can do it. Use exactly the same tactic as before by standing in the corner and shooting him with your bow after defeating him you will be able to CATCH the boss's key.

Good job with ice. The actual boss room is out of reach at the top of this room. so this is what we have to do: go back to the second floor and break the two slots in the pillar to lower it. You should be able to quickly climb the stairs to the third floor and smash the next two slots on this path with the Snow Boulders will now be accessible, but before doing so, there is one last Stray Fairy to collect. It is hidden in Al Cove between the second and third floors of the central room.

The intention here is that you should use the Scarecrow song for this, but we don't have the hook shot yet, here's what you can do instead of using the bunny hood. If you carefully line up with this line at the top of the pillar and jump forward, you should be able to make the jump. Al Cove, if you've been thorough, this should be your last Stray Fairy before we face the boss. I really recommend leaving the dungeon to take the Stray fairies back to the fairy fountain just outside the dungeon, doing so will grant us the expanded magic. meter which will be vital for the boss fight once you have it, you can use all the shortcuts we have created for ourselves to quickly go back through the dungeon to the top floor, you can hit these snow rocks and go up. the stairs, it's just a rolling Goron jump across this gap and towards the boss door, upon entering the boss room we will find the boss completely frozen in place, there is nothing else we can do except unfreeze him with a fire arrow that will start the battle.

This is a goat, how do you pronounce it? He will break through the walls of the room and start running. Gaun is basically like a mechanical bowl or goat, and I mean mechanical, the N64 tries its best to keep it detailed, but looking at his concept art, I can see gear cables and metal plates on him, it's a really unique design. which is not seen very often in classic Zelda. Now I hate talking about the 3DS remake so much because there are some good things they did with it, but why? Did they take his life here?

Just look at Got's remains side by side. I don't understand the decision to make his colors much less vibrant. The 3DS version leans more towards the mechanical aspect of its design, but sacrifices something truly colorful. designs in the process anyway, the boss room is basically a giant ring or like a race track like with odolwa, the dungeon element is not necessary for this fight, instead we will use our gouon abilities, you will want to charge a Goron roll and take Pursuit, basically the whole fight is this, you chase him and hit him with your spikes to deal damage, just be careful as he will.

Chuck throws bombs and even energy beams at you when you have a charged roll, he consumes magic power all the time. time, that's why it was so important to have double the magic power. There are also these green pots around the room that you can break to refill your magic meter when you hit him, occasionally he will be knocked down and if you are precise enough you can sort of get on his butt or his shoulder to still deal a lot of damage. while it is down. This can be really satisfying. I honestly love this because of how different it is from other boss fights in this series, it's so fast and energetic.

It's honestly a lot of fun, except in the 3DS version they added the giant eyeball once again. I didn't like this change for Adola, but I hate it here. This fight is meant to be a hot chase, but adding the eyeball forces you into it. Stopping the fight and using arrows against him, this may sound good on paper but all it does is disrupt the pace of the battle and for them to fix it by making it more like a Zelda boss by forcing you to stop it means you also have to. You have to charge your Goron roll every time you land a hit instead of stopping as a penalty for taking a hit.

What was the punishment for doing it wrong in the original version? It's what you have to do in the remake. I do not do it. Get it, to tell you the truth, this is a problem I have with the 3DS remake in general. They took a lot of what made this game really unique and different and somehow decided that these were things that needed to be fixed. The fact is that what I love about this game. how bravely he set out to not be a time acarina but stand out on his own, but I digress, the original version of this fight is fast-paced and a lot of fun, keep it up long enough and eventually it will fall and just crash. on the wall we will get that heart container and recover the remains of God we will briefly see the second giant and we will be transported outside to find spring on the mountainmarvelous the gorons are no longer in danger of freezing to death like before relief frog frog frog frog frog frog frog frog frog so that's the dungeon overall, this dungeon is a pretty big step up the difficulty curve compared to Woodfall, but considering the few dungeons there are in this game, I can excuse that it makes wonderful use of vertical space and is built around What would be established with the formula surrounding the use of a central room to alter the dungeon itself and the use of the arch as the main element, although in the case of Woodfalls the central room was not very large and the alteration was simply to purify the water here in the central room.

It's huge and the disruption is. Going up and down this pillar is taking those ideas and expanding them in such unique ways that make the dungeon design in this game so wonderful. A couple of details, most of these lost fairies are too obvious in my opinion, but the ones that aren't are a little hard to find, particularly the one hidden in the ceiling here and the one in Al Cove in the center room, that one really bothers me because it seems intentionally designed to be one you would have. backtracking until later in the game, forcing me to recommend an unintended exploit to get it, although the upgraded magic meter is worth getting.

I just don't like the idea of ​​having to go back to a dungeon I've already beaten. He collects Secrets later, after a while, he does it a couple of times with golden scales and I didn't like it, then another strange detail, but this room where you have to go find the switch to raise the platform has too many doors, there are no reason to need them. three doors to enter and exit this room in addition to the one you use to reach the switch is an odd detail, but I really feel like having too many options like that can trip up new players who aren't familiar with the dungeon.

If they just removed even just one of those doors, that would simplify everything a lot more, but I'd even go as far as removing two of them and leaving the one in the basement, it's the only door down here other than the staircase. Back to the first floor, that makes it pretty memorable, plus the first floor of the central room has seven doors, so removing those two would make it a little less daunting, still, those netpicks are pretty minor. All in all, I've heard a lot. Many people say that this dungeon is particularly challenging and frustrating, but the truth is that I really like it, oh boy, there is a lot to do before the next dungeon.

Keep in mind that the game only has four main dungeons, pacing-wise. As we progress through the progression, there is a lot of side content as well as pre-dungeon stuff to deal with. The battle will tell us that we can reach Great Bay by heading west, but there is a gate blocking the way, so this is what we need to do first. it's optional. I recommend getting the golden sword. You can do this first by making sure spring is on the mountain on the first day and completing the Goron races to earn an empty bottle of gold dust.

You can take your Kiri sword to Smithy Mountain to be upgraded, it takes until the next morning to upgrade it, so we need to do this on the first day, pay 100 rupees to first upgrade it to the razor sword and then give them the gold dust to further upgrade it for the second time to gold. sword, okay, so by doing that you should also be able to unlock the use of the powder keg by talking to this big guy. Once you have the powder keg, you can open the path to Romani Ranch early, you'll want to do that. there for the first day you just have to be there to learn a Pona song from Romani, which is weird because you should already know it, but whatever, but while you're here you can also do the Alien Invasion side quest the first night and the side quest to defend the cart on the second night now that we have a pona we can jump that fence.

I feel a little bad that your trusty Steed is relegated to basically being here to jump some fences and that's it as far as fast travel goes. he says, there are many more warp points here than in acarina of time and still Goron rolling is faster and more convenient than calling aona but hey, at least aona is here somehow, okay, now we can enter the area of ​​​​the Great Bay coast. Great Bay is one of my favorite regions in Terminal, but when we first get here it has a very gloomy and spooky atmosphere with the cursed theme song I mentioned in the video above gets its re-instrumentation here again, giving us some strings that sound like a distorted synth organ and wonderful steel drums which by the way are one of my favorite instruments and wait for it, a theramin, honestly this may be the best interpretation of the cursed theme, but its instrumentation captures the tropical coastline perfectly, but the song itself is still deeply imbued with that strange ever-present sense of dread and to add to that sense of haunting dread, this happens, the gossip points to the seagulls doing this vulture dance around something in the water we can swim to find to a Zora floating here.

He asks you to help him get him to shore, once you get him back he will start to get up and walk but he will be too weak to continue and collapse on the ground. MAA is the center of so much tragedy, he uses his last strength to tell you his story in the form of a song, he is in the band Indiegogo, the same band whose posters you have been seeing plastered all over the city, except the singer of The band Lulu recently put up some eggs, the eggs were stolen by pirates and Lulu has gone into a silent depression since then.

Miko had tried to stop them but she was fatally wounded and left for dead in the ocean. He begs you for someone to rescue his eggs before the Pirates take their toll, someone please heal my soul and then collapses to the ground basically on the verge of death, just like with Darman, we'll play him the healing song. MAA will have a vision of him, Lulu and the rest of her gang as they walk together and Mika leaves the Zora mask behind. His spirit can find peace in the afterlife on the condition that you finish what he started and then Link will give him a proper grave and funeral in one of the most underrated moments in history. series with no dialogue only this moment of silence, as tragic as all this, opens the door for us to take the form of Zora, which is my absolute favorite of these Transformations because, wow, we can swim water levels and swim in the Zelda games It's usually a little slow.

Swimming isn't usually one of Link's strong points and that's okay, but Zoras Zoras can swim and this game does that Justice The Zor Mask takes what was difficult about water physics and other Zelda games and makes it a lot of fun to swim. It is fast and precise. Liberating and just plain fun, Zor's mask is like Ocarine of Time's boomerang blue tunic and iron boots all in one. It allows you to sink, walk and breathe underwater, in addition to this, something incredible for swimming, oh, but even better, Zor Link can fight underwater. instead of being limited to just the hook shot and its combat is as fluid on the ground as it is underwater, it's fantastic, no more constant pauses to switch to iron boots, no more swimming with a paddle like a dog, this is like Zora link , we're free in the water, except they completely butchered her in the 3DS remake and made her absolutely terrible and hideous and a perfectly good thing by creating magic power super fast and making these horrible ones anyway, we need to get those eggs you should already have at least two, but probably Three empty bottles you can get by with.

To start, the first thing is to find a way to the Pirate Fortress while its doors are closed. You can find a secret entrance underwater. You will have to sneak around the Stronghold to find the eggs now if stealth is possible. If that's not your forte, then you can head towards Iana Canyon and get Shiro's stone mask, which will make the Pirates not notice you, although just like a while ago you can also shoot them with your bow to uh. Knock them out, yeah, yeah, they're fine, totally, they're not dead, they're just knocked out. The first place I recommend is to go up to the central tower and cross this door where you will see a scene of the Guto Pirates talking about trying to somehow use the eggs to get to the Great Bay Temple, you can shoot an arrow through the bars and drop some wasps in his room, then you can sneak in there and grab the contents of this treasure chest and it's the hookshot, oh I love the hookshot, the first one. of these seven missing eggs is also in this room at this point.

I usually suggest backtracking out of the Keep to use the hookshot to get to the top of this waterfall so you can do the beaver runs. It's optional, but by doing so you can get both. a piece of heart and another empty bottle, you have to race these guys four times in total if you want to get both prizes, which would be a complaint if it wasn't as fun to do these races as zor link because swimming is cool or I should be fine in the Pirate Fortress, there are three more eggs to find here. Each of which you'll get after a battle with one of these Garuda Warriors, just be sure to grab a pictograph of any of the Pirates while you're here, but more.

We'll talk about that later, once you have all the eggs here, drop the kids off at the marine research lab tank and take that pictograph to the fisherman's hut. I guess he's a pervert because he'll change your image for this weirdo. seahorse what were you planning to do with that image? You can bring that seahorse back to its home, a pinnacle rock in the sea. He will show you how to navigate through the murky waters to reach this huge pit where we can fight these sea serpents. and live our Mario 64 nightmares, the last three eggs are down here, we also rescued the other seahorse and they are in love and that's okay, with all the eggs rescued, they will only hatch if they are all together, so we will leave the rest here at the laboratory.

These little baby Zoras will hatch and arrange themselves conveniently to form scores. Yes, these little ones are showing us the new wave bosan NOA. Now we can play the song for Lulu, which restores her voice, but also. It seems to awaken something in the water. This is the giant turtle. He is a kind of patron deity of this ocean and is our only safe passage to the Great Bay Temple, since the murky water will prevent us from simply swimming. There you can hook a shot into her back. and it will take us directly to the dungeon I mentioned last time many people seem to compare this dungeon to Ocarina of Times Water Temple.

Well, I think I made a strong case for Snowhead actually being a more apt comparison when it comes to its structure and progression, I can still see how people would make the comparison between one thing, water, and, uh, hook. I think the main reason, however, is that people find this dungeon quite confusing. This dungeon is also the temple that feels at least good. temple, has a surprising industrial feel with emergency lights along the edges of these platforms, bolted metal pipes and machines everywhere. I've seen some theories online that suggest that the entire temple is like a giant water filtration system for Great Bay, which would So I have a feeling that if there was something here in the temple, the Waters of Great Bay would start to become cloudy as we progress through the dungeon, we have to open these systems to allow water to flow through the pipes again, turning this filtration system back on.

I don't know if this was Nintendo's intention when designing the dungeon, but it seems like a pretty accurate theory to me - aside from the surprising industrial theme here, as mentioned above, this dungeon is somewhat notorious for its difficulty, a sentiment I'm not personally familiar with. Sharing the Water Temple and the Snow Head had navigation as their biggest challenges, they forced you to adjust and traverse a central room constantly, while the Great Bay Temple still makes use of a major central room that needs modifications if you know what. what are you doing. You will spend much less time in this room and much less time in the dungeon overall, the reason being that the temple is simply divided into two halves which can be accessed by changing the direction of the water flow if you get lost or stuck .

However, I have a very easy way to stay on track: follow the pipes. There are color coded doors and pipes leading in and out of rooms and hallways as our main goal is to restore the flow of water by simply following the flow and following the pipes. In particular, the pipes that are active will make progressing through this dungeon an absolute breeze. The dungeon also features some of the best puzzles and challenges in my opinion, but we'll get back to that soon and as always, there are 15 Stray Fairies to collect here. Once again, speaking of that industrial topic, theThe music here really leans towards the percussion having this distinct metallic sound, then there's this synth sound that I'll talk more about in a moment and then the main synth section, I don't know if I can.

Express how brilliant this part of the song is due to my lack of knowledge of music theory, but listen to this section for yourself and tell me it won't make you uncomfortable. If I had to try to describe this section, I would say. Growing up, I used to get dizzy a lot and that fading in and out of this section almost sounds like what's going on in my head as I try to stabilize myself while being horribly dizzy and given the currents of water that keep flowing. trapped and then having to quickly swim through all these tight hallways, yeah, I'd say our koi condo friend really knocked it out of the park with this last bit of the song, this strangely quiet section and finally this weird synth bit. quite weak in the background of the song, but very similar to the synth sound I mentioned before, it's actually the same synth used during the alien invasion at the ranch, very similar to Woodfall and Snowe Head.

I feel like this is included at the end of the track. Leaving you with a lingering sense of danger, this song is not an easy listen by any means, but it certainly achieves a particular atmosphere that fits this dungeon perfectly. When we first arrive at the temple, our giant turtle friend will drop us off here in the lobby. which is more like a docking bay, there are some barrels for supplies if you need them, but be sure to light the torches for a street ferry. The door here takes us directly to this waterwheel room. Gossip will immediately draw your attention to the mechanisms here.

I can see that the wheel is driven by water spraying upwards from this yellow tube. There are elevators on each side of the door. Here on the left there is a school with a straight fairy and the main path on the right, however, we can't. progress that way there's still a spike here that needs to be sprayed so you can follow the pipe into the water and to the corresponding yellow valve. Once you turn it, the water flow will be restored. This is a concept that we are going to review. a lot throughout the dungeon, so keep in mind that there is another yellow valve that connects to the main spout that powers the waterwheel.

Don't touch it yet as it will shut down all the mechanisms here preventing you from progressing any further F, okay, now jump. Cross here and head down the hallway to the main central room. Gossip will mention that the waterwheel in the previous room seems to be what spins the turbine in this room causing the water to flow for the moment. Grab the straight fairy on this upper platform. and we go down to the water, the current is quite strong in this room so it can be difficult to swim. There's a single pot at the bottom with another fairy staying, but otherwise there are two corridors branching off from here that we can access right now.

The water currents prevent the other two from entering. This is another reason why I don't find the dungeon to be as challenging as Snow Head. There aren't that many paths to take. The central hall is three stories high and only two paths. Each level, both the Snow Head and the Water Temple, had many more branching paths from their central rooms. Of those two paths we can enter, I suggest heading to the upper red one first, following the corridor will take us to this room with a treasure chest and a door, however, both are out of reach for now, but remember them for later , instead continue following the stream and through the next corridor, which will take us down the hallway where we can kill these biod deu B for another fairy that is left and then head towards the door.

The next room has some notable things to nap in. You'll be able to see the boss's key taunting us from that balcony, but it's also out of reach. After fighting Biod Deu Babas, you can grab the key from the bottom of the water in this room. that's why we needed to come this way first, then grab the compass from the treasure chest on the top ledge, wait for the compass, yeah, I always find the compass before the map in this dungeon, which seems illegal, but hey, there's another hidden Street Fairy. here and it's one of the hardest to catch in the game, but one way to get it is to let yourself be grabbed by these dexi hands and just use your Zora Shield and they'll usually throw you right into the ferry.

If you duck down this hallway, the current should take you back to the central room, so now we can explore the other hallway. The next room has some octoroques and this red valve that is out of reach, so carefully follow this red pipe. and you can spend that key that we have on this locked door, there is a kind of rest room with some supplies and then we will head to this room to fight the mid-boss, just like GMA, the mid-boss will not immediately fight us . Here, however, he will hang from the ceiling until we make eye contact.

This is a wart. You may recognize it if you've ever played A Link to the Past. His giant eyeball is his entire body and his weak point, but it's surrounded by these bubbles. use your hook shot to take out the bubbles and pop them with your sword or if you're feeling bold you can just rush him with your sword and fully attack him once enough bubbles are gone you should be able to open an opening for yourself. To shoot his eye, the rest of the bubbles will fall so you can easily dispatch them. He will then start rhyming on the walls so I suggest standing in a corner to get a good vantage point and shoot him with your bow when his eyes are open, a couple more shots and he will fall which grants us the item. dungeon, ice arrows, just like the fire arrows we got last time. by having this as a dungeon item, they were even more underused over time than fire arrows, being completely optional in that game, so it's great to see them take the focus here, they can also be used not only for cool combat, but also for The puzzles built around their use are really cool, okay, the ice arrows are used well right away in the previous room.

We can freeze one of these octorrocks to become a jumping block and then you can turn this first red valve. We will be able to see how the water flow turns on and passes through the red pipes. There is a path back to the central room and if we follow the flow along the red pipe it will take us back the same way we came down earlier. However, there is a lot more we can do now that we have the ice arrows first, we can use them to create ice platforms to reach that Treasure Chest that was previously out of reach that contains the map and I love this mechanic, it is Seriously weakened in the 3DS Remake where you can only freeze glowing water spots, but here you can shoot any body of water to create an ice platform that somehow feels like a precursor to the Crionis Rune in Breath of the Wild, in which it is used very well.

In this dungeon we can also reach that door from before, behind, which is the next red valve. You can freeze the Choo Cho here and climb onto the ice block and climb onto the valve to turn it with the moving water. Let's follow the pipeline a little further. and going down the next corridor back to the room where we got the compass, now we can reach that balcony out of reach using ice arrows, unfreeze the door with fire arrows and we will find ourselves in front of the next mid-boss. This may look familiar, it's another gecko, but instead of a snapper like in Woodfall, it first has these huge bubbles.

I suggest you rush him with your sword immediately and then he will retreat to the ceiling, lifting all the bubbles off of him with him. What you will want to do is shoot an ice arrow at him while he is on the ceiling which will cause him and his bubbles to crash and shatter, this will leave him vulnerable to attack so once again I suggest you rush him with your sword while it is down, repeat this process a few times. times and he will come out frog FR frog frog frog frog frog frog frog ok, the next door should open and take us to that balcony where we get the boss key.

Well, we have the map compass dungeon item and the boss key regardless. Since we are actually only halfway through the dungeon, we can shortcut back to the central room once again and head to the waterwheel room, since we turn the red valve, you will see a new spot of water that we can Hook the shot and jump to the red valve, this will open another spout, but for the water reel to change direction, we must go down and close the yellow valve. Now, heading into the central room, the water flow will go in the opposite direction.

While we are at the top of the central room, we need to make a quick stop as we have ice arrows. We can now freeze the water flowing from the SE ceiling at the top of the room that was blocking this door. Through the door we can use. Use ice arrows to create a path to this green valve and open the water flowing through the green pipes. There is also a Stray Fairy hidden in the rafters at the top of this room, which you can find by creating ice platforms in this corner to line up with the hook aim on the ceiling back in the middle room with the water flowing in the another address.

Now we can enter the other two corridors that are color coded green, as before. We want to head to the upper green first. The room has another huge waterwheel and the start of some really interesting puzzle ideas. If you swim to the ledge, there is an elevator you can ride up to the huge water wheel. You'll want to use an ice arrow near the top to freeze the water. from the roof, which will stop the waterwheel because there is no water to push it. There are two lost fairies to find in this room. You can hook the shot to a treasure chest in Al Cove near the top of the room to make the first one nice and easy. the second is a little more complicated, you will want to head to this platform along the wall, then use fire arrows to melt the ice and make the water wheel move again, this will allow the platform to move along the wall, which should put it into position. to hook the shot to that torch this second Al Cove, once you have both you will have to go back into the water, go up the elevator again and freeze the water to stop the water wheel, this will also have the effect of stopping this giant paddle that creates a nice bridge to the next door, the next room has these seesaw type platforms and the use of Fire and Ice arrows for this puzzle is really wonderful, the water will flow from the ceiling pushing down one side of the platforms, so you have to be strategic in freezing and thawing the water flow to create the path to the next valve.

I really love this puzzle and my only complaint here is that I would have liked to see this idea expanded even more, but I guess. We can only do the dungeon for so long before it becomes repetitive. If you have any trouble with the puzzle, here's a quick tip: one side of each seesaw platform is decorated with this red outline which will always be the side you want to stand on when you pick it up, there are three of these seesaw platforms, so You'll probably use a lot of magic power, but this room has you covered, in addition to the usual boxes and pots, there are two Choo Chos that will continually respawn with magic and arrows, so don't do it. worry about running out after you reach the valve, don't forget to follow this pipe to NAB another fairy left in that Treasure Chest, as well as one hidden under the first seesaw platform, that first platform will also be used to reach the next door.

It takes us back to the room where we found the map, but with the water flowing in the other direction, that path acts as a quick shortcut to the central room once again, now there is only one path we haven't taken yet that has a single green pipe. Upon entering it, the last two stra fees are hidden in this room, also follow the pipe up and out of the water and you can turn the last green valve that activates this water fountain and takes us to the boss's door upon entering to the boss room. Go down this hole and down to the arena where the boss will immediately start the battle. this is gorg gorg George, he's a big mean ugly fish, this is probably one of the few cases where I don't mind the changes in the 3DS version which is strictly from a visual standpoint, his concept art is incredibly cool, but in the game it looks so wacky.

In the 3DS remake they added this cool looking skin and really honed in on the details here so I think it looks great, the fight here is pretty straightforward and while he may be my least favorite boss of the main bosses in this game, I think it's still the sameFun enough as always. The dungeon item is not necessary, so save your magic power. Instead, you can shoot him from the main platform using normal arrows. it will stun him allowing you to jump into the water like zor link and deal some damage or if you're feeling bold you can skip the arrow part and try to face him head on but that will most likely result in you getting chewed up.

Get up and spit, keep this up long enough and he'll move on to the second phase of the battle, which is really just him unleashing his little minions to chase you, but they pose almost no threat so you can keep it up. with the same tactic of shooting him and going on a zor link and yes we have to address the 3DS remake which continues to disappoint me in some ways, they took their mistake from the last boss fight but did it the other way around, look they got everything . Fighting in Goron form is about maintaining momentum during a high speed chase, you're on the offensive and need to be quick to keep up, so stopping your momentum to use your bow was an interruption that felt awkward with gorg, the fight is on the opposite side, you're defensively isolated on this platform while he tries to jump at you and knock you into the water, so when you stun him and open him up to attack, run up to deal some damage and back away quickly.

For a good combat flow there is no push to Stop, so this is not an interruption, they somehow decided, instead of alternating and going in and out of the water, that the fight would be better if they segregated those sections for the In the first part of the fight you simply have to shoot him to make his eyeball come out and then just shoot him. If we're still using the bow to shoot him here, then what's the point of even having that weak point? To make the fight more interesting, he will then synchronize the platform and we have to do the rest of the fight as Zor Link, which could have been cool if they hadn't completely weakened Zora by swimming.

Instead, there are these mines that you need to clear. trick him into swallowing like some kind of King Dongo underwater fight. I can see what they were going for, but this is very inconvenient to do and these mines detonate too easily, so there's a good chance you'll take damage yourself. I don't understand. how did they get these two boss fights to go backwards from each other so yeah the 3DS version continues to disappoint me if you like it I have no hard feelings towards you but to me this is all so contradictory in both versions he will go.

We go down after enough hits and we shrink and just explode, we get our heart container back, we get George's remains back and we get out of here, we briefly see the third Giant and as Gossip begs him that we need his support, the giant just replies to help To our friend, gossip assumes it means the giant room, but that's not exactly what he meant. More on that, another time Great Bay will be at peace again, the turtle can sleep and the gang will be back together, don't forget to turn in those lost fairies to get your upgrade. defense in the form of Outlined Hearts that arrive at a much better time here rather than halfway to Ganon's Castle, so that's the dungeon, while the Great Bay Temple has a pretty harsh reputation.

Personally, I never found it to be as difficult as, say, the water temple. Following the color-coded doors and pipes really helps with that navigation challenge, especially when you consider that you really only have to take on one half at a time. It may seem daunting, but using Lyx Zora's abilities in the N64 version is at least combined with some really creative stuff. The puzzles that use fire and ice arrows together make this one of the most interesting aquatic-themed dungeons in Zelda history. Plus, the overwhelming freedom of being able to make ice platforms anywhere is one of the best uses of ice arrows in the entire series. and like I said, it feels like the precursor to Breath of the Wild's cryonis rune, of course it's not perfect.

Some suggestions I have, the game would have benefited greatly from the Wind Wakers or Breath of the Wild system of switching a lot of types having to pause to equip. Fire and ice arrows over and over again can be tedious, not unlike the tedious feeling of equipping iron boots in a lot of time, while those games allow you to change arrow types very quickly without pauses and that would have been a great help here. I also feel that the game is sometimes too generous with its collected items, there are so many pots and boxes with magic and arrows and in some cases, in addition to them, there is Choo Cho, who will continually respawn with those collected items in a room like the which has the Seesaw puzzle.

I appreciate it because of how much magic power a puzzle consumes, even if done perfectly, but in almost every other room it feels a bit harsh. I'm not saying there shouldn't be item collecting at all, but tone it down. Guys, if you're going to deny the risk of running out, then why bother having a limit on your arrows or magic? But hey, that's me. I'm almost always looking for more challenge in my Zelda games, so maybe you guys feel like it takes away some of the stress or you feel differently about it, okay of course, I played this on the N64 and I think the swimming weakened The 3DS makes dungeon crawling so much worse, the fluidity of its movements feels so good in the original and that good feeling counteracts the stress of traversing these narrow hallways and solving puzzles.

It's a balance. The new swim is so terrible that it increases stress on top of sailing instead of relieving that stress, leading to an overall worse time. I know I'll keep I'm upset with the Remake, but it makes me very sad to see something so wonderful be dismantled and left to die because of this. I have to give the dungeon two separate ratings overall despite the dungeon's challenges because of all the cool things it does in the original. I actually like it a lot in the remake, though, because they nerfed the swimming and nerfed the ice arrows and then made the boss fight boring and awkward, I don't like it, which is saying a lot because I even openly like it. the water temple but hey that's just me this is my personal favorite dungeon in the game it has a fan favorite reputation for a reason but before we get to the dungeon itself there's a lot to do including more than any of the dungeons up to this point, first if you've done it.

We still haven't made sure to get the Gorman Brothers G Mask on Milk Road, otherwise this creepy guy won't even let us head to Iana Canyon. Next, we'll want to make sure to head to Iana's Graveyard, where Find this big, bony boy, play the Awakening sound and he'll get up and start moving. This is the Captain. When you get close to him, there are flame barriers and stye children that will stand in your way. You can stun him with your bow to give yourself more time, but once you reach him and attack him, it will only take a few hits before he gives in and will shed some light on the situation here.

There was a war in Iana some time ago. Some time ago now they are all dead but their spirits are restless and that is why the conflict continues. He will ask you to tell his men that the war is over and put an end to the conflict. This gives us the captain's hat. Now during the night we can use the. mask to interact with these stale kids on the night of the first day we can order these guys to open this tomb there are good things to get each night by actually doing this, in particular a piece of heart on the second night and an empty bottle on the third However, what is obligatory, let's take a look at the tomb the first night we will fall into this underground cavern where we will have to face an iron fist.

Now we fight these guys in a row of time and here. They are still some of the toughest enemies out there if you have the Golden Sword, however you should still be able to take care of them quickly. Then we will meet the spirit of one of the composer brothers, this is flat, he will ask you to face him. his brother with whom he had a fight and played her the song he wrote, then we will learn the Song of Storms. Okay, now let's go to the Ican Canyon proper if we show this creepy guy that we have the Gars mask.

They will let us climb up by providing this tree as a hookshot target, then we can use ice arrows to freeze these octo rocks and hookshot into the trees along the sides of the canyon and up to the top, this is the Haunted Kingdom of Iana, it's okay. Pause to talk about this place for a second. This is one of the most absolutely creepy and creepy places in the entire series and I love just adding to that haunted vibe that is the G. Every once in a while, gossip will mention that you may feel thirsty. by blood in the air, which is worrying enough on its own, but if you wear G's mask, one of these guys will show up.

The G's are apparently spirits of spies who were from an enemy nation during that war, when they appear they initially think you. You are their leader, but you realize it pretty quickly before they attack you, they are not difficult to defeat, you just have to block their attack and hit them once, but still their presence is unsettling, they can give you some pretty useful clues, however, they also As usual, the cursed area theme returns in full swing with its most terrifying rendition, but the other versions certainly fit their own types of danger, but this one has shades of horror in the song that begins with this terrifying buildup, the piano strings are deep and resonate in the chorus. the voices sound like ghosts howling in the wind in particular this part here is chilling it's just chilling now you'll notice this lonely house surrounded by gibdos which is apparently the home of a lonely father and a child who live there oh we want to move on the way. from the river where the water source should be, we will face in this cave Sharp, the other composer brother, who plays us a nice song that will kill us, thanks just a little trivia, but if you play him the healing song, he He will relax for a moment saying he feels at peace before continuing to play showing how far away this place is.

Instead, we play him The Song of Storms according to his brother's request and he will have a migraine and also the flow of water will be restored quickly, thanking him by saying that his brother's song broke the curse on his soul and reiterating how the dead here need to rest now with the water flowing, this water wheel will be activated which plays the music in this music box and Yes, it is the most annoying song in the game. This song drives away the gibdos. We can use the stone mask to sneak past this little Pamela and enter the house where we will meet her father.

This half-man, half-gibo is such a disturbing sight. Don't attack him, although we can play the healing song to restore him to his normal state, which creates the gibo mask. This is a very emotional moment in the game. Presumably Pamela has been living here with her father as a zombie locked in the closet for a while what a nightmare, it's okay with the gibo mask, RADS and gibdos won't attack us, the next part is one of the most tedious search missions of the series, so here's the first thing you want to start with. I suggest you go south. swamp, you'll want to buy five magic beans from the deu seller.

Here you will also need a blue potion which you can get for 200 rupees from the Deku vendor in the canyon or for free at the potion shop by bringing the heg mushroom below. Make sure you get another C Dust. You can buy them at the Bomb Shop as Goron Link for 50 Rupees. With at least those three things we can head to the caves below the well because we didn't have enough nightmares at the bottom. from the well in enough time we have to deal with this gibo infested Labyrinth now fortunately we are not in too much danger with the gibo mask in this cave system there are tons of closed doors and the gibdos will open their door in exchange for some material item, with With the exception of those beans and that potion, we can get almost everything we need here, but those first two gibdos require the potion and the beans, so save yourself some grief and come prepared.

I also suggest having at least four. but preferably five or all six bottles now, as having the extra carrying capacity will reduce recoil, meaning there will still be a lot of back and forth, however at the end of all this we will find this room lighting the torches. to reveal the treasure chest that gives us the Mirror Shield, it works the same as it did back in the day, but that functionality is put to even better use in this game. More information about that, soon it will be put to good use right away, of course, we can activate this. solar switch to reveal a ladder and shine the light on this sun blocker to remove it from the way.

Now we can follow this staircase upwards and weWe will find it in Iana's Castle, yes, so it is not the Stone Tower yet, but another mini dungeon that you need. Before we get to the main one, we can use the Mirror Shield to create a shortcut in and out of the castle to the cannon, but otherwise, let's get in safely. The first thing I have to mention is check out these sweet dance moves. Ican Castle is quite simple. but as far as mini dungeons go, it's among my favorites. From this hall there are three paths. The center path is blocked by this giant sunblock that we'll come back to later.

The same goes for the path to the south, so the north gate is our only option. there is a fallow chess room which is pretty simple, this switch opens the door and you don't get crushed, we can literally fly through this room and we will be up and out on the balcony, we will want to fly to this switch which will open the sunroof on the interior of the south chamber. Now, heading back inside, we can remove the sunscreen from the south room. By the way, with all these creepy undead enemies, we can use the mirror shield to basically shoot them all and it will be overpowered. fun one that I really wish Ocarina of Time had taken advantage of, then the next room takes us to a mini boss fight against a wiiz robe now we fight a blue one in Snowe Head twice and this red one doesn't mix things up too much so just shoot him like before and you'll be fine now we can take the stairs to the other side of the balcony and use the powder magazine.

I said we needed to cut a hole in the ceiling here, this allows light to enter the hallway so we can unlock the final central path and face the mini dungeon boss. This is AOS du Iana, the king of the Kingdom of Iana, and here is his Footman, they will raise the curtains and challenge you to combat in a fun way if you wear the captain's uniform. But iOS will be confused for a moment thinking you're K, but then realize you're wearing a mask because you're too small. I love that detail. Okay, first we have to face the two Lackeys.

I suggest using fire arrows to burn. the curtains so you can use the overpowered goodness of the Mirror Shield to deal some damage; Otherwise, if you played a timeline and fought hardcore enemies in that game, then this battle shouldn't be a challenge for you, just make sure when they are. go down to use the Mirror Shield to burn their bodies once they are done and the king himself will face you with the same tactic for him, however, he has more variety of attacks since he has a kind of icy breath in addition to his sword, but If you stick with him, you'll be able to take him down the same way once he's down, the fouls will start arguing and he'll shut them up by saying that this kind of bickering is what caused their kingdom to fall into ruins and their spirits to persist.

High GH becomes quite real when he asks us for that link to break the curse of his kingdom, the source of which is in the stone tower. He teaches us the element of emptiness that allows us to shed an empty shell of ourselves instead in the form of these strangers. statues in combination with our masks we can create up to four empty shells that will be needed in the stone tower for some interesting puzzles. Such a cool mechanic like this. This particular shell gives me the creeps that face G though those of the Transfiguration. are cool so the next thing we need to do is ascend the stone tower to reach the actual entrance of the temple along with the hook shot and use the void elegy to press these switches and move these blocks we can do our In the On the way to the tower, I wish this part was a little less tedious since we're going to play that song.

Many times, luckily, there is a warp statue at the top, so you only have to do this once, but it's still a long but worthwhile walk to the dungeon entrance. Stone Tower is, in my honest opinion, the cream of the crop when it comes to Zelda dungeons. It's unique in what could be considered her gimmick, but more importantly she does what every final dungeon should do. Every mechanical detail and gameplay element that the game offers us so far and makes good use of them, some compare it to the Spiritual Temple of Arine of Time which has two dungeon elements and in the same way you have to explore the dungeon in two halves, but while those were just two sides of the same building, Stone Tower puts a brilliant spin on all of this, as did the dungeons that preceded it.

Stone Tower also requires us to make a transformation to the dungeon itself, but this isn't just raising a platform or changing the flow of water, this is the most brilliant dungeon alteration I've seen in a Zelda game and an idea that I really can't. We've reviewed it since then, but we'll talk more about that soon. I can't praise Stone Tower enough. but then again, knowing my challenge pension, it makes sense that this is the hardest dungeon in the game, as it should be, and the dungeon that will take the longest to complete the architecture. As for this dungeon, it definitely returns to a much more temple-like feel with huge statues.

And the iconography where it differs from previous dungeons is that I have a hard time pinpointing a single room as the main central room. You could justify making the Foy, this big vertical room, and this bridge room all be core rooms, since I'll probably go through all of them, but none of them feel right saying that. However, I actually see this as a nice reorganization of the previous dungeons and a testament to how much more complex the design is here. Stone Tower still trips me up sometimes and that's great, there's purpose and thought in every room so it's just not a dungeon you can rush through.

You have to stop and think about your actions and make good use of your map. Honestly, it's wonderful, let's quickly talk about the music here, it's one of my favorite dungeon themes in the series, right up there with the Forest Temple, they take on the haunted chant choruses we heard in Ian Canyon and Iana's Castle and they build them to what is honestly just a catchy tune. The most interesting thing is that the instrumentation feels like a combination of all the instruments that are linked can play in their different forms with the mite taking the center of attention.

I realized that I had to play the Void Elegy over and over again just as I reached the dungeon. Interestingly, the elegy itself is actually the main part. of the song, so yes, we have our drums, this instrument that sounds similar to pipes, our strings and of course the ocarina, and that musical culmination really fits this level design perfectly, while each dungeon so far it has focused on just one. Of Link's Transformations, the Stone Tower makes use of all of them, with the highly knowledgeable Link being the most important, as always, let's not forget the 15 street fairies to collect, which are naturally the best hidden in the game.

Well, when we first enter the lobby, there's a few things worth noting, the most obvious being that change staring at us at this huge statue shooting. It will reveal this chest on the platform in the center of the room for our first Stray Fairy. There are three doors from the central room. Here the central door is locked. and if we go through the eastern gate, this path is blocked by this huge, huh, familiar sunblock, so the western gate is our only way to progress. This brings us to this winding corridor. The end of this hallway is barred, so there are a handful of switches. press down to open it, you can use void energy for these, but to save you some repetitions when playing that song, there are also these boxes that you can use for some of the switches, this brings us to this courtyard room which has two. doors, but we don't have the key we need for this one, so we can go down the stairs and enter the basement.

However, you'll quickly see that there's really not much we can do here, so make sure to bomb this section of the floor in the courtyard room to allow light to shine into the basement room. Now you can use the Shield mirror to ward off the sunscreen from here use the Goron link across the lava and get the map from that chest, defeat the Armos while you're here to reveal another chest that has the key we needed, it's also pretty easy to miss a Stray. Fairy in this room that you can reach with the hookshot, so make sure you grab her now to save yourself some painful backtracking later, now we can go back to the courtyard and turn the key in the locked door, this takes us to this room of the bridge. some sunscreens here that you can't do much with right now and this bridge with rails, so not much to do yet.

There's a treasure chest on this ledge that you can jump to if you time it right, but it's actually easier if you let this dexi hand grab you as it will throw you up there. That chest contains a key. Now, as Zora, you can swim down this hallway and enter this large flooded room. There are many things in this room. a lot of which we can't do yet, make sure to hit the switch at the bottom of the room, which will cause there to be a treasure chest up here, but on the roof we'll come back for that, don't worry otherwise you'll be able to Come up again.

On the surface of the water there is a ray of light that shines towards the ground and which we can reflect. This mirror gizmo will hint that there is something different about this mirror and if you try it you will see that there is some kind of delay in the reflection somehow, so what you can do is reflect the light on it and it will hold the light briefly so you can use the mirror shield to reflect the light again. This sounds more complicated than it is in practice. I swear. We will successfully remove this sunscreen that creates a shortcut back to the lobby.

There is also a chest here with the compass inside. While you're here, there's a frozen eye switch that you can activate with a fire arrow to reveal another chest on the ceiling, okay? Spend that key on the locked door at the north end of this room. The next room has some pillars that you can break as Goron Link to reveal this beam of light. You'll notice several sunscreens and sun switches in this room. You can use the Mirror Shield to activate the solar switches here, most of them will spawn enemies, but this one will instead reveal a treasure chest with a Stray Fairy;

Otherwise, this expands on the mirror puzzle we just saw in the last room, you'll need to reflect this light. from the beam to the first mirror of your Shield, to the second mirror, then out of your Shield again and to this sunscreen, this can be tricky to do since you have to be quick, but the premise here is a great puzzle, there is a second sunscreen off. next to which you can do the same for another fairy that stays, the next room is tricky, first you can cross the lava as Goron link to activate this switch and then at the beginning of the room we can use this deu flow to fly .

On the other side there are gusts of air to keep us afloat, although Deul Link doesn't have the greatest turning radius, so this room is easier said than done, that chest has a lost fairy, but otherwise we can head to next room, this next room is an arena. where the mid boss appears remember those ninja gero ghosts we have been fighting well, this is the G Master this fight is a lot like the previous battles but much more difficult, he is quite agile jumping constantly and can catch you off guard with his swords fire if you're not careful, as counterintuitive as it may seem given how fast he is, I actually recommend not aiming to catch him, instead wait for him to jump into the air and use Hood bunny's speed to evade him and attack when land, that's just my tactic, although with enough persistence he should go down fast enough and he'll tell you that there is an emblem outside the temple that we can activate with golden light that will rearrange things and then he explodes himself, talk about flares for How dramatic it is that the door will unlock and a chest will appear with the luminous arrows of the dungeon items.

This completes our set of dungeon items with the bow and our different types of arrow. The next hallway has a rather strange layout, but we can pass through for now. We'll end up back in the bridge room from before, but now, in the center of that railed bridge, there's an Igor blocking our path, so we'll have to deal with him. It's not as tough as it looks, even if you just shoot it in the eye with light. a bunch of arrows and it will go down, this reveals another treasure chest with a fairy and lets us through the door which takes us back to the lobby real quick before we follow Master Gerom's advice to activate that emblem outside that we can return to . the bridge room in the outer section and use light arrows on these blocks, there is a switch on the east side that reveals achest on the west side, yes, another fairy left, now we can head to the outskirts of the dungeon and sure enough, use the switches. to move this block it is revealed that the red emblem use light arrows to activate it and everything will rearrange itself as the entire dungeon flips, so if you can't tell the entire dungeon is now flipped i.e. all those doors and treasure chests that we could see. on the roof before are now accessible to us Can I just talk about how brilliant this twist on the dungeon alteration idea is?

This effectively doubles the dungeon and it was already a pretty large scale dungeon to begin with with this mechanic, however we are in for some really fantastic puzzles alright so we head back to the lobby, at this point you can only access the east door, we can enter and use light arrows to remove the sunscreen. We'll meet in the flooded room from before, except for me. I guess all the water fell from the skylights here there are some of those treasure chests on the roof now we can take a nap for more lost fairies there are some deu flowers to help us navigate here but what we'll have to do is go down that corridor to the dexi hand and press that switch to reveal a treasure chest containing a key.

Now we can use these gusts of wind to reach the top of the room and spend our key on the lock. The next hallway is our first test of some investing puzzles. There is an emblem we can shoot here with light arrows. We need to flip the room. Use formed Goron to cross the lava and then flip the room again to reach the door. The next room here is where the investment puzzle really takes shape. There's this push block. that we need to push towards this place in the opposite corner of the room, however, the floor has all these ledges and unevenness, so it is not as simple as it seems at first glance, we will need to use light arrows and rotate the room, push the block rotates the room push the block blocks a little more you get the idea it's a bit repetitive but this puzzle is very creative with the block in place the door opens and takes us to our second boss fight medium and it's another wiiz rope that we've already fought a lot against these guys, so it shouldn't be a challenge right now, but if you want to mix things up a bit, did you know you can reflect their attacks with the Mirror Shield?

It's a little tricky to get him to hit it, but that's the way it is. It's possible, but shooting him with the bow like before is the easiest option. Once he's dead, a treasure chest with a missing fairy will appear, but more importantly it acts as a grappling target to reach the ladder on that ledge, which takes us to the courtyard room, but since it's now inverted, don't fall, there's a pose here that you can shoot with light arrows and you'll want to fly through and into that corridor where we previously activated the push blocks, there will be a handful of enemies called Death Armos here that will try to stomp on you, but everything What you have to do is shoot a light arrow at their little symbol to turn them around and then they will smash their own heads into the ground, killing themselves. a switch to extinguish this Flame so you can GRAB that key now if you go out the other door of the Courtyard, it will take you to the Bridge room Now inverted, this is where I tend to stumble a little because I get overzealous and want to head towards the boss door immediately.

There is a door that will take us back to the lobby, but first we can use these deu flowers to cross this room, go through the door, go through this closed corridor and come face to face with a third mid-boss, this is Gomez, man, he just oozes that creepy factor. He is surrounded by bats that will protect him from damage, so you can't just rush him with your sword, but you can shoot him with light arrows to disperse the bats and open up. Just be careful because he has a good swing with that scythe, although with our improved defense he will only deal one heart of damage after a few good hits, he will fall in the most dramatic way, which will earn us the boss key, okay, Go back a little to the bridge room and we can cross again with these decorative flowers.

If we take that side door into the Foy and press the switch, another treasure chest will be revealed on the roof, just be careful of the weapons of death, here you can. Hookshot the chest, and if you haven't already, make sure to activate the solar switch using a glow arrow. At this point, it's a straight shot down the hallway to the boss room, but if you're looking to complete it completely, I suggest it. Quickly crouch here to revert the dungeon to its non-inverted state to NAB some of those straight fairies if you haven't already, as some of those chests will only appear when the dungeon is inverted, but will only be accessible when the dungeon is normal.

Otherwise it's a bit annoying, if we cross the upper door in the lobby and enter the bridge room, we will have a rematch with Igore and gain the second item of the dungeon, the Giants mask. This is super cool, but sadly underused next door. A hook shoots down this corridor and through the boss door we will be in the room where we fight The Go Master, but now the skylight is some kind of portal, so when we jump, the portal seems to take us to some kind of desert land . Covered by a sandstorm, the boss wastes no time making an entrance, or should I say bosses, yes there are two, this is the twin mold, a pair of giant sand snake insects, this is another case where the Concept art is so good, but they look a little lackluster. in the game, but hey, still, the scale of these guys is so cool, each of them has a weak point on their tail and head that you can shoot, which is a difficult but totally viable way to defeat them, However, it is much easier and simpler.

It's more fun if we use our newly acquired Giants mask, this will transform Lincoln into a giant pit, in giant form, our magic power will be constantly consumed, however, you can break these pillars and ruins to get magic drops. You can just cheese this fight by hacking and when attacking them, they move quickly although they are constantly going in and out of the arena so a little patience is required but you will get past them soon. It's chaotic but also a lot of fun to do. There's something about getting gigantic and overpowered that just feels so good in this fight and having the option to choose whether or not to wear that mask or just attack them is cool, but okay, let's tackle the 3DS remake for a moment first, the portal looks a lot cooler and the twin molds themselves really benefited from the Graphical Update, the changes to their designs are super minimal, but those faces look especially scary in a great way, it does a lot more justice to their original concept art, that He said the giant eyeballs added to the bottom of one of them look so silly and out of place. why the giant eyeballs why always with the giant eyeballs the changes to the boss fight here are also the most dramatic of the four and I think I like the ideas here conceptually, but not in practice.

First, the game now retains the giant mask until after defeating. the first twin mold making blue here our first Objective, now we are forced to shoot his giant eyeballs with the bow to make him vomit this larger eyeball which we can then attack head on once he is down, then we get the mask of Giant and we can grow. to face the red one, except, oh, giant mask, what did they do to you? Well, first of all, we can't use our sword as a giant anymore. I guess they decided Link should go full King Kong mode instead of something about punching links like this.

It seems so bad to me now that there are also a bunch of baby twin molds that will also come after you, but what you'll want to do is try to clumsily hit the red one here by removing your sword completely. Nerfs your range, however, this feels like it. awkward, once you've hit him a lot, you'll have a chance to grab his tail and hit him a little. I will confess that this may look very good to see, but doing it, that's another story, this is what bothers me. the original Giants mask, since you retain your sword and normal mobility, is quite intuitive, this is just an extension of Link's abilities, this version removes those abilities instead of adding them and replaces them with something that is clunky and awkward to make, oh, and it takes Forever Twin Mold just refuses to die here.

I'm fine with the show and while I prefer to be able to choose how I want to be able to defeat Twin Mold, making use of both gameplay options isn't a bad choice in theory for the remake, but When we get the Giants mask it should help in the fight, not hinder it, if they gave it to you mid-fight and then let us attack him during the second half with an overpowered Fury, that would be awesome and I think that's it. what they were looking for, but because they removed the original mask mechanic and replaced it with this set of slow, brutal, awkward moves using the Giants mask it just doesn't seem rewarding to me, so yeah, Majora's twin mold fight Mass 3D gets a big thumbs up.

As for me, once they're both defeated, they'll pick up the twin. The mold is still a strange detail, but in the original version it's blue and on the 3DS it's red, which is the perfect analogy for my own feelings about this fight. The original is great and the Remake makes me angry at least they look good. Don't forget that heart container and we'll see the last giant now he says call us and we'll head out. The curse is lifted. I can, the dead can rest and the four giants are freed. Don't forget to return the lost fairies. as usual, which will give us the Absolutely Overpowered Great Fairy Sword, which is very similar to the Great Goron Sword from Ocarine of Time, except it's purple, so that's the one IMO. dungeon, Stone Tower, which earns a reputation as one of the best dungeons in all of Zelda.

It perfectly embodies what a final dungeon should be, it's creatively challenging and combines all the elements we've learned so far. What I think I love about this is that while Ganon's Castle once did the same thing, it's much more segmented and straightforward with literally labeled rooms referencing its dungeons, Stone Tower meanwhile implements those ideas of design while maintaining its own identity and assimilating these ideas without segmenting them, and still manages to throw incredible new mechanics at us while doing so. It feels much less like we're simply reviewing what we've learned so far and instead like a triumphant culmination of our own growth as players.

It's Sublime of course, I have niggles, they were packed into something so cool with these room swapping puzzles and Honestly I wish we had seen even more of them. I know the dungeon can't be that long, but come on, we were looking at something amazing here and it's actually limited to a few select rooms. Another detail and this is even more of a problem. with the N64 itself, but because the dungeon uses all your abilities so well, the amount of items changing and stopping is quite extreme, there will be a lot of pausing to equip arrows, equip the hook, the Ocarina, the different masks that you get.

The idea that something the game could have benefited from was simply having more inventory slots. The controller has unused buttons in the form of the d-pad and the L button, although they can be a bit awkward to use, it would still be less tedious than pausing everything you have. Look no further than Wind Waker HD to see how it could work, as the game maps some of the most important elements to the d-pad. The 3DS version works better with this, but the N64 version is really pushed to its limits. regarding item management, but alas, speaking of having to do repetitive things, Elegy of the Void, while a great song that ties in thematically with the dungeon music, also wears quite a bit thin in my opinion.

As far as its use goes, it is basically the staff of Samaria. from a link to the past, but instead of creating these blocks they are these statues. I guess it gets the job done, but you'll get tired of hearing it before you even get to the dungeon. Minor detail, but this also bothers me. You can get to that one. staircase in the inverted courtyard room, but you can't get in, they could have made it inaccessible or locked or something. I just don't like invisible walls. Final complaint, but Gomez is too easy, he's a great mid-boss and I would have just loved it if he posed more of a threat overall, although those complaints are pretty minor.

Stone Tower is a Timeless classic with one of the best designs in the series and is my personal favorite dungeon in all of 3D Zelda. It's that good, so this game. it doesn't have a final dungeon like Ganon's tower for example, so justI want to talk about the end of the game and conclude with Majora's Mask. If you're a completionist like me, then you'll want to complete all the side quests and whatnot. good things at the top of the clock tower on the last night, you can play Oath to Order to call the Giants, get the most chilling dialogue in the entire franchise, and end up on the moon, where you can challenge Majora if you have all the masks you need.

You can get the extremely powerful Mask of Fierce Deities, which makes the fight too easy, but it's a cool reward for that extra effort; otherwise it ends up being a really cool final boss fight either way, Shatow Romani is very useful and gives you unlimited magic. Obviously, Zelda is my favorite franchise, but beyond that, Majora's Mask is one of my favorite games of all time. It somehow manages to build on what many consider the best Zelda game ever improved, improve it, and also act as a wild departure. It has some of the best writing, the best music and the deepest characters and story, between the looping 3 day cycle and the moon looming over us at all times, there is constant tension, stress and relief as you You move through the terminal, there is so much tragic loss.

Joy Freedom fun helplessness determination and hope this is the game that aims to not be just another Zelda game years before Nintendo decided to break its own conventions this is the installment that showed us a darker and more mature side of the series which does not Not talking down to your audience, it was difficult, but you earned that challenge and overcoming it is bittersweet, heartbreaking and triumphant. It is a masterpiece, one of the best works of art I have ever experienced. This is the problem with the 3DS version too, many puzzles are simplified and skills that were great in the original are removed or watered down in the new version.

The original respected that you had it in you to do this. Navi was there to hold you in line for time. but she's gone, and while gossip certainly grows among us, she's initially a reluctant partner, but the remake decides you need to be portable again, doesn't respect the player's skills or intelligence, and betrays what makes the original unique. when implementing tropes. which are already tired and omnipresent in the series. I've heard people say that its remake better meets the original vision of the game and achieves what the N64 simply wasn't technically capable of, but I don't think that's true if Speaking of graphics, sure, but do you really think that Aluma had a vision in 2000 of making swimming worse?

No, what I think is that Nintendo commissioned Greso to make this game, but we worried about its sales, they decided they should make it more accessible, but Breath of the Wild is more accessible because of how free Majora's Mask 3D allows you to be. traps you in a linear path instead of allowing you to try to be creative, it shoves the right methods down your throat all the time. I was so excited when they announced the remake. but when I finally got around to playing it it was one of the biggest disappointments of the game for me.

I always try to keep an open mind about these things. I love other Zelda remakes, so I swear this isn't just a case of nostalgia blindness, obviously not. Everything here is bad, or the graphics look good and being able to move forward in time more accurately is great for side quests where you don't want to stand still for hours, but that's where the game improves or adds quality. life improvements rather than removing or replacing great ideas, those changes for the worse are on display in these last two dungeons and I think it holds back what could be a great experience, this turned into a rant.

Sorry, this video is already too long. and I apologize, this is a summary of the major's mask. It's a wonderful game and definitely worth your time. It's one of my all-time favorites and I hope you like it too. There will be more dungeon design videos coming soon and I hope you like them. Stay to see it. Next on the docket is Wind Waker and I'm really excited to get to play it. It's also a great game. Alright guys, I'll see you and then I'd like to take a moment to thank you. Watch this video and a special thanks to the members of my channel here on YouTube as well as my followers on Patreon, you guys make all of this possible so thanks to the gray magician Brenda Tetra, Justin Midnight, Naomi Bunny and Stefan , as well as all the people.

Whose names are you seeing on the screen right now, you guys are amazing, thank you all so much for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day, bye.