After clearing Great Bay I went on today with completing Kafei's quest, which goes down really fast now thanks to the amazing improvement to the Song of Double Time. No annoying waiting times! Even better: you can now save right before doing Sakon's Hideout and just load your last savegame, if your screw it up. This always was my greatest fear, that I would fail retrieving the mask and then would have to do the whole quest all over again including all the waiting!
And I actually did fail the room with the block puzzle at the end. In the original it showed you in what directions you could move the blocks with the patterns on top of the blocks, but they changed this here and then I tried to push the wrong block, while standing on the red switch... which then resulted in a failure. Though it has been a while that I witnessed this event. Kafei simply gets trapped and you have to leave him. How sorry.
Ikana has always been the most atmospheric part of the game, but also the most cumbersome. But in the remake they changed bits and pieces to make things a little more convenient here and there.
Beneath the Well you now always only need one of an item. I went in there prepared with five Magic Beans and a Blue Potion, which was the requirement to enter the dungeon on the N64. But I only needed one Magic Bean and a Red Potion would have been fine, too. They also made some of the Gibdo's riddles easier and more obvious. Like the guy at the end, who wants milk, asks you now "give me what cows give you, if you play a certain song to them", instead of "give me something, which is good for your bones". So, he basically explains to you, how to get milk from cows. I really do miss the times, where games were about exploring and challenges. Today everything needs to be handed on a silver platter or else people will get impatient and consult the internet.
At Ikana Castle they changed the room with the falling, hot platform. In the original you had to quickly get to a Deku Flower and fly to a switch, before the platform drops. The timing was super close. Now you only have to get to the Deku Flower and then you can fly over the platform to the switch. This came in handy, because I fell down twice at the upper castle and had to go through this room a couple of times...
The Redeads inside the castle are probably the fastest source of money in the game. They always drop between 15 and 20 Rupees. There you can collect 500 Rupees in a short time, which allowed me to get to the 5000 Rupees at the bank and secure the Piece of Heart there.
Then comes the part, where you climb the Stone Tower. The Elegy of Emptiness always has been the most cumbersome thing in the entire game, having to play a song to do what you could do in a single swing of the Cane of Somaria in 2D Zelda games. You can walk out of the creation of the statue by pressing A, but this causes the switch below to be deactivated shortly. And then it shows you blocks moving back and forth several times...! Not improved at all...
At least the song is now easier to remember for me: YXYRYAX ...! I didn't even have to look it up. In the original it was just all some yellow notes, like with the Bossa Nova I never could remember the song well. But with the different button placement it was easy for me to remember. And I like, how it plays more like an actual instrument with these buttons.
It's also noteworthy that they added some Gossip Stones on your path up the tower, giving you hints about the Ikana River, what lies behind and ahead its stream. But it seems like the game now places you next to these Gossip Stones, if you happen to fall down the abyss. I'm not sure, if the original did that, but I believe you had to do it all over again, if you ever fell down...
The Redeads at the side are also now more silent. You can only hear them, if you go to the edge, where they are standing, using the Scarecrow's Song. In the original you could hear them most of them time, which always gave me this chilly feeling and I kept wondering, where they would be.
Now the Stone Tower Temple got some small tweaks here and there. They removed the small crates from the 2nd room, where you have to use the Elegy of Emptiness, and replaced them with one block. Originally you could mindlessly destroy the boxes and then get stuck, but they fixed that. They also changed the central water room, so that you can climb out of the water. But you also have to reach a switch using a dolphin jump, which can be annoying, if you don't have enough magic - another good example, where the force magic swimming simply fails. (Update: actually you can also reach the switch as the Deku, so never mind.) Also, the hand enemy in this place originally was supposed to help you out by throwing you back on land. Both in the normal and the twisted version of the temple. But now the hand just throws you away into the abyss...
They also enhanced the flying time of the Deku in the room right before the Garo Master, where you fly above the lava. In the original it usually took me a couple of tries until I got it right, but there it's easy. What wasn't so easy though, was the room before with the mirrors, which you have to load with light. The one, where you have to load two mirrors in a row, gave me some trouble, because no matter how long I would load the 2nd mirror, it only gave me light for a short moment... It took me a few tries to finally remove the block.
The Garo Master is also somewhat harder to fight than I remember. He's now nearly impossible to hit until he does that jump, where he disappears for a brief moment. You can abuse Deku Nuts, which I then did in the Secret Shrine of Ikana, but in the temple I didn't have any.
They moved the red emblem in front of the temple above the entrance, instead of behind the blocks. This is a lot more convenient, so I like it a lot.
But with all the changes, they at least kept all the Stray Fairies, where they originally used to be. This is surprising, after they made some of them easier in the first two temples. Stone Tower Temple definitely has some of the trickiest fairies, where you have to go back and forth between the two different versions of the dungeon. Great Bay Temple also had its fairies unchanged, I think, except for maybe one in the first room - I don't remember. But overall it seems like only three or four fairies got changed in total.
The new Twinmold fight was awful, I didn't like it at all. In the original you could either shoot the ends of the worms with Light Arrows or use the Giant's Mask, a simple but epic fight, now it's just some annoying mess. As a giant it keeps pushing you over, which is not fun at all. And the stupid 2nd half with the wrestling also took a long time to beat, at least five of those finishing moves, while the red worm also took tons of punches, before he came down... I doubt, you could do anything with Fierce Deity Link here, but I'll try.
New masks:
After defeating Twinmold, I quickly cleared the Secret Shrine of Ikana and thus completed everything you can do on earth, except for the new fishing. But I'll save that for later. However, for some reason my Bomber's Notebook didn't get a "complete" sigil yet, though I did all the sidequests... but I'll figure it out. Eventually you get it on the moon, which will be my next stop. I'm already fully prepared and I didn't even start a new cycle, so I'll just keep going.
And I actually did fail the room with the block puzzle at the end. In the original it showed you in what directions you could move the blocks with the patterns on top of the blocks, but they changed this here and then I tried to push the wrong block, while standing on the red switch... which then resulted in a failure. Though it has been a while that I witnessed this event. Kafei simply gets trapped and you have to leave him. How sorry.
Ikana has always been the most atmospheric part of the game, but also the most cumbersome. But in the remake they changed bits and pieces to make things a little more convenient here and there.
Beneath the Well you now always only need one of an item. I went in there prepared with five Magic Beans and a Blue Potion, which was the requirement to enter the dungeon on the N64. But I only needed one Magic Bean and a Red Potion would have been fine, too. They also made some of the Gibdo's riddles easier and more obvious. Like the guy at the end, who wants milk, asks you now "give me what cows give you, if you play a certain song to them", instead of "give me something, which is good for your bones". So, he basically explains to you, how to get milk from cows. I really do miss the times, where games were about exploring and challenges. Today everything needs to be handed on a silver platter or else people will get impatient and consult the internet.
At Ikana Castle they changed the room with the falling, hot platform. In the original you had to quickly get to a Deku Flower and fly to a switch, before the platform drops. The timing was super close. Now you only have to get to the Deku Flower and then you can fly over the platform to the switch. This came in handy, because I fell down twice at the upper castle and had to go through this room a couple of times...
The Redeads inside the castle are probably the fastest source of money in the game. They always drop between 15 and 20 Rupees. There you can collect 500 Rupees in a short time, which allowed me to get to the 5000 Rupees at the bank and secure the Piece of Heart there.
Then comes the part, where you climb the Stone Tower. The Elegy of Emptiness always has been the most cumbersome thing in the entire game, having to play a song to do what you could do in a single swing of the Cane of Somaria in 2D Zelda games. You can walk out of the creation of the statue by pressing A, but this causes the switch below to be deactivated shortly. And then it shows you blocks moving back and forth several times...! Not improved at all...
At least the song is now easier to remember for me: YXYRYAX ...! I didn't even have to look it up. In the original it was just all some yellow notes, like with the Bossa Nova I never could remember the song well. But with the different button placement it was easy for me to remember. And I like, how it plays more like an actual instrument with these buttons.
It's also noteworthy that they added some Gossip Stones on your path up the tower, giving you hints about the Ikana River, what lies behind and ahead its stream. But it seems like the game now places you next to these Gossip Stones, if you happen to fall down the abyss. I'm not sure, if the original did that, but I believe you had to do it all over again, if you ever fell down...
The Redeads at the side are also now more silent. You can only hear them, if you go to the edge, where they are standing, using the Scarecrow's Song. In the original you could hear them most of them time, which always gave me this chilly feeling and I kept wondering, where they would be.
Now the Stone Tower Temple got some small tweaks here and there. They removed the small crates from the 2nd room, where you have to use the Elegy of Emptiness, and replaced them with one block. Originally you could mindlessly destroy the boxes and then get stuck, but they fixed that. They also changed the central water room, so that you can climb out of the water. But you also have to reach a switch using a dolphin jump, which can be annoying, if you don't have enough magic - another good example, where the force magic swimming simply fails. (Update: actually you can also reach the switch as the Deku, so never mind.) Also, the hand enemy in this place originally was supposed to help you out by throwing you back on land. Both in the normal and the twisted version of the temple. But now the hand just throws you away into the abyss...
They also enhanced the flying time of the Deku in the room right before the Garo Master, where you fly above the lava. In the original it usually took me a couple of tries until I got it right, but there it's easy. What wasn't so easy though, was the room before with the mirrors, which you have to load with light. The one, where you have to load two mirrors in a row, gave me some trouble, because no matter how long I would load the 2nd mirror, it only gave me light for a short moment... It took me a few tries to finally remove the block.
The Garo Master is also somewhat harder to fight than I remember. He's now nearly impossible to hit until he does that jump, where he disappears for a brief moment. You can abuse Deku Nuts, which I then did in the Secret Shrine of Ikana, but in the temple I didn't have any.
They moved the red emblem in front of the temple above the entrance, instead of behind the blocks. This is a lot more convenient, so I like it a lot.
But with all the changes, they at least kept all the Stray Fairies, where they originally used to be. This is surprising, after they made some of them easier in the first two temples. Stone Tower Temple definitely has some of the trickiest fairies, where you have to go back and forth between the two different versions of the dungeon. Great Bay Temple also had its fairies unchanged, I think, except for maybe one in the first room - I don't remember. But overall it seems like only three or four fairies got changed in total.
The new Twinmold fight was awful, I didn't like it at all. In the original you could either shoot the ends of the worms with Light Arrows or use the Giant's Mask, a simple but epic fight, now it's just some annoying mess. As a giant it keeps pushing you over, which is not fun at all. And the stupid 2nd half with the wrestling also took a long time to beat, at least five of those finishing moves, while the red worm also took tons of punches, before he came down... I doubt, you could do anything with Fierce Deity Link here, but I'll try.
New masks:
- Couple's Mask
- Gibdo's Mask
- Giant's Mask
After defeating Twinmold, I quickly cleared the Secret Shrine of Ikana and thus completed everything you can do on earth, except for the new fishing. But I'll save that for later. However, for some reason my Bomber's Notebook didn't get a "complete" sigil yet, though I did all the sidequests... but I'll figure it out. Eventually you get it on the moon, which will be my next stop. I'm already fully prepared and I didn't even start a new cycle, so I'll just keep going.
1 comment:
So the whole Ikana ordeal ended with a low note because of the boss?
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