...SHRINE... An island secret in the shrine...
Hidden Things
Last time we got the Hookshot, which is basically the last major key item for exploring Koholint. The remaining three items do little to nothing when it comes to accessing new areas, so the Hookshot gets the rest of the fun. Naturally, the first thing I did was getting the new Magnifying Lens. I've heard that it's more useful now, but I couldn't find anything so far except for the expected new reward from the hidden Zora in Animal Village.
You actually get a Secret Seashell from him, which is very fitting for the character and a good replacement for the photo you got in the DX version. He also gives you a hint to look for another guy like him at the beach...
Of course this was my goal anyway, because I wanted that new Boomerang asap. At first you still have to trade for an item on your X or Y buttons, reminiscent of the original. Fairy Bottles don't work here, so it was the Shovel again. But you can then actually buy it back for 300 Rupees to finally have both items in your inventory for the rest of the game. Nice! And you certainly want to invest this, because there is still more stuff to find with your Shovel.
On the GameBoy at this point you were potentially done with the seashell hunting, so the Shovel didn't have any major usage any longer. It was fine to give it away. In the remake you certainly want to keep all items, however.
Unlike the Hookshot, the Boomerang wasn't nerfed brutally. It still got nerfed or changed a little, however. You can instantly kill smaller foes with it, like Octoroks, but stronger ones are stunned first. I haven't tried this on everything yet, but in case of the ghosts it stuns them first and kills them afterwards. And it's the same for the plants in the Goponga Swamp, maybe for all bigger enemies.
It also keeps giving you fairies from killing Anti-Fairies, as well as from these weird flying or hopping "Bone Putters" that appear in the Color Dungeon. Sparks on the other hand don't always seem to work. Sometimes they turn into fairies, sometimes they don't. I'm sure there is a rule to it, but the Boomerang doesn't seem like the best healing tool in the world anymore, because you can't heal yourself in every room with Sparks now. And it will be interesting to see, whether the Boomerang still creates fairies in Hero Mode or not. Probably not, though...
Away from the shore, back to Mabe Village, I already studied the dark secrets of the island. And this is what I got:
→↑↑←←↑→↑
This is a new one! This combination didn't exist in the original game and it might even be now entirely random. Either that or they have added a couple of new variants or changed the old ones. Though, I hope that the old routes are still part of the game somehow. Ideally it would be random, so you can't just guess it, though of course this then sucks for speed runners.
The Trendy Game had another new figurine and it seems that you get one per dungeon and then maybe a final one at the end (probably BowWow). The ones you get after a specific dungeon even seem to be themed accordingly. After the Angler's Tunnel it unlocked the Cheep Cheep and after the Catfish's Maw the Blooper. I bet that the Face Shrine will unlock the Shy Guy next.
lol...
This is always a curious part in the game, because both Marin and Tarin can't be found anywhere right now. Marin has left Animal Village, but didn't come back to Mabe Village. And Tarin is probably off looking for her. This has a good reason, of course, but I would like it, if the game had added a moment, where you can meet Marin at the Wind Fish's Egg or so. Let's see...
I even went up in the Tal Tal Mountains to explore the rest. In the infamous mountain cave that Link's Awakening expects you to cross multiple times I was a little bit surprised at the chest that requires the Hookshot, because you can't get back with the item now. It only attaches to wooden things and blocks in the remake, so skulls or rocks don't work any longer... Now you have to find another way back across the abyss, though that's easy to do.
However, the Heart Piece at the other side of this cave is now even harder to find than in the original, because it's actually quite easy to miss the cracks in the walls there. That's good, because I'm personally not a fan of cracking up all the bombable walls (this one used to be cracked in the original, however). More on this later...
And I finally found the anticipated warp point up in the Tal Tal Mountains...
It's on the eastmost edge of the mountains, right next to the cave with a Great Fairy, which is a plus. Still, a warp point near the hen house probably would have been more useful for taking short cuts. If I get the Flying Rooster later, I still have to traverse an entire set of caves to get the Eagle Key. But this is better than nothing and lets you return to the Eagle's Tower quickly, in case you want to do something else in between the dungeon - like healing up. But then again, you can do this right there with the Great Fairy.
I couldn't get past the flame thrower in the west mountains without the Mirror Shield, but I also didn't really try. Maybe you can do it with a fairy or the Secret Medicine... I leave this to others to find out. But if you can do it, you will be able to activate another warp point in the area and then potentially skip past Marin's rescue. So, I don't think you can get through the flames in the remake.
But in the area another one of my seashell suggestions came true. That's three out of four, which is a good quota and makes me happy. I always thought that Secret Seashells had to be in these areas when playing the GameBoy original and now finally I found something there.
Fun Time
As for the Chamber Dungeon, Level 5 gives you a lot of rooms... A lot of rooms with mini-bosses, like all four variants of the Master Stalfos and one for the Gohmas. Since they can now be defeated with the sword, it even locks you inside the chamber. And I got another one for the Slime Eel as well after clearing one of two new challenges.
I got another Piece of Heart here and at this point it was already clear that there will be 20 new Heart Pieces in total. I even found the rest of them before the Face Shrine, where I'm now only missing the final Piece of Heart from the original game. But it's nice that there are so many now, especially since they will be one of the few healing opportunities in Hero Mode. And this really adds to the environments, caves, mini-games and so on.
Apropos, there is of course one more new mini-game that has received major upgrades... the Rapids Ride!
It now has two disciplines: the Rapids Raid and the Rapids Race. Gotta love all those alliterations! The Rapids Raid works like the old version, just that you can now find a Piece of Heart and a Secret Seashell in addition to lots of Rupees. So, it's definitely worth playing the game now. The Rapids Race then asks you to traverse the Rapids Ride as quickly as possible, where the new Hookshot comes in handy. You basically hookshot through the whole place, where I landed a little over 31 seconds with room for improvement. But it still was quick enough to score both another Piece of Heart and another Secret Seashell.
I'm suspecting that the fishing might have Secret Seashells as well, so I probably should play this a little more...
Face Shrine
Sadly, this marks a small turning point for me. So far the remake was incredible and I almost had no complaints, while there are many new things to like. But I have to do some nagging after this dungeon, because they have changed certain things to the worse here. I've already discussed these things on my blog already, but I still need to put it out there again.
First of all, the dungeon looks and sounds incredible. I love the visuals, I love the new music, I love what they've done with the place. Except for this...
Why are there cracks on the walls here? These shouldn't be visible, because in the original you were supposed to figure out that there is a hidden room there. You even still have the Owl Statue giving you a hint about it...
But now this hint is more cryptic than the actual puzzle! "What does it mean, Nintendo? The eyes have walls? What?? Screw it, I'm not getting stuck in this place anyway, because it's eazy..."
Even the dungeon map simply reveals you the secret rooms right from the start:
I've already told you about how classic Zelda dungeons in the first NES game and Link's Awakening (as well as the Oracle games) had these "pixel arts" for their dungeon maps. The Face Shrine was supposed to look like a mask or face and the "eyes" on the ingame map didn't show you any rooms. It was confusing and I even got stuck in this dungeon as kid for quite a while, because I couldn't figure it out.
It was an interesting puzzle, which might only work once, but a puzzle nonetheless, where new players won't face any riddle now. They will only face cracks in some wall and do what they always did with those. It's pointless and gives away the dungeon's main item too easily. I'm not happy that they've done this...
At least the puzzle with the Knight figurines is now an actual puzzle that can be solved methodically.
At first I was completely confused and just kept throwing them around wildly without any success, because in the original these things were mainly a game of luck... But now you can detect some differences and there are actual spots of how to throw them to make them stand upright. This will be helpful for speedruns, I suppose.
But as nice as this change might be, you get another bad change right after... The chests with Secret Medicine in the last three dungeons now will stay closed, if you already got one:
Since I'm not playing on my own Switch, I won't bother with these, but this will be certainly annoying for a 100% run, where you want to have all chests on the map cleared. In the least there should be an option to put it back or to keep it anyway. Or to use it manually in the inventory. Those things are super cheap, so there is no reason to keep them locked deep down in some dungeon. You won't want to come back to this particular chest in any case, because it requires you to hit a crystal switch on the other side of the dungeon first! This should have been another Chamber Stone or so.
The Goddess Nayru certainly wasn't with the development team, when they've remade this dungeon...
The Wizzrobes also seem to be a bit different now. I couldn't get the bomb timing to work, but now two arrows kill them. I thought it was four arrows on the GameBoy, so that's helpful, but I also might just remember it wrong, because I always used to use bombs on them originally.
And at first I was afraid that you can't kill the Pols Voices with the Ocarina any longer, but I was playing the Frog's Song of Soul, which I've also already gotten from Mamu. That didn't work in the original either, however. It only kills them, if you play the Ballad of the Wind Fish, probably because your performance is so bad, as Marin would put it.
And the special room in front of the boss chamber, where lighting all torches turns the Sparks into fairies (like the Boomerang does occasionally), still does work the way it was:
Overall the remake is very faithful like this, where it hurts to have silly changes, like screwing up the main dungeon puzzle or leaving Secret Medicines behind in some far off dungeon chest.
Facade looks really cool now, but the boss is still ridiculously easy, despite the buffs. He can hurt you now, if you are touching him, and the holes are much faster and aggressive, but his variant in Oracle of Seasons still was more powerful. Like in Seasons they could have made him drop these little spider enemies, which otherwise only appear once in the entire game. Or let him summon Shy Guys or something...
We're getting close to the end of the game. I'm already done with the new Heart Pieces, but there are still nine new Secret Seashells (and two old ones) for me to find, which is nice. I haven't been using the Seashell Sensor and I don't plan to, because it's too much fun discovering them on my own. I'm also curious about the other reward in the Seashell Mansion, because it can't be a Heart Container or a Fairy Bottle now, because that stuff will be gotten from the Chamber Dungeon. Hopefully it's not just another Chamber Stone, but something special...
Current Status:
- Secret Seashells: 39 (23 old + 16 new)
- Pieces of Heart: 31 (11 old + 20 new)
- Chambers: 110
- Chamber Stones: 3
- Challenges Cleared: 8
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