Four Swords Online, Round 5

Today was our final stream of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords via Nintendo Switch Online, where we had to get the last Hero's Key from Death Mountain and then finish Vaati's Palace in its 12 floor variant, which is big as all stages from the basic games combined. One last time of cooperating while screwing each other over.

This stream was already planned to happen a week ago, but the blue Link had no internet at the time (it should be no secret to the rest of the world by now that nothing is really working in Germany), so we had to reschedule. Today the timing wasn't the best for me, however, and I just wanted to be done with it, so if I sound more annoyed than usual, then that's why.

It also didn't help that blue Link's connection was lost in the middle of a stage and we had to start over. Normally, this wouldn't be much of a big deal, because the stages are rather short and replayable. But we were right in the middle of the Vaati's Palace marathon, the final stage, so this was a huge setback. Here it's not really the best how Nintendo just kicks you out of the game, instead of suspending it and giving the players a choice of what to do. The connection was only lost for a brief moment, where we could have waited...

What also annoyed me today is losing all your seed upgrades after a death. You already have the Rupee loss, but they also reset all your stats back to 0, which feels very punishing. Well, this gives you an extra incentive not to die, that's for sure. And if you die, then collecting the seeds will have value again. But depending on the level it might not be so easy to max out everything in the first place...

Anyway, first we had to conquer Death Mountain with 5000 Rupees, which is the most difficult of the Hero's Keys to obtain, because the fire levels can get very punishing. You really need to make good use of Rupee Fever, but if you're constantly hit by something, then that's not a given. We failed the first time, but we did it on our second try, so this went actually quite well nevertheless.

Since I already had 10 Medals of Courage and cooperation was key, I stepped back during Death Mountain, even let others have the treasure chests, but I still managed to snatch a medal after the second run for some reason. Maybe I subconsciously was still acting greedily... I mean, none of the other players were interested in the A Link to the Past connectivity, so the medals never mattered to them at any point. It was really only about getting more Rupees than others and scoring first place.

And the fight was on for the last stage! Here we didn't have to worry about Rupees any longer and you get more than you need anyway, so we were free to compete again. Still, we couldn't shake the mindset of "we need to maintain Rupee Fever" for some reason. I guess that it became a (good) habit after the Hero's Keys.

We also got sidetracked by the one floor of the sky palace where you have this platform that goes around the main room in a circle and you have to shoot eye switches to make chests appear. But there are a lot of blocks in the way, which can and will push you off, especially when there's lag to deal with.

I got stuck there for a moment, because there is a "safe zone" in the northeast corner of that parkour, a little past the halfway point. So, when you fall off, the game will put you there. Sounds nice in theory, but in practice there is no way of getting back to the beginning, unless you are able to beat the obstacle course, which took me a number of tries...

But ultimately we even got all treasure chests, because the blue Link ended up in the same situation and managed to shoot one last switch that I had missed. Teamwork! However, this was right before the connection loss, so this was all for nothing... And afterwards we've decided to rush things, because there was no need to go out of your way for Rupees.

We still finished with almost 25,000 Rupees, but collecting Rupees in this game is just so addicting. Well, I was torn a bit between "I don't really need them any longer" and "this is the finale, so I want to win this". And in the end the red Link (which was me) established his role in Hyrule's history as the one true Link:

I always liked the red tunic best, so this fits. And I would have gotten enough Medals of Courage for the Riddle Quest from this playthrough after all, but I really enjoyed having the Hurricane Spin Attack during this last round. It's just the best tool for annoying the other players and it was worth it for the "why do you have this?!!" reactions alone.

So, now I'm 100% done with Four Swords, for the very first time experiencing it as you should – by playing this game with three other people and in parallel to A Link to the Past, where one achievement leads to another. And I'm very happy about that.

Should you ever want to do the same, keep in mind that the Suspend Points store both the RAM of the game and the battery save data for some reason, unlike save states on conventional emulators. That's a huge pitfall here and the first thing I did after our session today was overwriting all existing Suspend Points, just to be safe.

In case of multiplayer you can't use Suspend Points, so you have to rely on the traditional battery save data. But now, if I were to load a Suspend Point from A Link to the Past, then all of my Four Swords progress today would have been lost... with no means to restore it (unless it's still there as your latest cloud save). So, keep that in mind!