Twilight Princess HD Wolf Link amiibo Records

Last evening I was running through the Cave of Shadows for another time, trying to score the best possible "record" basically by cheating. Now, when you reach the end of a challenge, it shows you the following statistics:

• Your remaining hearts
• Floor reached (either 6, 20 or 40)
• Hero Mode or not
• amiibo used on which floors
• Your time
• Best combo
• Damage taken

"Combo" means the number of enemies that you kill with one charge circle of the wolf. You can get into the dozens with Stalchilds or Chuchus. You can also only use three amiibo: Wolf Link, Ganondorf and Zelda / Sheik. It seems that Sheik just counts as using Zelda. I don't have both, so I can't try, but from what I've heard, Sheik counts as using Zelda a 2nd time.

Anyway using Zelda / Sheik heals you completely. Using Wolf Link refills the number of hearts based on your best record, which is solely based on the number of remaining hearts at the end. So, if you finish the Cave of Shadows having full 20 hearts at the end, he acts the same as Sheik and Zelda on your next run.

And it only lets you save a new record, if you surpass this number. So, if you ever manage to get to an end point with full 20 hearts, you can't do better and it won't even let you save new records afterwards. The Wolf Link amiibo only seems to save the number of remaining hearts (best: 20) and the reached floor (best: 40). So, the best possible result would be 20 hearts on floor 40. All the other statistics don't matter and won't get saved, not even Hero Mode.

What does this mean? You basically just have to get to the end, heal yourself with Zelda or Sheik and then call it a record. And that's what I did yesterday.

Welcome to the age of amiibo. Hope it will end soon...

Update: It really only lets you save, if your surpass the number of hearts. So, if you get to floor 6 with 20 hearts on your first time, it won't let you save records for floors 20 and 40! Then only deleting the amiibo data is an option, which will take away its ability to heal, making it more difficult to get a high score.

Update 2: It seems that Hero Mode doesn't get saved either. I edited the post accordingly!

Twilight Princess HD Miiverse Stamp Guide

While playing through Twilight Princess HD I was busy compiling a list of all 50 Miiverse Stamp locations. I really enjoyed this new feature, because it added some unique rewards, where you previously would only find Rupees.

You can find the guide(s) here:

English version on GameFAQs
German version on ZeldaEurope (PDF)

Usually I only write these smaller location guides in German for ZeldaEurope, so this is the first time that I'm also releasing such a guide in English. All my other English guides were about a more complicated topic such as the Magic Rings or the StreetPass battles, where no other English guide provided the same level of detail. So, I usually don't write "dull" guides like this in English, though here at least I dedicated a part of the guide about the changes from the GameCube and Wii versions. I tried to list, how many Rupees were originally found in those chests, which may or may not be interesting to some people.

By the way, you can find all my guides in English on the right side bar, where I added a list called "My Guides".

The Twilight Princess HD Diaries, Day 6

Today I had a clear step-by-step plan for the rest of the game:

1. Complete the Cave of Shadows
2. Master Rollgoal
3. Complete the Cave of Ordeals (twice)
4. Collect all 50 Miiverse Stamps
5. Finish the game

And I achieved all of these goals in this order. The full playthrough took me exactly 40:00 hours, though the ingame timer always runs, so this time includes pauses. I was never a big fan of the timer in Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, because it always gives me the urge that I should rush more and aim for a better time. And on systems like the Wii U it's not needed anyway, because there's play stats for that. Well, let's talk about the individual steps...

Cave of Shadows

The first 20 floors were pretty fast and easy, in fact I could do those without getting hurt in a couple of minutes, so I thought the other half of the cave will be pretty easy as well. And I couldn't have been more wrong. Floor 21 is where the nasty stuff starts...

Since I was underestimating the challenge, I was using the Ganondorf amiibo right from the start and I actually died for the first time ever in this game. If you play a trial dungeon like this, there's always a steep learning curve, where your first try might end pretty badly due to some deadly surprises. I did finish it on my second try, though I wasn't using the Ganondorf amiibo then. For Hero Mode I certainly will have to practice this cave more.

Anyway, the Cave of Shadows follows the art of challenging enemy combinations. Like Bulblin Archers and Redead Knights. The Cave of Ordeals has this as well, but there you can just kill the archers in advance and easily dispose the Redead Knights with the Ball & Chain. Fighting the Redeads as a wolf isn't exactly difficult, but if you get stunned, while archers shoot you, that's when you hurt.

I also had trouble with the Armos. You can't just block, when they enter their frantic self destruct mode, so it's easy to get hit by them. And they made a pretty clever trap with the Armos, where getting close opens rooms with rats and Baby Gohmas, so you can't just quickly kill them, when they wake up. You can lure them without opening the doors, however.

And the Baby Freezards also annoyed me, especially in combination with the Chilfos. There are easy ways to take care of those as a human, but here you have to fight them in close combat. Even Torch Slugs can be an issue, when they finally drop on your head. It surprised me that you can kill the Helmasaur with one bite in the ass, but their charge moves are quite dangerous, especially when you got stuck by ghost rats.

Unlike the Cave of Ordeals, this also features enemies from the Palace of Twilight, mostly Zant Heads. Floor 39 was pretty cleverly designed, a big finale with a floor that keeps changing and where you release new waves enemies with switches. This was pretty great.

So, then I finally got my Bottomless Wallet:

But this was not the only reward!

There's also a giant statue of Midna and Wolf Link at the end, which you can view from different angles and even jump upon:

I also figured out, how the "highscore" system works. It does show you all sorts of stats at the end, before you can save on the Wolf Link amiibo, like your remaining hearts, the amiibo used, your time, damage taken and highest combo. This looks all pretty impressive at first, but all that matters for the "record" are your remaining hearts. It only saves those on the amiibo and what floor you have reached. Because my previous run to floor 20 had more hearts left at the end, I could not save a new record. So, my data on the Wolf Link amiibo shows that I'm still at floor 20...

You can, however, just heal yourself right at the end to make sure that you have a better result. The Wolf Link amiibo will give you the stored hearts from your best run and the Zelda or Sheik amiibo will heal you completely, so save those for the end.


Rollgoal

Naturally I had to defend my title as Rollgoal Master and play through all 64 levels of Rollgoal again. Doing it with the Analog Stick was very similar to the GameCube version, so there's nothing special here.

In the past I complained, how it's silly that you have to go through the same courses eight times in total. All that's different is that there's a little less time and they keep being mirrored with every level. Time isn't really an issue though, I hardly ever need more than 40 seconds for one course, which is the time limit of the eight level.

So, when they announced Twilight Princess HD, I was hoping that they would shorten the process. Basically have the first level for the Frog Lure and then go right into the most difficult set. However, considering the new Bottomless Wallet and the reward, it makes sense that you have to go through all this effort, because Hena completely fills your wallet:

That's right. If you want to fill your wallet to the 9999 Rupee maximum, this is the best way to do it. It also fills very slowly, so you can probably walk around for a while with the sounds of incoming Rupees in your ears. It's very satisfying to complete Rollgoal in this version.


Cave of Ordeals

The Cave of Shadows made me actually appreciate the wolf form in some situations, so I would use it more often in Cave of Ordeals. In the past I would avoid the wolf as much as possible and use some of the items like the Ball & Chain a lot. Now, in this run I was constantly using Wolf Link for certain enemy types, especially the Chuchus. In human form I always got hurt from the large Chuchus, when they jumped around. But in wolf form you basically just have to hold ZL and keep spamming A. You will destroy all the gel without getting hit.

I was using the Ganondorf amiibo and didn't have any trouble. It was basically the same as playing in Hero Mode, because there are only four Hearts, which you can find in the Cave of Ordeals, enemies won't drop any. But then again, I played through the Cave of Ordeals so many times that I know all the tricks (except for the wolf ones, apparently). I also made a 2nd run right away, but nothing has changed there. So, here's my inventory with three times Great Fairy's Tears, which I like to have at the end of the game:

However, the Cave of Ordeals now has more rewards to offer than just potions and fairies...


Miiverse Stamps

I didn't have too look for any missing stamps, because it actually was the case that nearly all remaining stamps were gotten from the Cave of Ordeals and Hyrule Castle. The Cave of Ordeals actually gives you a chest with a stamp on each floor with the Great Fairy, so that were five stamps in total. Two more were found in Hyrule Castle and you now also get a stamp for collecting 60 Poe Souls, where it's nice that you're getting something else here than just Rupees, even though it's just a Rupee stamp.

The final stamp is gotten automatically after collecting the 49 other stamps...

I'm planning on compiling a Stamp Location Guide the next days.


The Grand Finale

Ganondorf looks like a giant ape, when he's stabbed. But we already knew that... The additional credits were completely underwhelming. Just a black screen in the background that supports the fact that this was just a lazy remaster.

In case you wonder, there's no reward or statistic about using the Ganondorf amiibo, it's an entirely optional challenge like the Cursed Ring in the Oracle games. I really got used to those blue hearts though, so now it doesn't feel right, when the hearts are still red, so I instinctively scan the Ganondorf amiibo at the beginning of every play session.

That's it for now. I'm planning on playing through Hero Mode later this year, probably after playing the 2nd Quest of The Wind Waker HD. I might also do some more fishing and practice the Cave of Shadows, but probably nothing worth another entry in this diary series for now. Thank you for reading.

The Twilight Princess HD Diaries, Day 5

Today was dungeon crawling day. I've played through Snowpeak Ruins, Temple of Time, City in the Sky and Palace of Twilight. After you've gotten out of the big sidequest phase, there isn't much to do after the individual dungeons. Their items only give access to little possibilities throughout the overworld.

I still enjoy this part quite a lot, because the dungeons in Twilight Princess were all very well designed. It feels "cool" to play through them, except maybe City in the Sky, where I feel like the dungeons drags on too much. And I mindlessly hate the part with the hands chasing the Sols. Ugh. I've played this probably a dozen times already, but I still get nervous during this part. At least the second half of the dungeon then feels very rewarding with the glowing Master Sword, which sadly only gets used in this dungeon.

Overall I remember pretty well, how this part of the game let me down, when I played the game for the first time in 2006. Even though Twilight Princess easily became the longest and largest Zelda game, it still didn't feel satisfying to me. Like I'm running too quickly from one dungeon to the next without any real substance. Like something is missing. It felt like the game was already over, before it really started, which is also probably due to its heavy linearity.

Anyway, Snowpeak Ruins certainly was my favorite of the lot, because the idea of a ruined mansion being a dungeon felt pretty original, at least for Zelda. And I like the puzzles with the cannon, as well as the sliding block puzzles. Those are always pretty smart.

However, the snowboard minigame afterwards gave me some trouble. It feels somewhat rigged, because even if you're in 1st place, you have to score a certain time in order to win or else your opponent will run you over at the last second, which looks so super unfair. I forgot that holding down A actually slows you down, so I was too slow and got beaten by Yeto several times, before I realized my mistake. It's also another one of these wall hitting minigames that Twilight Princess has. It's like the steering in the entire game is broken.

But with a little practice all the minigames are possible. I even got a perfect score of
61454 points in the fruit balloon popping challenge. I thought that this might give you another stamp, which would have been evil, but it's just the same 200 Rupees that you got in the original for this.

I'm really looking for stamps right now, because currently I have only 41 out of 50. Unless Hyrule Castle and the Cave of Ordeals somehow give you the entire rest, I'm missing something somewhere. Which would be exciting, because this means that there are some treasure chests, which I haven't found yet. I do have completed the alphabet though, I'm mostly missing some of the faces and other stamps. And there even quite some places, where I thought that I would find stamps there, but didn't, like any of the hidden chests inside Lanayru Spring. Or I thought that I would get many stamps during the owl statue search, but this wasn't the case - there are still just Rupees in most of these locations.

But there at least has been a significant improvement in that part: the checkmarks on your map for the owl statues will be removed one by one during your search. In the original versions they would stay forever and clutter your map with red dots... and I always wished that they would go away.

Now, the Rupee situation has improved significantly over the original game, but there are still quite a lot and I wasted hundreds of them. Especially giving Agitha the remaining Golden Bugs hurts a lot. You have to give them all to get the larger wallet, so you can finally carry more Rupees. So, she basically gave me around 1000 Rupees, which didn't fit into my wallet, and then she finally expanded my wallet, so it could carry 1000 more Rupees... What an evil girl...! It's not alone her fault though, the main issue lies within the fact that there's nothing to spend Rupees on, except for wearing the Magic Armor, which only really might be useful in the Cave of Ordeals.

And the new Bottomless Wallet won't be available until you got the light infused Master Sword in the Palace of Twilight. That's when the final section of the Cave of Shadows gets unlocked. Both the Cave of Shadows and the Cave of Ordeals will be my goals for tomorrow, as well as completing the final dungeon.

Right now I got:

• 57 Poes (Cave of Ordeals has the last three)
• 41 Stamps
• All Golden Bugs
• All Heart Containers

Fun fact about my Heart Piece hunting: there's this one piece that I seem likely to forget at Hyrule Field in Faron Province. It's right up there in one of the trees and it's one of the first Heart Pieces that you can get, but I've missed both the last time that I've played through this game and now. I had 42 Heart Pieces before going into the Palace of Twilight and I wondered, where I was missing one piece, thinking really hard all over the map, where I could have missed something. I don't want to use the Fortune Teller, because it feels like cheating and I should have memorized all the locations anyway. My inner compass then was drawing me to Faron Field, I just felt like I was missing something there and at night you could even see the Piece of Heart from a long distance... I guess, it's just untypical for Heart Pieces to sit in trees, which is why I keep missing it.

The Twilight Princess HD Diaries, Day 4

Today the big sidequest part continued and right after I made my previous post, I found the Ghost Lantern right away, which directly answered my question about its whereabouts. It's not really spectacular though...

The least spectacular, probably. Jovani simply gives it to you alongside the Bottle, when you score 20 Poe Souls.

When the use of Ghost Lantern was revealed, I labelled it as "most useless addition ever" and I probably have to take that back. Its usefulness shows in combination with the Poe counter on the maps, which I didn't know at the time. The lantern alone wouldn't be all that useful, but now you can look at the map and see what provinces have Poes left. For example there are a total of 19 Poes in the Lanayru Province, but the province many different areas including Lake Hylia and this is where the Ghost Lantern comes in. If you're only missing one or two Poes in a province, it lets you narrow it down to an area.

I guess, this is helpful for everyone, who never has collected all the Poes before. I still remember, how I criticized the whole Poe Souls quest, back when the game was released, especially when compared to the Gold Skulltulas in Ocarina of Time. The lack of an overview made it hard to help people, who were missing one Poe. It could potentially be anywhere and there was no way to narrow it down.

But the quest still has other issues, which weren't resolved with the HD version, mainly the lack of rewards and that there was no way to change the time of the day. If the lantern could do the latter, it all would be better. Unlike the normal lantern, you can't swing it, which feels weird, so I wish that they might add something that happens, when you swing the thing. Either make the time pass faster or summon nearby Poes during the day.

Next to collecting Poes, I also played quite some minigames, including the infamous Rollgoal for the Frog Lure. Using the gyro of the GamePad doesn't work very well, but you can just deactivate motion controls and play it with the Analog Stick, which works as good as on the GameCube. I only played the first eight levels and will keep the rest for when I have the Bottomless Wallet at the end of the game. In the original you got your wallet filled, when you've beaten all levels of Rollgoal, so that's how I plan to fill the 9999 Rupees.

Which didn't work as good for me were the minigames around around the Zora River. Someone in charge of developing Twilight Princess must have had some serious wall hitting fetish. If you hit a wall in these minigames, you screw up... In case of the bird minigame you even have to start over and the controls here aren't exactly awesome. With a little practice it's possible to get a highscore or even a perfect score. But overall this game has an issue with steering controls and running into walls... like with the giant boards in the Gerudo Desert, which came next.

Anyway, I did most of the sidequests at this point and before going into the Gerudo Desert I had:

• 21 Golden Bugs
• 23 Stamps
• 29 Poe Souls

My stamp collection grew quite a lot, but many of the stamps got located in the hidden grottos, where you now have a good reason to visit them all.

So, there was the pinnacle of the game leading right into my favorite dungeon of the game, Arbiter's Grounds. I just love the atmosphere and the ideas. Also, every time playing this dungeon I notice, how some rooms have a similar architecture to the Earth Temple, my favorite dungeon in The Wind Waker. Well, both dungeon at least share the "undead" theme, so this might not be coincidence.

After the Arbiter's Grounds you can play a new section in the Cave of Shadows and I was surprised by its visual quality. The first six floors that you can play in the beginning look identical to the Cave of Ordeals, but floors 7 to 20 have a new stone design, which is nowhere else to be found in the game and therefore looks fresh. It feels like what the Cave of Ordeals always should have been, because it certainly looked very monotonous. There's even more variety here, like floors with lava or water. And I like, how you're forced to fight enemies, which you usually would engage in human form.

So, I'm quite enjoying this feature, despite the amiibo nature. Though right now it doesn't let me save records on the amiibo anymore for some reason, which makes me worried. The whole point of the cave seemed like improving yourself and it's a shame, if I make a good run and can't save the progress.. I got to Level 20 with only losing two hearts, but it didn't do anything.

Well, I then completed the fishing, where this is still my favorite version of fishing in the series. I just love the fishing pond and that you can bobber fish everywhere in Hyrule. On the GameCube I spent a lot of time with the fishing, I even made a list of all the locations that had fish, which I might put on my blog later.

And then continued to my 2nd favorite dungeon in the game, the Snowpeak Ruins. Or maybe it's my favorite, I can't decide, both have great design. I even used to have savegames for all the dungeons on different GameCube memory cards, so I could always replay the dungeons at any time (and I did so quite often). This would have been a great feature for a remaster such as this one...

Anyway, these are my collection stats right now:

• 23 Golden Bugs
• 29 Stamps
• 45 Poe Souls

Only one Golden Bug and 15 Poes missing, but I know where they are, I just can't access them yet. And 21 more stamps to go, which is great. If I reach the end of the game and still haven't found them all, Nintendo will have done it right. I suppose that there are quite some stamps found during the Dominion Rod quest and I fear that there might be some stamps for perfect scores in minigames, e.g. the fruit popping flying wall hitting game.

The Twilight Princess HD Diaries, Day 3

Another day, another province. Let's jump right into the missing bugs from Lanayru:

• the insect at the lake house
• one of the four insects in the river tunnel
• one of the two insects in the center of Zora's Domain
• the insect in the upper floors of Zora's Domain

It feels more similar to the insects in Faron, where they also reduced some groups and removed an insect behind a house. The one at Zora's Domain saves quite some time, though, because you don't have to climb all the way up again.

Next step was the carriage escort and that didn't go so well for me, because the new Epona controls are too stiff. I've never ran into so many walls in a video game before. The horse gets stuck where it can and actually naming it "Error" was the most appropriate thing I could have done. That doesn't look good, after they've claimed to have improved the controls and after Zelda U apparently has very good horse mechanics...

To make things worse, I fell off into Kakariko Gorge when I tried to shoot the bombing Kargarok. It came too close, the explosion threw me off the horse and into the abyss. Now let me tell you what happens: you have to restart from the beginning at the Hylia bridge... Imagine my outburst of frustration.

Still, besides all the issues with Error, I decided to do some sidequests before the Lakebed Temple, mainly getting all the Bomb Bags. Without warping you have to navigate Hyrule in its entirety and make some good use of the horse. In order to get back up to the Zora River for example, where the rafting minigame is located, you have to get shot up by the cannon, go to the northern field and there use the entrance to Zora's Domain. It's quite the detour compared to simply warping up there, so usually you would want to beat Lakebed Temple first and get the ability to switch between forms and to warp.

Getting the Master Sword is the point where the game gets the most fun for someone like me, who enjoys exploring and sidequests. The sidequests are not really well distributed throughout the game – as soon as you get the Master Sword you can do a majority of them. You don't have to, but I personally like to do sidequests as early as possible. So, that's why I usually spend many hours collecting bugs, hunting Poes, exploring grottos, fishing, opening Malo Mart and so on, before going to the Gerudo Desert.

And... now also collecting stamps! You may not like Miiverse Stamps, but I think that this was the best addition to the game. It's much more enjoyable than just collecting Rupees and it actually now gives you a good reason to search for many of the treasure chests, including the ones in hidden grottoes. There they even added new chests for the stamps, instead of replacing the content of existing ones.

But even with the replacements I'm quite happy, especially because they addressed some chests that required some serious amount of backtracking. One was the chest up the water spiral in the east part of the Lakebed Temple. You can't get it right away, because you don't have the Clawshot yet, and then you have walk up the entire water slide with your Iron Boots on to get to the chest, which takes some time. On GameCube and Wii I always got mad that I went through the trouble for just some Rupees and not a Piece of Heart. But here you get a stamp and added something to your collection.

It's the same in the Goron Mines. There is one chest, where you also need the Clawshot, so you have to return to the dungeon at a later date. And now this chest gives you another stamp, which is nice... So far I got 14 stamps already, forming the word ANHOFWYKCUS in that order. There's also some stamps that you can get outside of chests from people, so there's a little more variety to it than I originally expected.

And it's not like losing any Rupees hurts. You still get tons, for example from Agitha, who I had a beautiful moment with. There's this scene, where she slowly walks home from the field south of Hyrule Castle Town during dusk. You can walk slowly right beside her and Link and Agitha will keep looking into each others eyes while romantically walking next to each other, which looks funny, because they are not looking, where they are going. However, their passionate stare walk got interrupted by a nasty Poe, which could do as it pleased, because I couldn't turn into a wolf in front of Agitha...

Apropos Poes, to my surprise they actually did add a Poe Counter to each region of the map. So, they did improve the Poe hunting somewhat. I haven't found the Ghost Lantern yet and so far I didn't get spoiled about its location, which is exciting. I have some theories, where it could be. I'm thinking that you either get it from Jovanni after a certain number of Poes (it's not 10 though) or you might find it somewhere, like the cave at Lake Hylia or Arbiter's Grounds. If you already know where it is, please don't spoil it in the comments. Finding this new item will be one of my goals for tomorrow.


I'll finish this post with the Zelda U easter egg, where they put some E3 2014 images into the store at Hyrule Castle Town. However, as soon as Malo Mart takes over, those pictures are gone. Probably a way of saying that Zelda U is expensive stuff...

The Twilight Princess HD Diaries, Day 2

Today I played through the Eldin part of the game and by now I have warmed up to it. At first I didn't feel like playing Twilight Princess again, but it's getting closer to the fun part. But that's really, what all this is: Replaying Twilight Princess. Unlike the other 3D Zelda remakes / remasters, I don't really get a new experience from all of this. When I played Ocarina of Time 3D for example, it was all about exploring all the new details everywhere, it was a semi-fresh experience and I enjoyed it a lot. Even The Wind Waker HD at least looked very fresh and beautiful with its new bloomy bloom everywhere.

Twilight Princess HD looks sharper, cleaner and has more detailed textures, but that's pretty much it. There's nothing really to marvel at. The lighting even is worse in my opinion, everything looks quite pale, like the brightness is always way too high. It's especially noticeable in the "dark caves", which are not dark anymore. You don't have to use the Lantern at all, because you can see everything clearly... (Update: that has been due to the ingame brightness settings. On the lowest it's as dark as in the original.)

But at least Hyrule Field looks very pretty, I give them that, especially the part around Kakariko Gorge. It feels like this is a nice little preparation for Zelda U, though I wish that Error wouldn't get stuck on every wall. I don't see, how they have improved the horse controls, if anything they made them worse, because the horse now steers too sharply.

Anyway, like yesterday I took note, what insects went missing from the Eldin Tears of Light section, all of them in Kakariko:

• the insect on the graveyard
• the insect inside the shop
• the insect in the upper inn
• the insect in the highest building

I'm not all that happy about this, because I actually enjoyed hunting all the bugs here. Now you have buildings that you can access as a wolf for no reason at all. If anything they should have removed the Tears of Light at Death Mountain, so you don't have to go all the way up there. But... I wouldn't have removed any of the bugs at all. You can't really compare this to the Wind Waker HD, where they have removed some of the Triforce Charts, because they at least replaced them with additional Treasure Charts. Here the bugs are just gone and some parts of the game went missing...

And at the same time nothing really got added. For example there's this house in Ordon, which always remains closed. Originally they didn't have time to add an interior to this house, but now they did... Why not finally satisfy the curiosity of the players here, instead of keeping a door that leads to nowhere?

I also would have liked, if you could select the Ordon clothes in the menu. In the past I imagined having a "Hero Quest" version of the game, where everything is more difficult and Link wears the Ordon clothes all the time, similar to the 2nd Quest in the Wind Waker. With them you would take double damage, so essentially their purpose would be the same as the Ganondorf amiibo. Too bad that we live in the amiibo age, where simple features like the Cursed Ring / Tights are only available, if you buy 15€ figurines. Sigh...

Apropos amiibo. I tried the Wolf Link amiibo for the first time, which only let me play the first set of floors of the Cave of Shadows, scoring 20 Rupees. And with only five blue hearts, it was quite tough. In the Cave of Ordeals there's always some strategy to avoid damage. But here you have to jump in as a wolf and charge your attack, which leaves you vulnerable. I like the highscore system and if it wasn't for the Bottomless Wallet, I would even label this as a good use of amiibo, but if you have to buy the figurines to complete your game, it's a bad thing.

The difficulty with the Ganondorf in normal mode also feels quite good, since I keep looking for hearts more often. Of course this is a usual problem early in the game. As soon as you got more Heart Containers and bottles, you probably won't notice the difference. And that's where Hero Mode will be interesting. But since I haven't played Twilight Princess in five years, it was a good choice to start with normal mode to practice.

Nothing much happened on the Miiverse Stamp front yet for me. I only found two more, one of them under water in the Goron Mines, where I'm really happy that they changed this. This was always one of these "can't get this now" chests, where my wallet used to be full. Well, you have to backtrack to this part anyway, because you need the Clawshot for another chest, but it's still nice that I don't have to leave any chests and that I occasionally find some stamps instead of Rupees. Probably the most exciting part about the remaster...