Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - Part VI

 The Temple of Droplets features puzzles where you use sunbeams to melt ice. The amount of imagination that went into this game knows no bounds.



 Strange thing is, I get this like five minutes into the dungeon. I thought this was on track to be the shortest Zelda dungeon ever, but I was wrong.

This is eerie. A giant, frozen enemy.

Thump. Thumpthump.

The element is frozen too. Looks like we're going to have to thaw this place out to get anywhere.

Link stumbles into a room full of antlions. Don't worry, antlion is tame.

The icy floors in this temple make things very difficult. I remember getting pretty lost in the Ice Palace of A Link to the Past back in the day because of the block/switch puzzle that spans multiple floors. Of course, you can just skip ahead to the palace after that, get the Cane of Somaria, and completely gimp the Ice Palace...

After all of that, our hero must battle a gigantic frozen clitoris. What's worse, it has electricity coming off of it. That's right, it's...

...a Super Saiyan 2 gigantic frozen clitoris! DOES NATURE HAVE NO SHAME?

Link takes it down and wails on it aggressively. No wonder Zelda left him.

Here's the lantern...isn't this usually an early-game item? Here we are near the end of Minish Cap, so the timing is odd. It can melt ice, though, so it's more useful than usual.

Most of the frozen treasures in here turn out to be rupees, which is pretty disappointing because I'm already maxed out. My kingdom for a 999 wallet...or something to spend these rupees on.

After opening the skylight in this room, the element gets thawed-out. The only problem is...

...so did that giant octorok, and it stole the element. Son of a bitch!

This is just like in Romancing the Stone when the crocodile eats the stone and tries to slither off into a nearby lake while Michael Douglas furiously tries to drag it back to shore.

He spits roks, like all octoroks. The difference is that they're gigantic.

Win that battle and not only do you get the Water Element, you also get to meet the ghost of the king.

The soldiers of Hyrule Castle are now hostile and attack when Link crosses their path. What gives?

That's three elements down, one to go. Now Link can split into triple images, like Tenshinhan.

Here's the final sword skill trainer, who teaches Sword Beam. The weird thing is that Link usually knows all of these skills already in the other games...

I wonder if this is intended to be a prequel to some of the other Zeldas, hence why he's learning these things for the first time here. The Zelda timeline is super-convoluted.

The Sword Beam... is kinda anemic.

Oh My God, it's Tingle. This nefarious bastard robbed me blind so many times in Four Swords Adventures.

"You look thuuuu-PER" says Tingle when reached for comment.

Robbing me isn't bad enough, now he wants to fuse? You HAD your chance, Tingle!

Link reluctantly gives in. Tingle is hard to resist.

"KOOLOO...LOOMPAHHH"

After whoring himself to Tingle, Link ends up with another bottle. WORTH IT.

That makes two. I should have gotten these earlier, because three of the four are super-easy to get. The fourth is behind a huge sidequest, so I might skip that one.

Now that Link has Tien Power, he can push really big blocks.

Ezlo Amore proceeds to taunt Link. I don't know if that's such a good idea. The boy could snap at any moment!

Dampe: He's French.

Our next stop is the graveyard, where there's quite a bit of plunder to acquire. There's even a dungeon here, but it's more of a mini-dungeon than anything else.

More ghosts. Link swats at the air furiously, to no avail.

Now Link is doing kinstone fusion with GHOSTS? Where does it end?

"Source of the flow", heh

Next, I must climb a huge rock wall. I've tried rock-climbing in real life, and it wasn't fun.

Looks like there's a giant goron lurking in the background. I couldn't get anything to happen, though. It's likely part of a sidequest.

At the very top of the mountain is some sort of cloud town. That's right, Link is walking on clouds. How, you ask?

It turns out that the pure of heart can walk on clouds. There are so many metaphors at work here.

Here's the completed world map. It isn't much of a world map, and lacks the enormity of the beefy, man-sized world maps of yesteryear. At least, on the surface.

Link uses the Mole Mitts to feel his Animality (as the infernal Mortal Kombat Annihilation would say) and become Mole-like.

This gliding mechanic really reminds me of Wind Waker.

The cloud adventures continue, as Link can ride tornadoes from one cloud area to another.

...God?

No, not quite. These cloud people are more like the NSA.

Ruins filled with fun-colored birds are the next destination in the hunt for tornadoes.

I'm all for legalizing it, but I don't know if I like the way they're rolling it out.

In any case, this is the Palace of Winds, home to the fourth and final element. Much like the original Final Fantasy, the Air element is last and is found in a flying fortress.

After defeating a bunch of Wizzrobes, Link gets the coolest accessory ever: The Roc's Cape. Forget about the Roc's Feather, this is the real deal. It lets Link jump high into the air, which means he can scale all of these cloud platforms with no problem at all.

These fence squares remind me of Super Mario World. Here, they're used to strategically flip to avoid obstacles and stay on a platform. Every time I think this game has thought of everything, it debuts a creative new game mechanic.

With that, the item screen is complete...sort of. I have every tool in the game, but I could use more bottles. I'll say this: A complete item screen in a Zelda game is fun to look at.

Next stop: The finale.





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