This week I continued my adventures through Hyrule on the Geek's old Nintendo 64. Having defeated the weird spidery monster poisoning the Great Deku Tree in my first session, I returned to Kokiri Forest to say goodbye to my friend Saria and all the other Kokiri who I never really fit in with anyway, and after some dicking around in the Lost Woods while the Geek hunted down his strategy guide, left the forest altogether to fulfill the Great Deku Tree's last wish: that I meet the Princess Zelda in Hyrule Castle and go save the world.
Never underestimate the power of putting your own name on the save file. I still feel incredibly personally invested in this quest. (And maybe that's why it took me to the end of the visit with the Geek to come back to the game--I get anxious about returning to stories I've left in the middle. Well, that and Desert Bus was finally over and no longer taking up all my brain space.)
I feel like I've forgotten a lot about the controls (note to self, right shoulder button raises the shield), so I'm glad this session didn't have much combat. I did have to fight off an endless wave of skeletons in Hyrule Field, though. Waiting for night to end so you can go to a new area is annoying.
Something that isn't nearly as annoying as I expected is Navi's reminders of where to go to follow the plot. It was actually refreshing, coming back after a month away from the game, to have someone dedicated to telling me what came next. (This is why I've never finished a main-series Pokemon game. I start it up after a few weeks away and immediately get lost.)
Another not-so-annoying thing was the stealth sequence that takes Link up from Hyrule Castle Town to the castle proper. The hardest part was at the beginning: finding the vines to climb up the cliff, going down into the guardhouse and then finding the exact right path up the second hill in the dark. After that, the puzzles with the walking guards weren't a problem at all.
I met Zelda and Impa, learned about Zelda's prophetic dreams and how Ganondorf is Obviously Evil and after the Triforce, and now I'm part of some kind of conspiracy to save the world. I need three Spiritual Stones and a better ocarina to get into the secret back room of the Temple of Time (which looks remarkably like a Christian church), and the next stone is somewhere on Death Mountain. On the way there, I stopped at Lon Lon ranch to meet Epona and make the Geek play the cucco lottery for me, because at that point my hands were too tired for me to be any good at a timed challenge.
Next stop, Kakariko Village, home of--guess what?--more cuccos.
Some irrelevant statistics:
- Link now has three potential love interests: Saria, Zelda, and Malon.
- I've learned two songs: Zelda's Lullaby and Epona's Song.
- I have one Spiritual Stone, given to me by the Great Deku Tree,
- I've had one moment of intended inventory weirdness: the egg that Malon gave me before I snuck into the castle hatched into a rooster, which I had to remember to use to wake up her father. The rooster is labeled "Chicken," not "Cucco." (Note to self: tweet at Clyde Mandelin to see if he knows anything about this.)
- I have one bottle, which contains two quaffs of Lon Lon milk, and have had the temptation to try Reverse Bottle Adventure exactly once.
- I know where one Fairy Fountain is, but can't get to it.
- I have found one Easter egg: the portraits of Mario, Peach, and Yoshi in Hyrule Castle/
And some interesting animation choices:
- The Skull Kids in the Lost Woods stare at you solemnly when you climb up onto a podium without an ocarina.
- Ganondorf's red and green palette clashes appropriately with the yellow and purple livery of Hyrule's royal guard.
- When Link learns a song, he stares at his ocarina with the wide-eyed expression of a kitten producing its first hairball. The Geek says "You would too, if your ocarina started glowing in your hands!" Maybe the first time, yeah, but not every time thereafter.
- After I learned Epona's Song, when the cutscene ended Epona was walking toward me and pushing me along with her head. It took me a second to realize I was now in control of Link again and could just walk sideways. We're friends now.
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