Let's Play Link's Awakening, part 20: Link's Face

Welcome back to the Face Shrine. Now, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who, faced with a choice between left and right, will go left; and those who, faced with that same choice, will go right.



I fall into the former category. Come to think of it, there are probably some people who don't have a consistent preference? Weirdos.



These guys are a pain in the neck. They pop up and shoot at you, and you can't hit them with the sword. If memory serves, you have to drop a bomb at the right time so that they'll be above ground when it explodes.



Or you can use the Hook Shot to stun them and follow up with the bomb. Killing them all opens up the door at the right. I know I just said that I always take the left path, but I don't want to go to the effort of getting that door open again if I don't have to, so I take it.



Inside I find 50 Rupees and an elephant statue. I try to lift it, but it's too heavy for me. I probably should have tried bombs, the Hook Shot, the Pegasus Boots, and so on, but I remember these things from when I was a kid and I'm pretty sure I know how I'll be getting past them.



Heading up the left path reveals that when I do get past that statue there'll be a treasure chest in it for me, then leads to a room with some bollards and one of those enemies that mirrors Link's movements. I think the trick with them was charging a spin dash and walking past them so you can spin and hit them in the back?



I have a new trick. I make a brief attempt to hit it with the sword while it's stunned, then just get out the bombs.



As per regulations, I take the left side exit, making all of no difference whatsoever. Lifting the pot at the top left of the room reveals a switch which opens the door at the left, allowing me to be dead ended by bollards. I go back to the switch and drop a bomb, allowing me to get past the bollards in that room before they rise, which allows me to get hit by two out of three floor ghosts at once.



I give arrows a go, inspired by the one floating here, but it takes four hits to take one of these guys out. Not good enough!



The Hook Shot/Bomb combo is much better. Now, how can I get the guy behind the bollards?



I get the timing wrong to blow up the enemy, but it activates the switch, allowing me to Hook Shot it. Having cleared the room, a chest appears.



It's the map! I take a look. Surprise surprise, it's laid out to make a face.



In the next room I assume there's another switch under the pots and smash my way through them. I realised as I was throwing the last one to the ground that I need to throw one at the door to get through, so I have to go back to the previous screen and up again to get more pots and move on.



Unable to get past the bollards, I am forced to take the right-hand path. This leads me to the compass, and a lengthy path past a chest and a stairway I can't reach yet.



At the end of the path is a room full of bollards. I head back to the switch to get them out of the way, then clear the room of enemies, causing a small key to drop. I haven't seen any locks yet, but I'm sure they're upcoming.



The bollards are out of the way now, but the door is closed and I can't open it.



I head down and start taking the paths I bypassed before. The first one gets me the fragment of a Stone Slab. The second one lets me use it:

Enter the space where the eyes have walls...

I mentioned at the end of the last update getting stuck in this dungeon. I'm pretty sure it was my failure to understand this clue that did it.



The room in the first screenshot is next to one of the eyes in the map face. It also has a conspicuous path dead ending into a wall. Put a bomb there, and you can enter the eye, despite it showing as an empty space on the map. I think I found this entrance as a kid thanks to the path leading into the wall, but never noticed that there was no room showing on the map. For now, I'm not opening that entrance. Instead, I head back to the first room of the dungeon and take the right hand path.



It leads to this room with statues on moving walkways. I get through with minimal injury.



I take a few more hits in the next room. My strategy of trying to dodge around the edges of the room is not a good one. Once all the floor tiles have broken, the door opens.



The next room has a closed door and a locked door. If I hadn't gone left and gotten that key, this would be a dead end. In fact, I suspect the intended path through this dungeon is to take a right everywhere. That would lead you to this locked door before you had a key, and to the writing on the wall before you had the stone slab. Going left got better results for me, of course, but finding the key before the door doesn't seem likely to be the creators' intention. The room beyond the lock is an apparent dead end.



Checking the map, Link is below one of the eyes. I poke at the northern wall and find a bit that sounds funny.



Kaboom! I'm pretty sure this is the secret I never found as a kid. There's nothing in the room to indicate the wall is weak, I don't think I knew about poking the walls with the sword, and the map doesn't show a room beyond. I didn't figure out the clue. Instead, I went all over the map, talked to everyone, tried everything I could think of, and eventually started the game over assuming I'd missed something essential at some point. Imagine my frustration when I did find the way.



I encounter the midboss of the dungeon. I take a little while to figure out what to do, trying and failing with the sword and Hook Shot.



Eventually my brain starts working and I realise I need to pick up the ball and throw it at the enemy, which I totally fail to do on the first attempt.



I take a few more hits and decide discretion is the better part of valour. I don't think the other midbosses have allowed running away, but they weren't reached by blowing a hole in the wall, either. I head for the other eye and blow open its entrance.



I'm not sure what the deal is with this room, but killing all the slimes makes a stairway appear and that's what I care about.



Whatever that thing is, it has me on the run.



I try to grind for hearts from the Goomba, but wind up taking hits from it and the big glowy thing. I have more luck in the second room, where there are two goombas to bounce on. I need to backtrack anyway, since the room on the other side is blocked by raised bollards.



You've got a more Powerful Bracelet! Now you can almost lift a whale!

That obstacle cleared, I'm able to reach the dungeon item, a more powerful bracelet. That's not particularly impressive, but let's see what it can do.



I could already lift pots, of course, but getting a fairy from this one is nice.



Now I can lift the elephant statues! And maybe those skulls in the desert? I'm not sure how this item is going to help me reach the next dungeon on the main map, but for now it'll be a big help with this dungeon.



I put it to immediate use to smash open this door.



Inside I score 100 Rupees and a path to the first chest I opened at the start of the level. I head back up the left side of the dungeon to another door I couldn't pass through before, and smash it open. Inside I find a treasure chest, some horse's heads, and a path upwards.



The chest gives 100 rupees, and taking the stairs leads to the island in the river rapids. The chest there hold a disappointing 20 rupees. Stepping back inside, the game reminds me again of where I am.



Getting the door to open requires throwing these horse heads until they both land standing up. If there's a way to influence how they land, I don't know what it is, so it becomes a matter of doing the same thing over and over until the RNG decides to help you out. Adding to the time wasteage, after you throw one you have to throw the other before you can pick it up again, and both reset after each pair of throws. Maybe I'm missing something here?



I head back to the entrance and up the right side of the dungeon. Once again, an elephant statue clears the way.



I fight enough floor ghosts to cause slowdown. The doors unlock when I finish.



I spend an embarassingly long time trying to figure this one out. I can't get past the bollard, but if I go find a switch and flip the bollards I'll be blocked from the stairs by the other ones.



I get there in the end. There must be a better way past the blade trap, though.



I think it's fair to describe the reward for figuring this out as underwhelming. The northern path eventually leads to a chest with a small key, which I'm sure I'll be using later.



I head back to the secret passage into the map's eye, and the midboss.



I struggle a bit with picking up the ball and throwing it accurately, but eventually manage to take the enemy out. It drops two fairies, one I suppose from the ball and the other from the thing (some kind of ray?) itself. As usual, a teleport to and from the entrance appears.



In the next room there's a stairway concealed by a statue and a path north. I go north and find myself in a familiar looking room. Checking the map, it appears going north has actually taken me three screens south. Dunno what that's about, but I head back up and take the stairs.



They lead to another underground passage. Let's see where Link ends up:



I'm in another room with what look like flying floor tiles.



I've improved my technique for avoiding them, at least. I get in a corner and use Link's sword arc to smash them all before they reach me. A small key drops when they're all gone.



I open the lock block and head north, using an elephant statue to open the door and reach a room with some more horse heads in it. In desperation I try to break the door with a pot, but it doesn't work.



Miraculously, they both land upright from the first throw, and I'm free to move on.



This gets me to another stairway.



This looks like a job for the Pegasus Boots!



I emerge in a room full of bunnies. The Hook Shot/Bomb method works on them, too. I manage to take out all three in one blast, in fact. Checking the map, I see I'm at the upper right, so I take the path north to get the chest there.



I learn that you can avoid these guys by pressing against a northern edge while they go by to the south, but not by pressing on a southern edge while they go by to the north.



I'm getting close to maxing out my Rupee counter.



Surely there's some trick to this? I like Link's Awakening a lot, but flipping a coin for over a minute until it lets me proceed is just bad.



Taking the southern exit at the last junction leads to the return of the cannonball slugs. I blow 'em up and move on to a chest we glimpsed earlier. For some reason Link swings his sword instead of opening it when I press the button in front of it.



Turns out you have to throw a jar at it to get it open, revealing the Nightmare's Key.



I use Manbo's Mambo to get back to the entrance, and the teleporter to get back to the midboss's room, then head through the underground path again to the tile room and head south towards the boss door. Not shown: a couple minutes of my wandering about randomly trying to remember which stairs I needed to go down and where they were.



Unlocking the next room is a simple matter of getting all the enemies to reveal themselves and be pulled into the hole in the floor. I manage to do it while only falling in once myself.



The next room has a laser gun in the corner that makes taking out the floor ghost a bit tougher than it has been so far.



I manage though, even dodging blasts as I push a block out of the way to make progress.



Using the powder to light the unlit lamps in the next room converts the enemies to fairies, which are just what I need before facing the boss.



Say, where is the boss?



Oh, there we go. Not sure if throwing the pot woke it up or if it just takes a moment to get going.



Hey dummy! Need a hint? My weak point is... !! Whoops! There I go, talking too much again...

The boss opens with an insult. I mean, give me a chance to not work out how to hurt you before giving me a hint, ok?



It opens by throwing everything in the room at me, which I get past by standing in the corner and mashing A. The room shakes throughout this fight, which really drives up the gif file size, so I've cut this one short a bit. Just imagine it running for about twice as long for the complete picture of the first stage of the fight.



Once that's done, it starts opening up holes in the floor. I don't seem to be able to hit it with the sword.



Bombs work, causing it to disappear briefly.



Okay, listen up! If the Wind Fish wakes up, everything on this island will be gone forever! And I do mean... EVERYTHING!

Four bombs later, it's all over. I guess this is harder than the Angler's Tunnel boss, but not much. As for its speech, I'm not sure what exactly "EVERYTHING" refers to. Link? Marin? Just the island in general? It does open up explicitly some questions about what Link is up to that have been a bit more subtle to this point. Even if this is all a dream, is it moral to destroy it just so Link can get away? I suppose I could end it here: turn off, decide Link lived the rest of his days in peace on the island after coming to understand what this boss was saying.



But I won't. Link adds to the percussion section of his orchestra of destruction.



Link is a pretty good triangle player.



This was kind of predictable, since I've been everywhere else. My sticking points in the mountains are a huge gap keeping me from the bird key, and a wall-mounted flamethrower blocking passage in the west. Not sure how the bracelet will help with either.



But that's a problem for next time.

Next Time:
That problem.

Map:


To-Do:

• Find yet another way to cross long gaps.
  -Cross the gap to the left of the Kanalet Castle gates.
  -Cross the gap in the cave below the Chicken Man's house.
• Find a way to get past cracked (but non-explodable) rocks.
  -Get past the cracked rock north of the phone booth near Write's place.
  -Get past the cracked rocks on Mt Tamaranch.
  -Get past the cracked rocks on the mountains east of Mt Tamaranch.
  -Get past the cracked rock blocking the cave entrance at the peak of the western Tal Tals.
• Do something with the Flying Rooster statue.
• Find a flying chicken.
• Poke suspicious walls with the sword.
• Reach the chest on the south-west island in the rapids.
• Figure out how to kill the moving skulls
  -Kill the moving skulls in the cave to the right of the lake above Richard's house.
  -Kill the moving skull in the cave under Richard's house.
  -Try lifting them again.
• Do something in the cave on the beach.
• Find a demon to double my arrow carrying capacity.
• Jump down the well in the Animal Village.
• Use "The Frog's Song of Soul" to liven up something unliving.
  -Try the Flying Rooster Statue.
  -Try at the graveyard.
  -Try the big skulls in the desert.
• Find something really heavy to lift.
  -Desert skulls.
  -Moving skulls.
• Explore the Face Shrine.
• Get the bird key in the cave below the Chicken Man's house.
• Use a key in the Bird Keyhole.
• Get past the flamethrower in the cave in the western Tal Tals.
• Go right four times, then up four times, in the passageways of the Egg.
• Find the eight instruments.
  -Find the Full Moon Cello.
  -Find the Conch Horn.
  -Find the Sea Lily's Bell.
  -Find the Surf Harp.
  -Find the Wind Marimba
  -Find the Coral Triangle
  -Find the three two remaining instruments.
• Play the eight instruments in front of the Wind Fish Egg.
  -Wake the Wind Fish.
• Get off the island, I guess?