Hello again. Link starts his trip through Eagle's Tower by going left. Under a pot he finds a bomb, and under the floor he finds an enemy. I've been using the hook shot and bombs on these guys, but let's try something else:
Bomb arrows do the job. Link maybe got a little close for an explosive projectile, but I think the hit I took here was the floor ghost's attack.
Heading north my path is blocked by bollards. I try out the boomerang on the chest, but it doesn't open. Instead, I head back and take the right hand path, finding a room full of blade traps and floor spikes. The spikes are animated to move up and down, but you'll get hurt walking over them even if they're at the low point of the animation. It's a shame the Flying Rooster didn't come in with me. In the next room I put the boomerang to use on the enemies.
Finishing them off nets me a small key, which I put to immediate use, allowing me to reach the second level. Hey, what? All the other dungeons have been single storey, not counting the side-view tunnels between areas. I pull up the map. Although I can't see the floor layout yet, instead of a single eight by eight map there are four floors, each four screens by four. Anyway, in the immediate term my passage south is blocked by bollards. I could go north, and that's probably the intended path, but instead:
I get the L-2 Shield. This is probably what I need to get past the flamethrower on the other side of the mountains, and I suppose some beams in this dungeon that I haven't seen yet. I think the boomerang is the only diagonal ranged attack I have, so I assume this isn't how you're supposed to make this switch. At a guess, I'd say you're meant to use the hookshot or arrows from the upper level at the left, or else maybe you can fall down next to the switch from the level above? Speaking of which:
I throw myself down a hole. I think the squiggles in the hole indicate that it'll drop you somewhere rather than just taking off some health. It lands me on the upper level border of the lower floor.
Heading south gets me nowhere, but the northern path leads me through a screen I haven't seen before to a chest containing a small key. Also on this screen: Kirby. This comes up in an Iwata Asks:
Aonuma: You wanted it to be like Twin Peaks, but characters that looked like Mario and Luigi were appearing.
Tezuka: Yeah. And Kirby.
Aonuma: Did you get permission from HAL Laboratory?
Tezuka: I don’t know…
Aonuma: You don’t remember?
Tezuka: No, not really. I think they approved it, but…
Aonuma: Is that alright?
Tezuka: Umm, just what did we do?
Tezuka: It was for the Game Boy, so we thought, “Oh, it’ll be fine.” (laughs)
Nakago: And it wasn’t just Mario and Luigi, but something like Kirby, too.
Iwata: Huh?
Tezuka: Um… Kirby was in there , too. I think we asked for permission, but…
Iwata: Oh. (laughs)
Tezuka: But some people at HAL Laboratory might say they never heard anything.
Iwata: I suppose so. Oh well.
The shield, as promised, can be used to reflect beams. When I remember to face towards them. I take Kirby out with several hits of the boomerang, but nothing drops. In retrospect, I probably should have let myself get sucked in to see what would happen. Oh well.
The next room sees the return of the helicopter flowerpots. The boomerang works well, but only when they land. I manage to take several hits from the laser in the meantime.
Up the stairs we see the return of the horse heads. Link turns his back in disgust.
Thirty seconds or so of head throwing later, a chest appears and I get the map. Throwing them against the wall seems to increase the chance of getting them to land standing, but it doesn't guarantee it. They're just a nuisance. Anyways, let's look at the map:
Man, four floors! Huge! Actually, the four levels together make up the same area as the other maps, though I'd say a higher amount of the available space is used than in most of them.
Heading south I find a room with exits in four directions and a big pillar in the middle. I choose the left exit and find myself in a thin corridor. I thought I might be able to reach the left side by pushing blocks, but it doesn't seem to be so. I tank a hit from the spikes rather than switch to the feather, and head north to find the return of the matching suit enemies. They really went all out with annoying enemies for this stage, didn't they?
After what seems like forever but is actually just shy of two minutes (don't feel obliged to watch the gif in full, especially since it runs at 5/6ths speed), I make a match. I think the trick with these guys is to hold off on the initial hit until they're all in the same place so you can hit them all in one blow. I didn't do that. I tried leaving the room so they'd reset, but it didn't work (it probably would have if I'd taken the stairs to the lower level and back). Eventually I get two of them synchronised and from then on hit the two of them together, and I manage to match the third. A chest appears.
I get the compass! I've stopped putting it in, but rest assured the game is still telling me what the compass does each time, and about its special new feature. Looking at the map reveals I have five more chests to get, and that the boss is on the top level. Unsurprisingly.
Heading south is a dead end, so I take the stairs back to level one and head left. Have we seen goombas outside of the side view bits before?
Carrying on I get dead-ended again, so I head back to the stairs and go south to another dead end. This time I take the northern west exit and make it back to a room I've been to before. Last time I was here I entered from below and the bollards were reversed. I can't reach the chest, but the stairs and the north and east exits are available.
I go north, which leads around to another dead end, so I head back and take the stairs. The upstairs room has two of the wall crawling enemies, which are a reliable source of fairies now that I have the boomerang. Plus they respawn immediately if I change screens and come back, unlike other enemies. As a result, I can always get full health from them.
For some reason I decide to take the one-way exit north.
What was I saying earlier about annoying enemies? I take a tip from the thread and just hold up the shield to weather this attack. Now there's a hole in the ground that should drop me to the upper level of the lower floor...
Score! Well, sort of. One less chest outstanding.
I head back up and go the same way. Fun fact: every time you exit the second floor, the flying tile room resets. It took me a while to figure out what I needed to do, so I holed up in the corner with the shield and waited out these tiles maybe half a dozen times before finishing. Anyways, I get through the door eventually and pick a hole to drop through. Where will I land?
On the bollards that were blocking my way mere moments ago! I take a left and make my way around to the chest near the stairs. To my surprise, I'm able to open it while standing on a bollard, and I get the Fragment of a Stone Slab. Then I head around to the right, reaching a room that I never really managed to make sense of. What's the deal with the square in the middle? Dunno.
I head right, which takes me back to the room from which I first went upstairs. Circling around I reach the other side of the room with the mysterious square, which leads to I guess the burial chamber. Have there been mummies before this dungeon? Taking them out gets me nothing. I try falling in the hole, but it just loses me HP, confirming my idea about holes with lines in them leading somewhere.
I head back to the stairs and go south. This guy was a midboss in Bottle Grotto. I died twice to it. Let's see how we go this time:
Now that Link has the boomerang and almost triple the health he did before, it's a short fight. I get a key for my troubles.
The matching enemies show up again. I tried waiting for them to all stand in the same place so I could hit them all at once, but after a while it wasn't happening so I just hit them seperately and eventually got it. About 80 seconds passed between the first and second screenshots here. A chest appears, but I can't reach it. The blocks on the left won't be pushed. The ones on the right can move, but it doesn't do me any good.
I mentioned that enemies reset when you move between levels? So does the appearance of this chest, at least until you open it. I'll be matching these guys again. For now, I head back left to see if I can make my way to the north entrance of this room.
The room above the last has two sets of blocks on the left. I'm able to push some to get into the middle area, but the right set won't be moved, and even if it could, I can't figure out a way to get into the middle that will allow me to move enough blocks to get through. Observant readers may have spotted the completely obvious solution to this puzzle. At this point in my playthrough, I have not.
I've clipped out about three minutes between the last image and this one, spent fruitlessly pushing blocks and wandering about on top of bollards back on the ground floor. Note that the matching enemies have returned and the chest is gone. I go right and find another switch, stairs to the third floor, and a blocked path to the right (that I can unblock with the switch).
I hit the switch and head east. Using a key gets me up the stairs, and I hit the switch in the next room before jumping down into another room with a column in it. Still don't know what those are about.
Then I accidentally fall back down to the ground floor.
On my way back up I stop through this room and finally notice the cracked wall at the top. I try to bomb it from here, but can't throw a bomb over the blocks.
On my way to the north side of the cracked wall, this happens. I was holding the shield button with one hand, a glass of water in the other and not really paying attention. Whoops.
Next time I take out the skull thing first, then get in a corner, hold B, and have a drink while the tiles play out. Then I bomb through the wall. Once I'm in the next room I spend a little time trying to push the blocks before noticing that the southern wall is also cracked. I blow it, allowing me to reach the treasure room with the matching enemies. Now I just need to match them again and make it back here without falling down a hole in between.
Frickin' seriously? For serious? 20 Rupees? Frick.
The real prize is access to the right side of this room where the pillar is, but c'mon. Put something nice in the chest.
The riddle is solved when the pillars fall!
I decide to head up to the third floor, but when I get there it's blocked by bollards so I head back down. Despite needing to lower the bollards anyway, this is my last attempt at the upper levels before solving the riddle mentioned in the last screenshot, which changes the layout up there. So this LP won't be featuring the original layout of the upper floors. It's probably detailed enough without it, right?
I pick up the big ball on the pedestal and take it to the room below. I'm pretty sure you normally can't walk from one screen to another holding an item. I think rocks and bottles just disappear between screens. Anyway, pillars have to fall, I've got a big heavy ball, the next step seems pretty obvious.
I take the ball to the nearest room with a pillar.
And smash it down! Is this a wise thing to do to a building Link is inside of?
I head one screen north and do it again.
The next pillar is less readily accessible. I head around the top and throw the ball over the barrier, then fall in a hole as I work my way back around to the other side. Whoops.
I head back up and find that, to my surprise, the ball has not been reset by my moving between levels. So I go around, once again sitting through the tile room, and knock down the third pillar. Then I head south through the exploded wall. Realising at the end of the passage that I can't get the ball where it needs to go from here, I throw both it and myself into the hole.
The ball's persistence doesn't extend to following me back to the ground floor, so I head back to the pedestal, throw it over the gap from below, endure the tile room again, hook shot across, and knock down the last pillar. My reward:
A brief cutscene showing the tower collapsing in on itself.
Checking the map again reveals that the fourth floor isn't there any more, and the boss is now on the third floor. Shame I didn't explore up there before mashing the two floors together.
I head up to the third floor and start looking around. The first few rooms I reach don't have much of interest in them, but I find the boss door and confirm that goombas still drop hearts if you jump on them in top-down screens.
I'm not sure what the purpose of these rooms is. They don't seem to have puzzles, and nothing drops for clearing them of enemies. The key block on the left of the last room seems kind of odd, too.
I've got a small key though, so I use it. Killing the enemies and lifting the pot don't seem to achieve anything. I head back to an earlier junction and try going right.
Hey runt! You think you can take me?! All right boys, get this punk out of my face!
The door slams shut and a rude skeleton threatens me. Let's see what it's got. Or what its boys have.
The fight is... anticlimactic.
You dirty rat! You k-k-k...beat my brothers! You'll pay!! I'll never forget you!
The skeleton is bitter over the consequences of its own actions, and swears revenge.
In the room beyond I push some blocks together to make a chest appear containing the Nightmare's Key.
I also hit the switch before leaving. I thought that this would give me access to the boss room from the left instead of below, but it turns out it raised a bollard blocking me from reaching the left side of the floor. So I go through the boss door, only to find regular enemies beyond.
Heading further north there's still no boss, but some helicopter flowerpots and a laser cannon. I carry on.
Nintendo employee A: I've made this really annoying chance-based "puzzle", but how can I make it worse?
Nintendo employee B: What if it were on a conveyor belt with a laser cannon?
Nintendo employee A: Brilliant!
Also of note: my Rupee count was at max before opening the chest, so I got nothing out of this other than a step towards satiating my insatiable completionist urges.
I use the boomerang to get fairies from the wall crawlers until my health is full again and then Hook Shot over the gap behind the boss door and take the stairs up. This leads me to the outside of the tower. What's up the ladder?
BAH! I'm not going to hold back! I'm going to make you wish you were never born!!
This guy is not very nice. I guess I did kill his brothers.
A giant bird appears and picks him up.
It flies overhead. On the second pass I land a hit.
Then I miss the timing a few times.
I land two more hits. Going well so far.
Then it changes attack, pushing me off the edge of the tower.
I return to the top and am blown off again. What was I thinking, lowering my shield like that?
I return to the top and this time manage to weather the air blast. I was geniunely shocked to see this in my recording, because I spent at least ten minutes on this fight before figuring out I could do what I just did. Somehow I didn't notice that I'd done it so early in the fight.
I suspect it was because the next thing I did was land this hit, and I spent a lot of time trying to repeat it consistently. It also took me a while to realise that each time I got blown down the boss's HP would reset, so I wasn't making any progress by landing 1-3 hits and then falling down.
Let's cut a long story short. Here's each time I fell off the tower, gradually working through my hearts, the potion from Tracey, and then all my hearts again until Link died. Each of these shots represents 1-4 attack cycles from the bird. Note that I wasn't just trying the same thing over and over: I used the bow, the hook shot, I tried jumping over the wind, I tried using the pegasus boots to run through it. I tried to get under the bird to hit it before it started flapping. Nothing seemed to work, and for some reason I had the idea that just putting up the shield and walking into the wind didn't work.
After dying, I decided to try giving the dungeon item another go, and beat the boss first try. This has been a pretty embarassing performance.
My energy... gone...I...lost! But you will be lost too, if the Wind Fish wakes! Same as me...you...are...in...his...dream...
I cut the speech from the gif, so here it is. Will Link fade away like a dream in the morning if I succeed in my quest?
Back inside, I head through this doorway. It was closed before I beat the boss.
Inside I find the Organ of Evening Calm. One more giant instrument to stick in Link's pocket.
Link is a pretty good organ player.
I'm not sure what this means. I couldn't have gotten to this dungeon without the Ocarina, and if I didn't have it this wouldn't help me figure out where to get it from.
And that's it for today! Whew! I gotta say, I find the dungeon updates a bit more of a slog to put together than the overworld stuff, and this one in particular, especially with how badly I did against the boss. Still, I think it's a pretty good dungeon. The central puzzle of getting the ball to the four pillars is pretty good. It's just a shame that they put all the most annoying enemies in the game in there. The suit matching things were pretty neat the first time, several dungeons ago, but were just annoying the three times I did them in this stage. The horse heads remain terrible. The room where you're attacked by tiles wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to go through it so many times (partly this is my fault for taking a while to figure out what to do). Even the helicopter flowerpots require you to wait for them to land before you can attack (the solution to that is to just leave them alone, but my completionist tendencies don't let me).
Next time:
Some more overworld stuff. Probably not much, though.
Map:
To-Do:
- 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. - Poke suspicious walls with the sword.
- Find a demon to double my arrow carrying capacity.
Explore Eagle's Tower.- Get past the flamethrower in the cave in the western Tal Tals.
-Try the L-2 Shield. - 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 Organ of Evening Calm.
-Find thetworemaining instruments. - Play the eight instruments in front of the Wind Fish Egg.
-Wake the Wind Fish. - Get off the island, I guess?
Comments
Post a Comment