Twilight Princess Chapter 17: Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey

Okay. I'm hoping to post more than once (or twice!) this week, as my mortal enemy Styve is also playing Twilight Princess and is catching up to me a lot faster than I thought he would. Who would have thought a grad student would have so much time to play games? Go figure. So anyway...more than one post this week. That's my goal.

So, today's adventures were in the Temple of Time. Let's get started!

I walked into the temple's front door and was greeted by music that had absolutely nothing to do with the old Temple of Time music from Ocarina. I was kind of saddened by this, but whatever.















This place looks fun. Lots of detailed stone carvings, and all that. Not that I usually pay all that much attention to architecture, but whatever.

Right after I walked in, Midna popped up and said there was a statue missing from one side of the main door. Clearly, my objective was to find the missing statue. Yay! I'm so glad to know what it is I'm supposed to be doing, rather than just exploring randomly.

Also, this temple is full of bells. Huh. Well, there's your cryptic clue for the day.

The first thing I had to do was put a statue on a switch to make a section of wall lift itself up so I could climb it and get onto the stairs in the above picture. Delightfully simple! Then I had to light a couple of torches to make a key appear so I could get through the door at the top of the stairs. Which led to the room in the following picture.














First I had to put a pot on the switch so the golden gate blocking the way would open. Then I had to run past the gate and shoot the pot with my bow so another gate would open and I could proceed.

It was good fun, I can tell you. But eventually I made my way to this room! What are those things on the floor, you ask? They are spiders.















Normally spiders in video games don't bother me. You know, because they aren't real. Unexpected spiders will make me jump a little bit, though. Although considering the size of the spiders in that picture, the end boss should have made me run screaming...wait, we haven't gotten that far yet. Ahem. Let's carry on.

In this room, I had to make my way up the stairs, past several enemies, and then use the Spinner (yay!) to get past a broken section of staircase to get to a lift in the middle of the room, which I had to use to go up a level and then make my way through a door after weighing down two switches with statues. Here's me on the lift.















Eventually I made my way to this room. Those statue guys? They're this game's version of Armos Knights from Wind Waker, I guess. Except they can actually hit me with their little hammers instead of hopping around trying to bump into me like the last ones. And I don't have to use bombs to kill them, luckily. Just circle around behind them and hit the gems on their backs like old times.















This is about the point where I lost track of the whole picture-taking thing and just started clearing rooms as I went along. So here's a room that had a giant balance scale in it.














I had to throw little statues onto the scales to balance things out with my weight so I could get to the other side. Fun. I'm totally living the dream here, people. Did I mention this room was full of unexpected spiders, too? No thanks.

The next room featured lots of fun obstacles, including rolling spiky things, swinging blades, more rolling spiky things, and electrical barriers. Good times!














Eventually, of course, I made it to the miniboss room...















containing the statue I was looking for...















...and also a scary armored guy standing there waiting for me. I could see him breathing. It was spooky.















When I got close to him, he turned around and started swinging his sword around menacingly. I'm...not really very worried.















Okay, maybe I'm a little worried.

This was a pretty standard sword fight. I'm pretty sure I was supposed to use my fancy Hero's Moves on him or whatever they're called, but whatever. I just hit him with my sword, making bits of his armor fall off as I did so, until he was dead. Pretty simple.
















Victory!

And my reward?
















Vampire Link is pleased.

Ah, another day, another underutilized dungeon trinket. Well, let's give this one a try, eh? I used the Dominion Rod to take control of the big statue at the back of the room. The Dominion Rod is a little different from the Command Melody in Wind Waker, in that you retain control of Link while you control the statue, and the two pretty much move in tandem. Which can get annoying. But this is made up for by the fact that the statue has a really big axe and can destroy a lot of stuff. Including golden gates, certain walls, rolling spiky things, those little spiky things, enemies, etc. But it can't destroy the swinging scythe blade thing. I was disappointed.
















My objective was to guide the statue back through the areas of the temple I'd already visited, using the bells to move it from room to room. But I had to move it through the rooms to the bells, which was easier said than done.

Here's a picture of my statue and me, moving as one.















So, I guided the statue back to its designated resting place...which opened the door to the end boss!
















Goodbye, statue. It's been real! You just have fun collecting dust next to that door, now.

So I made my way down the hallway next to the statue and went through the door. On the other side, I found...this.
















That looks like a doozy of a room. Okay, actually it doesn't in this picture. There are two more Beamos things that you can't see, another swinging blade thingy, and at least two more spiky things racing back and forth. And maybe a rolling spiky thing, I'm not sure. I'd, uh, call the spiky things something other than "spiky things" but I don't know what they're properly called, so...spiky things it is.

I had to make my way to the other end of this room, where two golden gates blocked my way to the Boss Door, which I unlocked and...

Wait. I don't have the Boss Key. Why don't I have the Boss Key? I must have missed a room somewhere. Let's take a look at the map.

Okay. It looks like I missed a room way back on the seventh floor. I had no idea what floor that was, so I backtracked all the way there. Turns out it was the room with the balance scale. After some investigation, I realized there was a Clawshot target on the room's ceiling that I'd failed to notice. The Clawshot target led to another Spinner track (yay!) that I rode to a ledge containing, among other things, a Poe and a door to the room I'd missed earlier.















That's the ledge. Woo!

So I went into the room, where I had to use the little statues to weigh down three of four switches, and the shell of one of those...shell animal things (I'm really on a roll here) to weigh down the fourth switch. This took me way too long about five minutes to figure out. This opened a golden gate so I could get the Boss Key!

FINALLY it was time to make my way back through the Room of Death to the Boss Door!















And there it is. So I proceeded through the door, and found myself in a dark room with beams of light shining down from the ceiling.















Confused Link is confused.
















Not real sure why the statues are here. As usual, I don't remember what I'm supposed to do for this boss fight. Nor did I remember much of anything that was in this dungeon. But, whatever. There's something crawling around on the ceiling...
















UNEXPECTED SPIDER! AAAAAGH!

No, wait, I knew this was coming. Never mind. Well, Link is afraid. Very, very afraid.

So, I stumbled around for a while, completely confused, while the spider crawled around on the ceiling and shot fire at me from its giant eye (as they do). Eventually I got the idea to shoot the eye with my bow.















This is me not shooting the eye with my bow.

Although shooting the spider made it fall on the floor, nothing much else seemed to be happening until I finally understood the significance of the statues and used the Dominion Rod to control them and make them chop the spider with their swords, or hammers, or axes, or whatever their weapon was, I already forgot. After that it was easy! And I only had to hit the spider three times...

And Armogohma is...DEAD!















Link proudly sheathed the Master Sword, preparing to collect the Mirror Shard...















Wait a second...what...is...the eye...















The eye sprouted legs and started crawling around on the floor with all the little spiders that hatched out of those eggs. Creepy. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do, so I just shot it a few times with my bow, and finally it died. Yay! NOW I get my Mirror Shard!















Yay, Midna's happy! As usual, when Midna's happy, I'm happy.















NO. BECAUSE I WENT BLIND MERE MOMENTS AGO. Geesh. Let's get out of here.
















OKAY, OKAY, I GET IT.

On the way out of the dungeon, I moved a couple of statues with the Dominion Rod and found a Poe and a chest containing a Piece of Heart. Success!

And that brings us to the end of today's post. What's the next post going to be about? I dunno, some girl, Link can't remember her name...Jilia? Something like that.

Until next time, heroes!