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#VGCApril2026

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Some more specific thoughts about how the game ended for me. I did complete a number of sidequests, but not Rollgoal and fishing. Finally bringing a bottle of hot spring water to the goron south of Hyrule Castle Town is the most meaningless one. Hooray, I can finally go north from the field north of Ordon, but I have been able to teleport for forever.

I really like the aesthetic of the Palace of Twilight, but it does underscore that the game mostly stops caring about Wolf Link. Sure, you can move around a bit quicker to attack Zant's green images while you're dealing with the sols, but the form is just treated as a penalty for not clearing away areas of shadowy fog. Wolf Link gets a bit more to do again in Hyrule Castle and you need it to allow Midna to do some magical goat wrangling against Dark Beast Ganon, but that's it. There's even a destroyed staircase I was expecting to jump as Wolf Link but no, you must use the double clawshot.

I thought Zant's boss fight revisits of earlier boss fights was interesting. Even he thought Fyrus was dull and instead picked Dangoro. All Ganondorf fights were good.

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I finished Twilight Princess. It's still a beautiful game, I love the art direction in it, and there are some interesting things going on with the music. I wish that Hyrule Historia didn't make specific timelines to tie everything into Ocarina of Time because I enjoy the story as just another retelling of elements of these other games and you really don't need to know that game to understand Twilight Princess. That said, there's some stuff at the end which can still be hard to decipher. The dungeons also had me going in loops, preventing me from finishing them in one session and they are disguised, but still very linear. Wolf Link did get some more use at the very end, but nothing new to do. The Master Sword got a new trick for only the penultimate dungeon. And one of the last boss fights involved going back to your experience with herding goats, so farmhand Link really did bring some valuable experience to the team.

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I have found all 60 poe souls to make sure Gengle is safe... I mean, to break the curse on Jovani, yeah totally. But, then I just had to go to the fishing hole and find Rollgoal. Now I've got 7 more stages of Wii remote tilting to get through to get the frog lure and catch the Hylian Loach to prove... uhm... something?

Or, I can try to deliver the hot springwater again, for a piece of heart. I have 4 pieces remaining. I just checked a guide and there's apparently a trick with d-pad swapping that only works on the Wii version. I still don't understand how people could play the GameCube version with only 2 buttons set aside for items (since Midna was always set to Z).

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I think I have to recommend to anyone else that as soon as you find the Bridge of Eldin and put it back where it belongs, do the 1st 10 floors of Cave of Ordeals. Fairies are so rare in Twilight Princess, so getting rewarded with one spring where they can always be found is quite powerful just beyond the game's half-way point when you have a smaller life meter. I, however, waited until I had the tools to do it all in one go and died on the last floor of it. I still unlocked fairies at all of the springs, but it's blue potions which I need and those cost rupees which I just spent on defense with the magic armor.

Speaking of dying on the last floor, it turns out you don't need a bottle of lantern oil, like, ever. I refilled my lantern once in Arbiter's Grounds (there's a pot of oil before the central room), and that was the only refill I needed within a dungeon. So, yeah, carry a potion or soup or a fairy or even milk instead sandbagging with lantern oil like I did.

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Alright, I was wrong about Wolf Link being completely obsolete because in City in the Sky you need that form to... walk on some tightropes only to get the big key and an optional chest.

Argorok was also a little underused. It's present in the background often enough, and it does destroy one bridge forcing you to later come back with the double clawshot to get to the eastern (on Wii) tower of the dungeon, but that's really it for its rampaging. I did the entire boss fight without taking damage on the first try. I will say I wasn't expecting to need to press A to do a finishing blow on Argorok. That wasn't needed for Morpheel.

Of the 3 mirror shard bosses, I think Blizzeta was handled the best. It's the only fight which seemed to have anything to do with the power of the mirror, you end up fighting on a reflective surface and it's the only time you get a feeling that someone is in danger. The oocca supposedly are in danger from Argorok, but you can't talk to most of them. The Temple of Time was just filled with statues, spiders, spider-filled statues, and spider-crushing statues. Maybe the Darknut was alive?

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Wolf Link appears to be completely useless now in City in the Sky, but that's OK because I've got double clawshots. Your clawshot becomes unequipped when you get it after a fairly interesting battle against a winged lizard-man, Aeralfos, who unfortunately uses a clawshot target for a shield. It's only after you get my favorite tool in the game that you can then get the compass it seems. I'm checking guides now and they seem to agree, so this isn't like Goron Mines where I just missed it.

I'd also like to point out that maybe the game doesn't do the best at ensuring the player knows that cuccos can be used to slow your descent. There's an optional mini-game, Falbi's Flight-by-Fowl which you technically must visit in order to leave lower Lake Hylia, but you don't have to talk to Falbi at all. So, your first mandatory cucco flight is Rusl's golden cucco (only because Midna refuses to help Wolf Link jump now and the gorge slightly changed). That was frustrating on my 1st ever playthrough. Now, I don't miss a single oocca-aided-jump in City in the Sky.

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The best part of Hidden Village is how Twilight Princess suddenly becomes a spaghetti Western. Here's the Zelda Re-Orchestrated arrangement of the backing track when you're rounding up the Bulbin gang in this lawless ghost town (which also plays when your mission is to just find and talk to some cats).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0SLm3Ej6nw&t=4772s

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Snowpeak Ruins and Temple of Time are done. Its funny how you learn all these hidden sword techniques from the hero's shade and absolutely none of them work at all on a lizard dude in armor with a ball & chain in a narrow corridor. Hope you like the taste of reekfish and pumpkin stew, because you're going to be drinking a lot of it for that miniboss. Blizzeta, however, is a cool boss fight. It's like if the final boss of Battle of Olympus was 3D, with the way you need to pay attention to a reflection to avoid damage. Midna also seems to have more empathy for Yeta afterwards than she did when you first met Yeto, "a beastman." As for the dungeon, I spent too long not realizing you can hit the ice block with the ball & chain to shatter the ice and get the 3rd box you need for that puzzle.

Temple of Time sort of comes out of nowhere and has even less for Wolf Link to do than any other point in the game. But, it's also more of a tower at 8 floors. Which I had to go back up 6 of when I got to the 1st floor boss door without the big key.

Hidden Village is fine. Horse call was needed waaaay earlier in the game.