I approached the fourth palace with a night’s sleep under my belt in hopes of finding a path forward. I went down and got the princess and proceeded to take her to every single room with no avail. I was about to give up, but then recalled a room on the second floor that seemed to have no purpose. I ditched the princess and headed up to the second floor to investigate.
This floor had puzzled me because each room had patches that were clearly cracked. Normally this is an indication of a weak spot which can be opened with a bomb. However, dropping a bomb, or even two bombs, on these spots had no effect. I kept heading to the right though to take another look at that final room. Another reason this room intrigued me is that it is directly above the boss room. I figured there might be a connection.
In this room, there was another section of floor with cracks, but it was behind a wall so I couldn’t get to it. In addition, there was light shining in from a window onto this section of the floor. Suddenly it occured what to do. If you plant a bomb, you can quickly pick it up again and throw it. After a few tries to get the distance right, I landed a bomb on the cracked region and it revealed a hole in the floor. Now I had to go check out the room below.
I first went there by myself, but nothing happened. Now there was a light shining onto the boss room floor, but no boss. So now I decided to go get the princess again and bring her here. This was the trick. As soon as I brought her into the light in this room, she morphed into the boss and began attacking.
The boss was pretty easy. He floats around the room shooting lasers which are very easy to dodge. One hit with the sword and he moves to the bottom of the room, so you can now attack his head. Each hit to the head causes him to spit fireballs (also easy to dodge). Three hits causes his head to detatch and fly around the room continuously spitting fireballs (a little harder to dodge). After a moment of this the main boss reappears and you repeat the process. Now you have two heads flying around. Since Nintendo likes the number three, you do this one last time and the boss is vanquished.
I like how each rescued princess in the Dark World takes a few minutes to add to the story of the game. It’s nice to get the backstory in these small doses. Sure beats “Our princess is in another castle”.
Since I was on a roll, I immediately made my way to the fifth palace. I realized that despite referring to 8 palaces throughout this blog, there are only 7 crystals identified on the map. I have to assume that number 8 will appear when all 7 are obtained and this will be Ganon. Nintendo loves three and eight.
Gaining access to the fifth palace required a little bit of puzzle solving, but not much. Basically you get to the walled palace and use the mirror to move to the light world. From here you climb onto an island which corresponds to a location inside the walls of the fifth palace in the dark world. Lifting up a rock reveals a warp square which takes you back to the Dark World, but now inside the fifth palace. I entered the first room, defeated the first creature (requires the fire rod) and left it at that.
I will return tonight, because this palace has like 7 or 8 levels. I’m curious to see if each level has a lot of rooms (making it a huge palace) or if it’s just a tower configuration.
Time played: 30 minutes
