Spring forward? Fall back? Let's Play The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages!

Moonlit Grotto is roughly when the puzzles in OoA start to pick up, where focusing on the big picture becomes important to solving the dungeon's puzzles. The crystals around here, for example, anchor the spinner in a nearby room and we'll have to knock it loose in order to make headway further down the line.



One we've taken out the first crystal, we head northeast and come across another one, this time being hidden behind blocks. What to do, what to do...



Oh, right. Bombs. I guess that's two crystals down now.



While we're here, we'll just shove this statue back into place and pick up a small key for our efforts.



Using the key we got, we unlock a path back to the other side of the spinner, allowing us to move along it in... pretty much whatever way we want at this point. For now, North will do.



Ah, Armos Knights. They're invulnerable to most weapons, but there's nothing quite as satisfying as seeing one or four of them going up in smoke with a few well-placed bombs. Anyway, that's another key for us.



Bah, haunted tiles and a trio of Zols. They're little more of a roadblock at this point, really.

Small tip: the Spiny Beetles here can be found out by the fact that the tile underneath them still has its pattern when they're standing on it, as opposed to how the normal bushes blank the space they're on.



Oh, and we get some money from it as well. That's nice.



Well, I think that's all we can do in this floor for now. Time to jump below, and...



OH GOD.



Once we've fought our way through the Tektites and the Zols, it's time to head south through the gauntlet here. Bombs and the Harp trivialize it, but meh.



Hit the switch there, take out the Armos, yadda yadda yadda, and you've got the Compass.



Anyway! So. Once we're past that we reach another one of those weird crystals littering the place and smash it, breaking another one of the anchors holding up the spinner. I think there's only one left?



Another set of staircases later, and we're lead to this room here. As tempting as it is to jump down and wreck a few Pols Voice's shit, we still need to pick up the key to our immediate west.



Now we take out the Pols Voice.

Once all of that's done, we double back to this room here, unlock the door...



Pass by this floating torch here...



And take out a few Arm-Mimics and Mini-Moldorms to pick up the Seed Shooter!



Screw the Slingshot and Hyper Slingshot from OoS - the Seed Shooter is where it's at. It's slower-firing than the other two, but the Shooter allows Link to bounce seeds off walls to hit his targets, which allows for overall more imaginative puzzles and better accuracy when dealing with enemies. The downside is that we can only fire one seed at a time, so we can be left pretty much defenseless when a seed is bouncing off of walls far apart from each other, but hey. At least it's fun to use, and that's all that matters, right?



With help from the Slingshot, we smash the last crystal and knock the Spinner clean off, dropping it to the floor below.



It seems like the ceiling above it went with it, as we find a treasure chest where the spinner was. It's another Gasha Seed, but we've already got, like, twenty of them. I doubt we'll need any more at this point.



Heading down, heading down...



Case-in-point, re: Seed Shooter puzzles. It's a pretty obvious one, but it's still miles above what they did with the Slingshot puzzles in OoS so it's all right in my book. We get yet another Gasha Seed from it, further cementing my understanding that they really wanted you to get that last Piece of Heart.

But seriously. Seed Shooter > Slingshot by a mile.



With our new toy in-hand, we'll just head north from here...



...and take on the mini-boss.



I'll be blunt - the mini-boss, Subterror, is a damn sissy. He attacks you while he's underground, but he moves slowly enough that you can easily unearth him with the shovel and smash his face in with the Wooden Sword. It took less than half a minute to take him down, and that's pretty sad.



Heading further north brings us to another trick block. Your first reaction to seeing the block refuse to move is to give up on it, but killing the other enemies in the room will (somehow) trigger the mechanism to allow it to move. The moral here: don't give up!



Unlocking the door we passed by earlier brings us... right back to where we were, just on the other side. But we still need the Boss Key to proceed, so I guess we'll have to backtrack.

Heading east from the spinner brings us to another Seed Shooter puzzle...



...and solving it nets us the key. Well then.



All righty, let's put this baby to bed.



Sinister!



Shadow Hag is more of an annoyance than a real challenge, but figuring her out may take you a while and a few hearts beforehand. As she mentioned, she follows you through your shadow around the room, and we can't "see" her since she'll just retreat back into it when we turn around. So, in order to attack, we'll just have to bounce seeds back into her face with the Seed Shooter while dodging her when she slips around the room in her shadow form. Overall annoying, but nothing really challenging.



With that, she goes down quickly and lets us pick up another Heart Container from her remains.



And we pick up Essence of Time #3, the Echoing Howl.

Yeah, I don't know where the heck they were going with this one. What does a wolf's howl have to do with time? I mean, aside from metaphorically.



Meanwhile, thousands of miles away...



Sheez, they're already half-done? I have to admit, Labrynna's workers are damn efficient.



With the Echoing Howl in hand, the Maku Tree drops by to give us another hint and warn us of the Black Tower's completion. It looks like things are starting to get tense now, so I guess we'll have to hurry up the essence hunting.



Next time: The Skull Dungeon and the Burning Flame!

OH! The stupid GBA "bonuses." I was so convinced that there was a damn good reason to be playing this game on the fancy new handheld that I carried around the GBA ring forever trying to figure out what the heck it did. I would have liked these games much better if they hadn't had the worthless rings.

I also seem to remember hitting a brick wall with the puzzles in Ages... I'm curious if I'll be able to spot it on this LP, it's been so long.

Oh god, I'd forgotten about those horrible Tokays. I wanted to reach through my gameboy and strangle them all.

I wanted to stab all of the Tokays in the face, and was most put out when I found I couldn't.

Man, I remembered that there was something around the middle of Ages that infuriated me, but I couldn't remember what it was.

Thanks for the reminder, Paps.

I heart Moosh.

That is all.

My noble steed is a flying bear.

Another day, another update. Anyway, welcome back. Last time, we went on an annoying fetch quest, made a raft, rode that raft to the Crescent Island and were promptly shipwrecked by a freak thunder storm. After which we had our stuff stolen by kleptomaniac lizards, went on another fetch quest to get our stuff back, and then entered and crushed the third dungeon under our heel.

Now that we're done here, I guess we'll have to find a way off, huh?



Oh, for the love of- first you guys steal Link's stuff, now you're going to eat his ride back too? I know you guys have trouble with your compulsions, but this is getting ridiculous.



Great, now they're holding him hostage for Ember Seeds. Fortunately, they don't know what Ember Seeds are like, so maybe we can turn this to our favour... Go on, guys. They're on the house.



Hahaha, there we go. Enjoy your lunch!



Now that we've saved Dimitri from being eaten (again), he all but throws himself at our feet to help us get back to shore. Might as well take him up on his offer then, since the raft is all but gone.



First, we'll just drop by where the trading post used to be to plant another Gasha Seed. Might as well, right?



And we're back. Like with Ricky and Moosh, Dimitri wanders off now that he's paid us back for our help, but rest assured that this won't be the last we'll see of him.

Now that we're back on land, our first order of business is to pay Tingle a visit. Why?



Because he promised to expand our Seed Satchel, of course. I neglected to screenshot it in the last installment, but Tingle promised us that he would expand the satchel once we've picked up a few more Mystical Seeds (namely, Scent Seeds), and he's all the more happy to help us once we've done so. Seeds tend to get a little scarce later on in the game, so dropping by Tingle is generally a good idea.

So... thanks, Tingle.



I'll just take the time to drop by Bippin's and Blossom's house to see how little Lupin turned out. Due to my... um, negligence, Lupin has looked to his father for inspiration and has taken up the mantle of master Arborist. He even grew a goatee to go along with it, too.



*sniff* They grow up so fast, don't they?

Well, I guess we'll go track down the next dungeon n-



Aw geez, why did you have to mess up a good thing, Impa? And why the heck is Zelda dropping by Labrynna when things are still crazy? She should know better to get involved when the last time shit went down she was sent to a horrible alternate reality as a part of a mad wizard's plot to take over the world.

Fine, fine. Just know that I'll be expecting a reward for this.



Oh, it's Vire. This shouldn't take long, then.



At this point, we get involved in a Zelda recreation of Donkey Kong as we climb the Black Tower. It's pretty easy, really - with the Roc's Feather and how slow the fireballs move, climbing the tower is a piece of cake. Perhaps even a waste of time, really.



Man, I am so going to kick your ass later, Vire.



No prob, glad to be of service. Now, about that reward...



Thanks!



Yes, yes, she is.

At this point, Zelda warns us that she's been having nightmarish visions again and tells us to keep our chin up and keep going. And... that's pretty much it, really. Outside of Vire revealing himself again and that ring, the entire situation was a complete waste of time. Sadly, after this point, it starts to become par the course for the game...



Before we move on, we might as well drop by Vasu's and get that ring appraised. It turns out the ring Zelda gave us is a Blue Joy Ring, which doubles the number of hearts recovered when you pick one up. It's potentially useful, but I tend to prefer rings that slow down the depletion of hearts rather than helping them recover, with only one sole expection.

Anyway, with all of that done, it's time we moved on. Onwards!



Or not. Sorry, I lied - there's a couple of more things we've got left to do before we move on, and the trading sequence is one of them. I can already tell that this post is going to get long, so I'll just abridge it and save you the repeat of the rambling that was Dancing Dragon Dungeon.

First on the list is the Happy Mask Salesman, who's just back from his adventures in Termina. He forgot to pick up the groceries on the way back however, so he's out of a lunch and suffering because of it. We toss him the Tasty Meat we got earlier and get a Doggie Mask as a reward.



Next we drop the the Breeder's house in Lynna City, where we find her trying to find a way to get her dog to be less shy about its appearance. What better way to do that than to give it a mask and teach it to cover its face? In exchange she gives us an old dumbbell for it, which should help Link turn that flab into something fab.



We can't quite finish the rest of the chain just yet, so it's time we moved on. Shooting the switch lowers the bridge for us...



But then we find that the Master Carpenter has lost his students again. Just like back in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, even though they both allegedly take place several hundred, possibly thousand years before these two games begin. Yep, just like all of the others.

I guess this'll be another sidequest for us to tackle...



Oops, better make that two. Isn't life great?

(Hint: It is not.)



Yeah, yeah. Dimitri got lost? I'll go find him for you.



Ah, there you are. Let's get you out of this terrible, terrible forest so we can go find those carpenters and get them to build another bridge for us.

At least the faeries show us to the exit and save us some time. But really, why all of the sidequests all of a sudden? I know finding the dungeon has become a bit of a big thing in the later Zeldas, but isn't this taking it to a bit too far of an extreme here?



I mean, if you're going to ape Ocarina of Time so much, at least get it right and include some reason to it like OoT did. Give us some new items to cross! Make it so we get the key to the dungeon from it! Don't litter the place with broken bridges and arbitrary distractions just for the sake of dragging it out. This isn't rocket science, damn it.



Anyway, we find the three apprentices soon enough and they go hopping along back to their boss...



...the boss orders them to build the bridge...



...and fifteen seconds later, they're already done. Not bad, for a bit of witless slackers - the only carpenters I know who can work that fast are Cornelian.



Anyway, now that we're here and have set up a check point, I guess we can move onto the next dungeon now, right? ...Right?

Hahahaha, no. We've still got one more thing to do before we're done, and it's another sidequest. This time involving time travel, too.

The gist of it is that the Tuni Nut keeps the village in balance, and as Veran messed up the timeline she ended up breaking it accidentally. Now the volcano's erupting and the village will die out over the course of the next 400 years, and they can't fix it because they can't move too far away from their identical twins according to their ideology of perfect symmetry, and the designated fix-it guy's brother hurt himself the other day and can't go along with him.

Yes, that is about as stupid as it sounds. Why do you ask?



Well, enough vitriol for now. Downstairs is a skinny guy, who has to align himself with the dead center of the village at all times and can't work out with the single dumbbell he has because of the aforementioned stupid reason. We give him another dumbbell and he trades us his mustache in return. No, seriously, he just tears it right off and hands it to Link. Ouch?



Now that we've got the Cheesy Mustache, we pick up the Tuni Nut from the brother and get to work. Honestly, I have to wonder if whether or not this entire city is just one big practical joke on Link.



Seriously, it's just so stupid. I guess I'll just move on now and fix that Tuni Nut...



Huh. Well this is odd.



An old hermit studying tunes? Maybe we can get him to upgrade our Harp of Ages while we're here. Thanks, Ralph!

First, we'll just take the time to drop by Lynna City again and pass off the Mustache to Mr. Seinfeld here. In return, he teaches us the funniest gag he knows. In fact, the joke's so funny...



...that we'll test it out right now.



Man, tough crowd. But let's try anyway!



"My dog has no nose!"

"How does he smell?"



"Awful!"



Nuts.



Seriously dude, not cool.



You know what? Screw you, I'm taking one of your books, jerk.



Oh hey, it's Maple again. Didn't she say that she was looking for a Touching Book?

You think that's bad, wait until you get to the part where he has to shoot the dog.



And... she gives us an Oar. Apparently it's the first one she made, though she doesn't elaborate on why she made it. It's a bit of a non-sequitur, really.



Anyway, it's back to the search for the hermit, and this hole in the ground here gives him away right-quick.



And there he is. I wonder how he gets his food? Fishing, perhaps?



Seems like he's hit a bit of a block. "Echoes produce waves," huh? Hmm...



I wonder if he means this?



Yep. It seems like the tune hit all of the right notes for him.

At this point, he teaches us the Tune of Currents, which lets us travel forward in time from the present at will from now on. Hooray!



Using it, we teleport our way onto the rock precipice (which doesn't seem to have moved at all, but shh), and grab another Piece of Heart. Hooray again!

At this point, we have to make our way around the mountain to get to the guy who'll fix our nut, which involves redirecting a water way and numberous time-travelling, but this update's already eight posts long at this point and I've still got 200 pictures left to sort through. You'll have to forgive me if I'm hesitant to drag this out any longer than I have to.



However, this part at least gets special mention. Drop a bomb into the water here and answer the skill-testing question and the faerie inside will expand your bombs. Nice.



Oh, and Maple drops by again.



We're heeeere.



Introducing Patch, the guy who'll fix our nut for us. He's a little... well, eccentric, as you'll soon see.



Yes, yes, just get on with it already.

Of course, Patch being the eccentric he is, decided to make his ceremony into a mini-game oh so long ago and now we'll have to participate in it. Really, this part of the game is just dripping with delays, isn't it?



Anyway, at least the ceremony isn't too bad - just step on the switch so the cart doesn't careen into the nut and shove the Hardhat Beetles into any of the four holes.



And there we have it - the Tuni Nut, as good as new. Now let's get the hell out of here.



In a form of irony, the way back to Symmetry City is much shorter than the way from it. A nice convenience of a spit in the face? You decide!



God, I hate this place so much.



Since we only just returned the Tuni Fruit back to its altar, the volcano doesn't calm down all of the way just yet. This, of course, is because it takes a long, long time for a volcano to finish cooling, so we'll have to warp forward in time in order to actually enter the dungeon.



Before we do, however, we'll take advantage of our ability to move forward in time at a whim to enter the Town Shop Member's Area. It's odd that he would lock off all of the expensive stuff from the world since he could probably rake in a fortune selling it, but who cares when there's some nifty stuff to be had? I can only afford the Ring Box for now, so the Piece of Heart will have to wait for now.

And with that done, we can enter dungeon #4, Skull Dungeon.



Being a dungeon hollowed out of a volcano, lava flows through the dungeon all over the place, necessitating the use of the Roc's Feather and the dungeon item for this level in order to cross it. However, after Sword & Shield Maze, we're pretty much already used to these kinds of puzzles.

A little ways in, we pick up the Compass. Hooray?



We come to another coloured-block puzzle a few rooms after the compass, though this one is somewhat more nuanced than the puzzles we've already solved. Since the sides of the block don't line up perfectly with the switch when you push it towards it, you'll have to shove it around the room a bit until you've got the blue block in range of it. Pretty simple, really, but at least it's a step up from before.



Aaand we're right back to the sucking again. Fire Keese are really annoying to deal with as enemies, as they'll fly above LInk around the room until they swoop down to attack. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal on its own, but having to dodge Goddamn Bats while jumping over lava is a big ol' fuck you.



At least we have some track puzzles to amuse ourselves with afterwards. We even manage to pick up the Dungeon Map as well from the trip, which should help us keep from getting lost.



Heading further down on an alternate route brings us to another Seed Shooter puzzle, netting us a key. It's a little confusing at first since the game doesn't beat you over the head with the solution at first like they do with the others, so it's relatively easy to overlook it and think that you're supposed to come back for it later when you're making the rounds through the dungeon for the first time.



Now that we've got the key, we can ride the cart back over to where we were before and truck on through this locked door here.

This puzzle is a new one to the game so far, and is pretty benign overall. The idea is to pull the switch as far back with the Power Bracelet as you can, and rush over the lava before the floodgate opens and it thaws again. Right now, its stupidly easy to cross over the lava pit, but later on the game will add on some variations to the puzzle to fix this.



Don't you just hate it when an ill-placed enemy makes crossing over a section of a room a pain in the rear? Yeah, me too. Hardhat Beetles are such pricks in the GBA games.



Another jumping puzzle? For me? Oh, you shouldn't have.



Heading further in, move along...



Heading further into the dungeon, Link comes across another set of tracks here, and again we'll have to push a colour block onto the switch in order to pass through. However, the block is also surrounded by cracked tiles and a Blade Trap in the corner, so using the Roc's Feather is strongly advised.



Eventually we reach the end of the tracks and we manage to pick up another small key from it after shooting at another switch. This is getting kind of repetitive, really.



Scratch that, make that extremely repetitive. Didn't we just solve another one of these track switch puzzles earlier? At this point, it's really seeming like they're struggling for ideas after this point.



At least we get the chance to shoot at a few Stalfos along the way down.

Moving platforms over lava is irritating, since there's not nearly as much of a margin of error jumping over water/lava/etc. than jumping over pits. This is mostly a matter of coding; watery surfaces are programmed to draw Link in right away as soon as he touches the tile, while open pits will give him a few seconds to correct himself as he's drawn towards the center of the tile. It's not really much of a big deal, but it does get a little annoying after a while if you're not very good with using the Roc's Feather.



Heading down, we pick up another key to unlock the block with...



And it's further into the dungeon for Link as he takes a ride on yet another cart.



Mini-boss time! For Skull Dungeon, we're matched up against an Armor Warrior this time, and fighting him takes a little bit of unorthodox strategy to take him out. Since he's invincible while he's got that shield up, you'll have to break it in order to have any chance at damaging him, so you'll have to redirect his sword right back at him and smash it to pieces with it. Once they're both gone, he's open to all attacks so pull out the Wooden Sword and Spin Attack him until he's dead.



Once the Armor Warrior goes down, it's relatively smooth sailing...



...until we get here and the pain begins anew.

The puzzle starts out simple enough - you start on a yellow tile at the entrance of the room and walk onto every blue tile in the room until they've all turned red. This sounds easy enough, until you realize that the room is A) littered with Armos Statues left, right and center, and B) the path through the room has to be a single, uninterrupted line with no crossing over. Add onto the fact that the solution can't be guessed at via observation due to the room 's size, and you've got a recipe for disaster here.

I'll be honest, this puzzle here is probably the largest reason why people tend to get stuck halfway through Oracle of Ages. Because the room expands beyond the borders to the screen, the only way to really figure the solution out is to try and brute force it one try at a time, exiting and re-entering the screen to reset whenever you end up with an unwinnable scenario. Because of how it's set up and how much its flaws end up undermining the puzzle itself, it's pretty much expected that someone's going to get stuck on this room at least once on their first playthrough.

Worst part is, it gets worse. Much, much worse.



The good news is that we finally pick up the dungeon item in this room, and it's an odd one. Introducing the Switch Hook, the stand-in item for the Hookshot in the Oracle games. However, instead of pulling Link towards an object like the Hookshot did, the Switch Hook instead switches places with the object instead, warping Link and the object he's pulling across from each other. I'm not really fond with the SH, to be honest - the game never really makes full use of its potential, and as a weapon it's much too slow (and weak) to really be of any worth. Then again, I guess it probably could be worse, but meh.

Naturally, since we just found the item ourselves the game drops a few puzzles involving it in our laps to give it for a test drive. They're relatively simple, all told - just warp Link across the gap, step on the switch and switch places with the other object in order to hold the switch down.



Case in point, this room here.



Or here, where the game decides to add in cramped quarters and a few keese to knock you off of them for good measure. Stupid bats.



Eventually, we come across another tile puzzle like earlier, and as always you have to brute force your way through to get to the solution of the room. This one takes many, many tries if you don't already know which way to go, and is generally where most people give up in disgust with the game. Seriously, screw these puzzles so much.



Eventually we come across the door to the boss room, but we don't have the Boss Key yet! Seeing as there's a set of stairs right there that leads to a section of the dungeon we haven't explored yet, I don't see why not to go that way.



Yep. Switch Hook puzzles don't really get any more creative than what's been shown so far. It's kind of a disappointment, really.



Further in we come across another section of lava that needs being cooled, at least far enough in to start Switch Hooking across the gaps.

Right afterwards, we come to another Switch Hook puzzle, this one actually involving some thought on the player's part. You can probably guess the solution just by looking at these screenshots here*, but the big thing to remember is to push the other pot in the center downwards, so you have a means to hook yourself back to the chest.

*Pull yourself to the blue square first, push the other pot below the square and then hook over to where the switch is. After you shove the pot onto it, you just pull yourself downwards to the spare pat and then finally back to where the chest is.



Now all we have to do is head back through the passage and unlock the door to the boss.



Introducing Eyesoar (grooaan), who, as Kishi pointed out earlier in the thread, is actually Patra in disguise. She doesn't have the map this time however, and that's not the only thing that's changed since the original game.

Despite her showing, Eyesoar is really, really easy to fight. In order to damage her, you have to fire your Switch Hook at her and switch places with her, which momentarily stuns her and leaves her open to attack. While she's vulnerable, all you have to do is hack away at her with the sword until she's dead, and thanks to the size of the gaps between Eyesoar's pals and the fact that you can stun her immediately after she recovers from the last volley, she ends up going down really fast. It's almost disappointing, really - the bosses in this game aren't as much fun to fight as they were in Seasons.



Oh well, at least we've got another Heart Container now. Woo!



And with that, we pick up the Fourth Essence of Time, the Burning Flame!



This entire section ended up taking over 500 screenshots to fully capture because of the sheer length of what needs to be done, which all but speaks for just how boring this part of the game is. Thank God that's over with.

Also, what the heck's up with the Essences in Ages? I knew they were as non-sequitur-ish as all hell, but man, talk about reaching.

At this point, the Maku Tree chimes in yet again, this time pointing us to the mountains north of Lynna where the Gorons reside. But as much as I'd like to get to some of the more interesting dungeons of the game, it will sadly have to wait until the next installment.



Next time: The Crown Dungeon and the Sacred Soil!

I think those colored tile rooms is where I gave up. I don't remember fighting Eyesoar.

I don't remember either, but I do know that I beat the game. It's just that un-interesting of a boss, apparently.