Arbiter's Grounds

[amethyst73]

I just finished the Arbiter's Grounds (desert dungeon), though I haven't yet gone after the Mirror of Twilight.  It was time to go start dinner when I finished off the boss; I'm assuming that since the game gave me a 'Save now?' question, I'll find myself in the same Relatively Near The Mirror spot that I was when I stopped. 

It was an interesting dungeon, and for the most part I liked it.  One aspect that I found rather strange was the relative layout of stuff in the dungeon.  It took a relatively long time to find Ooccoo: in the last three dungeons, she's been no farther along than about the fifth room.  Here, I spent probably along the lines of 3-3.5 hours of dungeon-tromping time (and around 15 rooms!) before finally getting her during session #3.  (Said session also included the mid-boss and acquisition of the Spinner... probably totaling around an hour.)  Session #4 was brief, only half an hour or so, an exploration of much of the Learn To Use The Spinner Room.  And then session #5 last night was a finishing of that room, getting the Boss Key, finding a new (and highly entertaining) use for the Spinner, and getting the boss, all in only about 40 minutes.  Quite strange - it was a good thing that orichalcum and her husband had warned me that Ooccoo took a long time to get.

Getting the Spinner was initially kind of frustrating.  As is generally the case the room with the Mid-Boss Toy cannot be exited unless you use the Toy properly.  I messed with it for what felt like ages, getting dizzy and ill, and finally gave up and looked at a walkthrough.  The rail was not at all obvious  to me as a means of transportation by wheel.  Thank you, IGN!

I particularly liked the use of the Spinner as a kind of 'key' to turn rooms around.  When I landed in what was obviously a Spinner-shaped hole, I had the option to 'Spin' by pressing B.  Pressing once didn't do very much.  Holding B down did the same very small amount that simply pressing it once did.  Pressing a few times in slow succession also didn't do a great deal.  But boy, once you figure out that you need to press B in rapid-fire mode, things happen!  I'm not sure whether there was rumble feedback to the action, but it was somehow very satisfying to spin-spin-spin-spin-spin and have stuff start to work!

The final boss battle was distinctly unusual in that Link's sword wasn't used that much.  Instead, the Spinner was all that was needed in terms of equipment for the first half of the battle, and it was required to make the boss vulnerable to sword hits during the second half.  The second half in particular was quite strange in that it totally felt like a platformer for most of it.  Ride the rails up - jump across to the opposite set of rails when there's a spiky wheel coming along your rail - jump to avoid the flying skull's fireballs - jump at the skull just post-fireball to knock it down, at which point the sword becomes useful.  It was also strange in that most of the time when Link took damage, it wasn't from the boss, but was instead from the spiky wheels hanging out on the rails.  I think I lost maybe 3, 3.5 hearts that battle. 

Eleven full heart containers seems like a tad overkill at the moment... but I'm guessing that sensation won't last long.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It's my opinion that A) you rarely need all your heart containers in Z:TP, except at the beginning and to a lesser extent the end; B) the boss battles are frequently not very dangerous in terms of actually costing heart containers; but C) the boss battles are often very long, even frustratingly so. I wish that the boss battles were shorter but with higher damage involved. I would rather lose sometimes than get frustrated and annoyed because I've hit the boss 4 or 5 times but it requires 6. Better in my opinion to have the boss have less hit points, but do more damage, so dying is a threat and winning is possible, but boredom and frustration are less likely. (Of course, done wrong this turns into an even worse cycle, where you fight the whole battle getting one hit away from victory and then die, requiring a start over.)

--Adam

[amethyst73.livejournal.com]

The beginning was definitely a place for heart containers. Three just isn't very much when you're a complete beginner to this sort of game. And my complete beginner-ness is what's made me go a little wild searching for heart pieces - it feels secure.

But you're right in that the boss battles aren't really very damaging. The only one in which I died was the mid-boss in the first dungeon. Oh, and I would have died fighting the Last Insect if I hadn't had a fairy in a bottle.

I've gotten a little annoyed with the length of the boss battles occasionally, but then I've thought, "Yeah, but he isn't actually *hurting* me very much; therefore I can continue going at this for quite some time." ('Specially the mid-boss of Arbiter's Grounds, which felt like it took bloody forever... but then, I never figured out that I didn't have to turn back into a wolf in order to see it after each arrow-shot. So the amount of damage I did to it each time it was on the ground wasn't really all that great.)

The huz can testify to the annoyance of having to do boss battles over and over because you got to within a hit or two of winning... but you die first. This happened occasionally when he was playing Z:OoT. Bosses hit harder and more regularly than in Z:TP. And fairies are harder to find.

Vagrant Story has a really serious problem with bosses being too hard. It's actually a downright shock if we kill a boss in only one go in that game. The main problem is that Ashley's weapons generally do squat in terms of damage - 1 to 4 points per hit on a several-hundred-point monster is not very effective! So we've found that the trick is to Reflect their attacks. Ashley still takes full damage (40 to 80 points usually), but the monster takes half the damage that it caused. It can take a while to work out the timing of doing the Reflect action, and we have yet to figure out how to Reflect spells. Anyway, Ashley dies on a frighteningly regular basis because the boss battles are Obnoxiously Hard.