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More like the cave of HELL!!!

Not to get manic or anything but OMG, the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess is not easy. For those of you who don’t know what the Cave of Ordeals is – it is a series of underground rooms (50 of them) where you fight every single monster you’ve encountered through Zelda’s Twilight Princess. The entrance to the Cave of Ordeals is located in the southeast of the Gerudo Desert.

Basically, you have to beat your opponents to advance to the next room. After every 10 rooms, you meet a great fairy who offers you the option to leave the Cave of Ordeals but you lose all progress, and will need to start over from room 1 if you choose to do it again. And you don’t get much help while you’re in there – probably over the 50 rooms, a total of maybe 8 lousy hearts. It sounds like a lot, but trust me, it’s peanuts. You’ll need certain equipment to get through certain rooms like the Spinner, Ball and Chain, Dominion Rod, and Double Clawshot.

I was pumped and loaded up on rupees (to use the Magic Armor), had all four bottles filled with all manner of rejuvenating  potions – blue potion, great fairy’s tears, red potion, a plethora of arrows and bombs, and I still got done for. Guess where? The last freaking cave!!!

Oh I hate the Darknuts. Evil, armored nasties. One of them is hard enough, but seriously three??? I managed to get all their armor off but couldn’t get them before the got me. Anyway I was so mad. Still waiting to calm down to do it again. Plus, I just found out that any subsequent time you try the Cave of Ordeals after the first, you have to fight FOUR darknuts. So not right. I need some serious strategy.

Damn you Cave of Ordeals!!! *shakes fists to sky*

OMG. Two words – clawshot hell. This level was all about using the single and then the double clawshot to get around the various floating rooms in the sky.

First word of advice, equip the iron boots whenever you feel the wind start to pick up walking between rooms or you’ll get blown right off the walkways, which means instant death.

Second word of advice, when clawshooting between the peahats, use Z-target to lock on, then press B to jump between them which will be very useful when you have to use spiderman-like instincts to get past the boss’s fire-breath. Try not to press A instead of B otherwise you’ll let go and fall into space or enemies – had to learn that lesson the hard way a bunch of times even with the boss. Z-target doesn’t work with the vines.

Final piece of advice, you don’t have to beat the two Aerolfos – the guys with the clawshot shields that you have to draw down to you before they knock you off your feet (which I thought were way worse than the bosses for some reason) just before the big boss. Just clawshot your way up out of their reach, about the second or third fan, and get to the boss.

Argorok wasn’t too bad. Once you Z-target his tail a couple times, he drops his armor, then the peahats come into play, and it’s clawshot monkey-swing time. Although like I said, I did press A stupidly at the wrong moment and busted out my hearts falling to the ground. Once Argorok stops blowing fire, target him manually (the blue gem on his back) and clawshot to him, whacking him silly. Couple times of this and you’ll be done. Careful though, the last time, he reverses direction on the fire-breath, so you’ll need to rotate and Z-target back along the peahats as quickly as possible until he stops.

Stupid reekfish! Arrggh. Spent thirty minutes of wasted time bobbing that stupid floating lure up and down in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I even went as far as to Google “how to catch reekfish.” Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Anyway, the short answer for those of you who don’t have an incredibly savvy 5 year old of your own to do the dirty (er, fishing) work for you is…jerk the Wii remote up just as you see a fish swim for the hook. You don’t have to wait for the lure to bob below the water. Once you see a fish swim to it, jerk up and hold it there even when you see FISH ON. Keep holding the remote up or you’ll lose the fish!

Then you change into the wolf and sniff it to learn a new scent. Then on to the Yetis and some Olympic-style downhill ice-boarding!

I wasn’t kidding when I said I was going to go back to playing FFII in my last post about Final Fantasy: The Crystal Bearers. Actually I was…and then I clicked on it, and well that was the end of that. Seriously FFII is a classic. I don’t know why newer games (in the FF dynasty) with so much technology at their fingertips just seem to get bogged down in it. Take the Crystal Bearers for example…graphics are overdone, gameplay feels sluggish, and it’s just boring. I’d take the Sylph cave in Final Fantasy II as a side quest any day over the inane “design your own garden” in Crystal Bearers!

In FFII, the graphics aren’t great, but the gameplay definitely is. 18 hours later and memories of the “Big Whale” revisited, I have beaten Zeromus and loved every minute of it, even those dastardly “EvilWalls” and the “Behemoths.”

Rydia is still my favorite player, and I still think that Rosa looks like an anime version of Jennifer Aniston. Oh, yea and Cecil is still paladin hot!

I definitely didn’t get as worked up as I did the last few times I played it, but it was still challenging, especially that Odin fight where I kept getting cleaved. Definitely as fun as I remembered! FFIII, here I come!

So for those of you who were completely stuck like I was and had to depend on your gamer 19 year old brother to rescue you because nowhere on the internet, not Gamespot, not IGN, not Gamepro, said how to put the stupid fire out on the wagon (you know where you’re accompanying Ilia with the sick Zoran prince and the weird old lady who winks at Link way too suggestively all the time) while you’re being chased by thugs and bombed by birds AND trying to manipulate a horse that randomly draws to a halt for no reason!? Yep, that sequence.

So I thought I’d do a quick post with some straight up instructions. Gallop right up to the wagon and when you see the downward-pointing red arrow, lock on with Z and then release your gale boomerang. Repeat if necessary. It will put the fire right out. Then swing your wii-mote away to slice and dice those thugs, or use your bow and arrow. With the birds, may sure to take them out as they drop bombs which DIVERT the horse and wagon into a continuous loop. Keep in mind you have to do this twice – there are two diversion areas. So basically if you’re like me, you’d pretty much go around in about fifteen circles before saying…wait a gosh-darn minute! Anyway, knock off the birds – same with the wagon, get close to them and when you see the arrow above them, lock on with Z and press B to fire the arrow. It will dispatch them and get you to Kakariko Village where you need to go to meet the Zoran Queen for your underwater gear.

BTW, not sure if anyone had any issues with the actual the game disc for Twilight Princess. I had to return mine because it was super slow and went to a white screen going from screen to screen. Not good. Bought it on Amazon and they were pretty great about the exchange. New game works great.

So Final Fantasy Crystal Bearers did indeed come out on December 26th 2009. I braved manic shoppers with morning breath at Best Buy at 8am to get my copy (it was back-ordered online). A few days in, I have to say that the jury is still out. Gamespot has it currently at 6.8 for critic and 8.5 for users. IGN has it as “passable” at 6.2 on their scale. Doesn’t seem like it’s getting too many awe-inspiring reviews, but you know what, it’s been 5 days – I’ll give the reviews some time to settle in. Meanwhile you can also check out this review at Gamepro for more insight.

The main character Layle is a pretty-boy with an attitude. He has some interesting friends including a couple CGI’d hotties. Seriously, those Square Enix guys mustn’t get out much – take a look at the Selkie’s short shorts and lace up leggings! Developer fantasizing much? Yowzer!

But I digress. I’m a few hours into the game and am finding it okay but definitely not the typical feeling you’d expect from Final Fantasy…you know, the one where you’re playing until your eyes are burning and it’s three in the morning and all you want to do is keep playing! It feels a little blah but then again expectations have been running high for this game.

The worst thing so far is that there are no maps! None, nada, so in some areas, you pretty much run around in a circle and hope you’re going the right way. The Wii-mote takes some getting used to for wielding the crystal power and a lot of it is pretty much learn as you go. The break-away scenes are pretty cool – graphics as you’d expect are decent, but the gameplay so far just seems lacking to me. I’m hoping that that will change as I get used to the controls and dealing with all the mini side quests like random grape-picking or bikini-clad, butt-bumping girlfights, and ongoing smart-mouth comments from Layle and his buddies.

If it doesn’t get any better, I’ll be writing a review of playing FFII for the fourth time on my PC. Classic.

Stay tuned.

I am SO fierce! I am a Twilight Princess superstar! Nevermind that I am consulting Gamespot like a crack addict, but at least I am getting somewhere since my last post. I was proud to finally nunchuck my way out of the Forest Temple (swinging my fist at the cruel designers who invented those giant skulltula arachnids…HORRID, horrid things). **shudder**

After a lot of effort, I finally mastered the stupid spider-pod bomblings! Guess when? You got it…during the boss fight. Oh yes, all the way at the very end of the Forest Temple. Why didn’t someone tell me I could have used the boomerang to double-target so that I never had to throw the stupid exploding things and blow myself up in the process!!!! What’s the point of cheating with a walkthrough if that useful little tidbit is not in there!? Ah well, live and learn. Killed the boss no problem once I had that down, and am now finally onto the next quest – Kakariko and Eldin.

Go me!!! Um, I mean Link. Check back for more as we make progress defending against the forces of shadow! No doubt with Gamespot‘s very available help, and of course the random Google when I get wedged into a too-tight spot like when I ran out of oil in room 13 of the Forest Temple and had to run ALL the way back outside – my silver lining was that I randomly learned that you could be a cheapskate and pay just one rupee instead of getting pecked to death for thievery. Sweet! What did one ever do without walkthroughs!?

Oh right…they tried and died, and did it again. Old school kung-fu.

I have been waiting for Final Fantasy: Crystal Bearers since May 2006 when it was first announced, and all I can say is that IT BETTER BE GOOD! I have been a fan of Final Fantasy forever, back when it was on the Super Nintendo console in the early nineties. I mainlined Final Fantasy, so much so that I wrote my Cambridge “A” Level exams while being completely addicted to Final Fantasy II and III. I remember hiding in my room with the TV volume on silent when I was supposed to have been studying. I lied to cover my tracks too. Sorry mom! But I digress. I cannot wait for when this game drops on December 26, 2009. Check back for my review then! Right now, I will try to contain myself with Zelda’s Twilight Princess.

Let’s just say it has been a loooooong while since I broke out the role playing games. Ok fine, not that long – I actually went old school a few months ago and replayed Final Fantasy II & III on my PC. In the interests of looking for something new (while waiting for FF Crystal Bearers supposedly on sale December 26, 2009), I decided to give Twilight Princess a try. I am not ashamed (fine, a little ashamed) to say I am now stuck just nine minutes into the game. If you are TP gamer, you know what that means – yes, I’m still in the village chasing after cats, using my hawk to knock down stupid beehives, and trying to find the kid’s mother with the fishing rod!! Ok, I’m calm now. I just did the inexcusable – I googled ‘walkthrough’ and went to Gamespot‘s guide. I’m terrible, aren’t I? If you have any tips, I’ll take them. If not, check back soon – I’m sure I will be stuck somewhere else once I use the cheat and nunchuck my way past the first ten minutes!