Sunday Morning Game Ocarina of Time Part 21

Which I remember placing myself in front of so I would remember to unlock it. Sweet! Something to use my keys on!

And behind it: Another twisty room. All right, still in the Forest Temple (Forest temple? What's foresty about it?)

The problem with these rooms is that there is actually a hidden monster in them (there was also in the previous one but that wasn't enough of a problem for me to mention it here).
Slowly a shadow starts growing under you as you walk around the floor, and when it gets big enough, a hand-monster drops on you and... sends you back to the beginning of the temple.
And, turns out, crawling up stairs counts as "standing on the ground"... sooo, yep.

Back at the beginning. (I also, at some point during all of this, lost another heart, so now I had one half heart on me.)

What's worse than backtracking through a temple? Hearing a constant beeping while you do it.

So that's back up through Door 1, through the block-puzzles (I fortunately don't have to solve, just run through), through the first twisty corridor, the room, down the stairs by the first ghost, through the circular room, up the stairs of the second ghost, and there we are.

Now, though, I have a plan. Instead of jumping down and going up the stairs, I realize I just need to go right, so I try to make a sick jump diagonally onto the platform, and Link just grabs onto the ledge.
Nice, Link. Just about the one thing you're good for.

And then I find some Green Bubbles, which like their Blue namesakes, have a shield that means I can't hit them. But instead of me hitting the shield off them--like, you know an interesting video game--I have to wait for the shield to disappear.

Like, that's it. Just... wait

The next bit is pretty darn cool though.

The room has four big, rotating pillars around a small pillar with a torch on it, and on one of the ends of the room is this:

A thing I need to shoot, with ice over it.
So, ok, first thought, I light a stick on fire, bring it to the ice!
Except, the game also took my ability to hold a stick away from me---which, ugh, but I already talked about that--so I have to find another possibility. A little more certain that I have all the tools I need than last time it doesn't take me long to strike upon an idea.
And boy, it's a good'un.

Yes. If you can't tell from the image, the solution is to stand on a rotating pillar until you're aligned perfectly with the torch and the ice-eye, and shoot an arrow through it, and hit the eye.

That's pretty cool. I'll say that.

Shooting the eye twists the corridor and the previous room around, so I go back and find that now I can fall down a hole. So, gleefully, I fall down a hole.

Onto Chess.
No, unfortunately, I don't have to play Chess. Instead, I have to play opposite whack-a-mole (does that make any sense?).
You know that thing about the wall with a window falling down and the man standing right where the window hits?
See those holes in the ceiling there?
Yep.

The next room has shadows on the floor. Which has me terrified because of what happened first thing today. But luckily, they're not hand monsters but... boxes.

So, there's an image on the wall I shoot and when I do, the boxes fall down and a timer appears on screen.
Pretty clearly, the boxes have an image on them that's jigsawed up and I have to put them together.

So I begin, hoping that they don't reset when the timer runs down because that'd suck and I clearly won't be able to finish in time.
Instead, what they do is they lift up, and rotate once arbitrarily--so as bad as a reset!
Great...

Except, it's not quite so bad, because by then I had at least brought them together so I could do it within the time limit the next time, and surprise, look who joined the party:

So more waiting and shooting and another ghost down, through the door which leads back to the main room.
Which is not where I want to be because I'm still missing a ghost... or...

Fortunately, this ghost fight is a little different, because she doesn't wait around while invisible but just appears around you like a clinging plant and I have to hit her until I find the right one and she takes damage.

There's probably some tell as to who's the real Meg, but it was just as effective to shoot arrows until they all died, so whatever.

That's all four ghosts down, now the altar-thingy in the middle appears again and it's actually an elevator.
Powered by fire, I guess.
In a forest temple.

Look, it all makes sense. Read the lore book.

Down the elevator is this room.

And it's pretty small. There's no doors, only barred ones. And no windows. I can see hallways on the map, but none of them in the world.

So, I'm pretty quickly stuck. I try everything. Throwing bombs, hook-shotting up the platforms (I mean, what's this item for??), I hit everything with my sword.
And yes, of course I try

and of course I also try the Chicken

Would never leave home without it!

But nope, none of it works.

So, it's time for the cop-out, the ultimate admittance, the average I-got-a-feature-to-write-solution: Look it up.

And turns out, this entire room is ROTATABLE.

Yeah, I sure did not see that one coming.
But apparently, you can grab the big pillars (which I did try) and if you push them for more than half a second (not just a little bit, it has to be LONGER), you'll rotate the room 45 degrees.
Which, like, I did try grabbing and pushing. But not for that long. Because everything else I've pushed has moved immediately upon pushing it...
So, yeah, alright, whatever.

Now I can push around the room, which opens the holes to the other paths, which allows me to push some buttons that lifts the bars and it's finally, I can't believe it, but it's really here,

It's really less dramatic when you hear *beep* *beep* *beep* while walking through it.

But let's find out who's running this joint. I'm guessing some sort of Big Wolf or maybe a large ghost or something?

That seems... a little early? But awright.

Ah, you're coming back through another image, cool party trick, you gotta tell me how you do t--

I was actually super happy about this because, you guessed it, the BEEPING IS GONE!

I respawn with three hearts! Party time!

Just, pure relief, I tell you. An hour of incessant beeping, nonstop, never ever, letting go, from here on out it's going to be a breeze!

NOOOOOOOOO

Back to Beeping...

So, eventually I figure out that when he appears he throws this forked lightning onto the ground, but if I stand to the side along the ropes and not at the points of the hexagon (octagon?), I tend to not get hit.
So I do that, and begin hitting him with arrows when he reappears through the images.

I do that, surprise, 3 times, and he goes into another phase.

Na'vi also, in the slightly more helpful corner, says that I can "answer his attacks with one of my own", and he throws these slow-moving projectiles at me.
So... I hit them, right?
Or, I try to.
Instead, I miss the hit and get hit myself, and die again.

Naturally.

Back down the elevator and up the room (fortunately, that boss run is pretty short) and expend some more arrows to get him to this stage again, where I spend a bunch of time, learning the timing of his projectiles to hit them back.

There are two problems here.
1: Link tends to, instead of hitting it back up at him, just firing it straight in front of him, and not actually up, where he hovers... So I miss most of the shots.

2:

The Camera doesn't understand railings.

Most of the time, my view is obstructed by the borders of the arena, for no other reason than the camera wants it to be like that...

But eventually, I manage to land a hit that strikes his projectile right back at him, full speed, but instead of hitting him with the sound of victory, he deflects it immediately back in my face.

I... was not ready for that.

But ok, he wants to play tennis. Let's play tennis.

Except... I'm now outta arrows.

Yay. Felt like this has happened before.

Soo, I was planning on finishing the boss this episode, but now it's taking longer than expected and this is actually pretty long for now, sooo, I'll unfortunately stop.
I promise that the adventure to get ammunition won't take as long as last time. And I will kill that boss!

See you then!