Hey...what if we...did a Zelda today. That'd be neat.

Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass [4] Blaaz

Video Length: 20:13

In today's exciting, if slightly shorter than average, episode of Phantom Hourglass, we continue onwards with the Fire Temple! Our first puzzle today involves hitting switches in a certain order. An order that is immediately told to us via a mural on the wall. Okay so it's not that complex a puzzle, but they're gonna get trickier! Also tricky; remembering to sweep over every subtitle in the editing program I use because oops, this one is wrong! And I had people watch these in advance and no one noticed! Thanks a bunch, friends! I was just gonna say something about oh noo enemies or whatever. Now I'm embarrassed. That aside there really isn't much LEFT to this dungeon. The final puzzle of it is realizing that...the boomerang can grab fire for whatever reason. It's a puzzle that's really only intuitive if you know that Zelda dungeons expect you to use the thing you got to interact with basically all of it, and otherwise makes no real sense.

With that said and done, and a little bit of silliness involving how to get to the big chest aside, we finally have the boss key! Where we find another...really poor decision on the creators part. the Boss Key doesn't just go in our pocket like regular keys, we have to carry it manually throughout the dungeon. This is not super bad initially, but trust me this is going to be an issue later on. What's sad is that I don't HATE this idea, it just also feels like a really bad one overall. But with Boss Key in hand, we head to the final challenge of this dungeon.

And what a challenge it is. The fiery wizard demon, Blaaz! Blaaz is an interesting first boss, splitting himself into three to start off the fight. He can shoot fireballs at us when in this form, but is otherwise harmless. The trick to beating him is noticing that, on the top screen, each Blaaz piece is marked by a horn, one to three. Boomerang them all together in that order and he'll return to his full self, stunned for a bit, letting you slash at him with your sword. In his regular form he can teleport around and summon meteors to fall on you, but little else. After awhile he'll split again, and you'll have to boomerang him again. This is a fun and interesting mechanic that makes use of the top screen in a cool way, but also has the problem of being hard to do because the boomerang follows your path exactly, and the Blaaz pieces can just shuffle around however you want. This doesn't feel BAD per say, but it can be frustrating if they keep on interrupting your perfect boomerang throw. One small leniency provided is that your boomerang actually targets Blaaz, instead of being left up to fate.

With Blaaz dead and heart piece won, the Shrine of Power has been purified! And our reward is...another fairy friend! This one is read, and a male fairy, which is quite a rarity. Leaf, spirit of Power, has joined the party. What he actually DOES will be elaborated on later, but rest assured...he does DO things. This is one of the only Zelda games where the macguffins you find in each dungeon actually matter mechanically as well as flavorfully. We meet back up with Astrid, who tells us a bit about our quest. We're gonna need to find the spirit fairies of Courage, Wisdom, and Power if we're to stand a chance of defeating the Ghost Ship. As well, we're gonna need to buff our fairies up. Those mystery orbs we've been seeing around in shops are gems we can use to power up the appropriate fairy! Astrid doesn't actually tell us how to do that beyond giving us one, and of note I'm pretty sure you can get through the game entirely without upgrading them, but I forget. Astrid also tells us one other rather important thing...our next destination is Mercay Island. The Ocean King Temple calls out to us once more.

It's time to go back to the island. We that dark knowledge in our minds, we head home Mercay. I take a brief look at ship customization but will look at and talk about that more later once we have more than one part and more than zero reasons to actually customize our ship. I'm also smart and buy a revive potion before returning to the Ocean King's Temple, just in case. We also buy a Zora Scale for Later. But finally, finally, we return to the Ocean King's Temple, wherein we learn the truth. We must delve ever deeper into the temple, we must explore it's depths. It is...the first dungeon, and the final dungeon. A massive mega-dungeon we'll need to explore. But how can we hope to do that when it tears at our very life? Well...it's time we meet the title namer. For killing Blaaz, we have been rewarded with S A N D, and with S A N D we can fill up that suspiciously hourglass shaped object at the entrance to the temple. With Oshus' guidance, we do so, and obtain the PHANTOM HOURGLASS, filled with Sands of Hours that we robbed from the corpse of a demon wizard. As long as we have sand, the hell dungeon won't kill us. And with that set up...join me next time for what will be the first of many return trips to the Ocean King's Temple. Many people consider this a bad mechanic. I...kinda do but kinda don't. We'll talk more about it later.

Because trust me. We'll have time to talk about it. Hope you all enjoyed, I'll see you guys next time.