Image: Jim Norman / Nintendo Life
With five Sages under my belt, it was time to head off to the final temple in my Ocarina of Time replay to pick up the last of ’em before the big showdown (not technically the ‘last’, but you catch my drift).
I chose to polish off the Shadow Temple last week, so I was left with no other direction than to head west to the Gerudo Desert and finish the main quest with one of my favourite dungeons in the game.
On the off chance that you’re only just joining the series now, I am going to get into some pretty key dungeon spoilers here, so turn back now if you’ve been saving yourself for the Switch 2 release!
Dungeon Crawl #8 – The Spirit Temple
I mentioned last time that I wasn’t sure why I always tackled the Shadow Temple first, but as I made my way through the Gerudo Fortress and up to the Colossus, I think the answer might have dawned on me: it’s because I always want to finish on this belter.
Much like the Fire Temple earlier in this playthrough, I often forget about the Spirit Temple. Perhaps because it’s so late in the game and I’m usually a little sleepy by this point, but I don’t know this one like the back of my hand and I can rarely complete it without a good bit of backtracking.
The same was true when I returned to it this time. While I remembered the mid-dungeon time travel and the mirror puzzles, everything else felt new.
Images: Nintendo Life
I love the way that right from the jump, the temple is split in two: the left side only available to Child Link after talking to Nabooru, and the right to Adult Link once you’ve got the Silver Gauntlets. There’s a great mystery to the whole thing, knowing that you’ve still got half the dungeon unexplored when you finally learn how to get rid of that big rock in the entrance hall.
But first, Child side! After crawling through the tunnel and swearing to return with the Gerudo treasure, this first half effectively serves as the dungeon’s tutorial. The left side is full of rooms with multiple entrances, switch puzzles in the main statue chamber and simple sunlight triggers. I was particularly keen on watching those light puzzles develop this time around, progressing from bombing a wall to trigger a stationary switch, to moving the switch into light, to bending the beam to meet its target. It’s classic Nintendo.
I flew through the Child portion, for the most part. Telegraphed attacks aside, the Iron Knuckle fight is a nice change of pace, and I still love the cinematic pause in the middle with Nabooru shouting out before being dragged away by the sisters.
The Adult Link half is where the Spirit Temple really comes into its own, though; it’s just satisfying encounter after satisfying encounter. Finally shifting that massive stone that previously barred the right entrance? Satisfying. Seeing the outside of the temple from the other colossus hand to the one where we found the Silver Gauntlets? Satisfying. Being able to do anything at all in the temple’s central colossus room after previously floundering around as a child? Immensely satisfying.
Images: Nintendo Life
It carries through into the puzzles. Almost every dungeon has a central mechanic that develops as you work your way through, but the Spirit Temple takes the biscuit for the breadth of that development. The Mirror Shield is such a wonderful puzzle item. The aim refraction stunned me when I first played through it, and still today, seeing that tiny patch of shield-shaped light move around the wall feels so very modern. Heck, Nintendo reused the very same formula in Tears of the Kingdom’s Lightning Temple for a reason.
It caps off with the wonderfully long-winded mirror slalom, bouncing light between multiple rooms to lower a platform into the colossus chamber and then use the light to…melt the statue’s face? Nintendo was really cooking with this one.
It even carries through into the boss fight. After one last Iron Knuckle encounter (I had forgotten the plot twist of Nabooru being inside the suit!), it was time to face Twinrova.
I love a puzzle boss, and I think my passion for them might come from this very encounter. Bouncing the fire/ice beams back at the opposite sister is still a little fiddly, and the connect-three elemental dodging of the second phase slows the pacing, but the prioritising of puzzle-solving over timing or mechanical skill is sublime. Give me something like this over a combat-first encounter any day.
Does anyone else feel strangely upset at seeing the haloed sisters ascend off the mortal plane at the end? No? Just me, then.
Image: Nintendo Life
Remake Reflections
Honestly, this one rules. Dividing one temple between Child and Adult Link is an inspired choice, and the sunlight puzzles boast some of the best development in the game. I cannot wait to play it all over again with some fancy HDR lighting to really make the beams of light pop.
That’s it for the main quest dungeons, but you know I couldn’t leave this series without a run through the grand finale. Keep an eye out as I embark on one last dungeon crawl soon!
What do you make of the Spirit Temple? Let us know in the comments.
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Jim came to Nintendo Life in 2022 and, despite his insistence that The Minish Cap is the best Zelda game and his unwavering love for the Star Wars prequels (yes, really), he has continued to write news and features on the site ever since.