Dungeon Week: A Link Between World’s Lorule Castle

Today is the last day of Zelda

Informer’s Dungeon Week!

We’re closing up this week’s

series with the brilliant Lorule Castle, the final dungeon from the newest

title in the series, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between

Worlds.

Last November saw the launch of

what I believe to be the single greatest 2D entry in the Zelda series, the glorious The

Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. The

game, both incredible and excellently polished, managed to perfectly execute

one thing that many, many games fail to do well: a finale.

Of all parts of a finale, the

final dungeon is the most crucial; not only must it attempt to live up to all

the hype preceding it (and manage to encompass everything that you’ve learned

in your experience in a way that feels complete), it faces the undeniable

challenge of giving a player closure, leaving them satisfied, but not

underwhelmed.

A lot of Zelda games haven’t managed this very

well. I know we’re not all going to agree on this, but Ocarina

of Time, as a quick example, failed at it entirely; yes, the finale

and the final boss are an absolute masterpiece, but to me, Dark Hyrule Castle

is the most tedious and cliché dungeon in the entire series. It feels like a

quick mash-up, though this isn’t a detrimental flaw in and of itself. It really

is pace-breaking and felt kind of unoriginal, especially when the entirety of

the game had been building up to that final moment of glory inside the castle.

It feels empty because it isn’t

fresh; yes, it celebrates the old, but it fails to introduce almost anything

new. The puzzles are nice, and a little harder than usual, but they’re

recycled. Dark Hyrule Castle seemed like a great prospect from the outside, yet

it didn’t bring anything new to the table, especially when you consider that

the entirety of that dungeon was fragmented; the Forest theme stuck to the

Forest room, the Ice theme stayed with the ice room, and generally, this just

got tedious. I might be alone in this opinion, but feeding you tiny bursts of

old gameplay in small spoonfulls seriously ruined the moment.

A Link Between Worlds is a game that seems to be constructed

primarily around an escalating hype—an ultimate, undefeatable crescendo that

peaks towards the very end. The rentable item system works as a great example of

this; yes, this wasn’t the developers were aiming for, but it shows real growth

for you. Your character gradually becomes stronger from the rentable and

upgradable item system, the hidden dungeon sword enhancements and armor

upgrades, and the obvious constant growth through heart pieces and personal

experience. Every area is slowly dominated, with little secrets discovered time

and time again; Mai Mais found, enemies defeated, and obstacles destroyed. The

overworld itself is mastered eventually through the dungeons; while this is

true of every Zelda game, A

Link Between Worlds really

makes you feel like it was your own accomplishment, as you can do everything at

your own leisure, always in control.

A Link Between World’s

soundtrack, my personal favorite in the entire Zelda series, seems to be built

around this ideology of rising euphoria. As a short example, the theme for the Cuccoo Run

Minigame, which is coincidentally the best song ever written by any human,

symbolizes this perfectly: as the song progresses, it gets louder and fuller,

more and more instruments join in, and it climaxes in a huge orchestral hoedown

(while “orchestral hoedown” sounds ridiculous, it works out incredibly

well. People always assume I’m joking when I bring this song up in

conversation, but it’s honestly just about the best thing in A Link Between Worlds).

Right at the very end of the

game, after having finished all seven dungeon and rescued the sages, you warp

to Lorule Castle, for the very last taste of awesome. At this point, nothing

will stop you—no pit stops, no healing, no final upgrades, nothing. And when

you arrive, there’s one last surprise, which damn nearly made me cry out of joy

and excitement; the

Lorule Field theme was replaced entirely by a fuller, huger, incredible

rendition that leaves the regular one coughing up dust. This

little detail is absolutely brilliant; it could have been easily left out, and

nobody would have realized the loss, much less felt the absence was something

severe. Yet it shows so much understanding of the game and the moment and

everything the developers were trying to achieve that I am just immeasurably

thankful to however had this idea, because they made the game just that much

better.

And that’s not even the best

part of the music in this section of the game; I know I might sound like a

broken record at this point, but honestly, Ryo Namagatsu could

not possibly have done a better job of the Lorule Castle theme. The

song itself is excellently written—it’s got a strong melody, one that really

captures the excitement of the moment perfectly, and is incredibly catchy and

identifiable—and is probably one of the strongest tunes in A Link Between World’s masterful soundtrack.

And the best part about this song,

or at least the moment in the game, is that it actually gets louder and

stronger every time you finish a vital section of the dungeon, which is perfect

for getting the feeling of excitement up for the final battle of the game; in a

sense, this is what the whole dungeon is about.

This part may just be anecdote,

or simply blatant nostalgia, but I really appreciate the way the Lorule Castle

theme was hyped up before the release of the game; in those last few months,

every single trailer released by Nintendo used this song almost exclusively,

and by the time the game finally came, I was incredibly excited to hear it.

Throughout my first playthrough, I kept waiting and waiting, with the song stuck

in my head the entire time, and my wish didn’t come through until the very end

of the game. I understand that the developers didn’t mean for this to happen—most

likely, they just loved the song and thought it would be a great signature melody to A Link Between Worlds—but using the same

music for the trailers added to my excitement even further, and having that

song play at the very end of the game made me immeasurably happy.

The height of the tower that

Lorule Castle is built upon adds a feeling of accomplishment, and the literal

ascent up the tower is showcased by the 3D effects; as the dungeon itself is

centrally one large, five-floor tower, the height makes the climb meaningful,

since you can always see the distant bottom and are reminded of your triumphs

every time you look down. The dungeon was designed as a tower specifically for

this reason (probably) to be able to capture the euphoria of the last moments

of the game in the best way possible.

The basic premise of the

dungeon, after climbing the first few floors, is to defeat four main bosses

(all old bosses, but changed to be harder and bigger) to open up one big door,

similar to Ganon’s Tower in The Wind Waker. Each of

the four bosses is hidden behind a genius set of puzzles, all themed to

whatever dungeon the boss came from, with a ton of new concepts thrown in to

overcomplicate everything, making it all seem incredibly difficult—and making

you feel like an even bigger hero for managing to solve them. Lorule Castle

legitimately makes you feel as if you’ve grown as a player, like everything

you’ve done counted for something, and it is truly amazing.

And that’s really the most

vital thing about a final dungeon, especially in an RPG or an adventure game

like Zelda: everything has to feel

important and connected, and everything has to be difficult (to a certain

extent) to make the player feel as if he’s being challenged, as if it was all

worth it. Frustrating levels of difficulty can make the end anti-climactic,

which is precisely why this last section favors intellectual difficulty; all of

these puzzles are amazingly constructed, and they mix together all different

kinds of puzzle mechanics from the game’s eleven dungeons, forcing you to use

every item and every skill at your disposal.

One particularly remarkable

room had you rafting around in lava, pulling yourself along an intricate lake

of obstacles with a hookshot, while being followed by a Wallmaster, all the

while having to carry two eyeballs from one side of the room to the other to

open a door. These are five completely different gameplay mechanics shoved

together for one brilliant section of the dungeon, which feels difficult, yet

incredibly rewarding.

Another (perhaps

even better) part of Lorule Castle had you make your way through an invisible

floor, walking from one side of the room to the other. This is fairly standard

in the game in a sense; the floor is invisible with the torches turned on, and

when the torches are turned off, everything turns black except for the solid

ground, which is suddenly a shining white. There’s a really clever twist here,

though; giant-ass scary spiky walls come crashing down on you whenever the

torches are off, making it impossible to walk through. You are forced to

memorize short bursts of the path, walking on invisible ground and treading

your way through the room, intermittently turning the torches on and off,

trying not to fall into the precipice.

And these kinds of puzzles,

with this awesome amalgamation of seemingly random puzzle mechanics from

the different parts of the game, are what make Lorule Castle such a great final

dungeon, and represent such growth for the series. In the end, the most

important thing about any final dungeon is that it’s the climax of the game,

and it needs to live up to the expectations perfectly. It needs to bring in new

concepts and new themes and colors and songs, and celebrate the rest of the

game in a way that feels neither cheap nor fragmented. And it needs to be

exciting and build the euphoria the player is feeling up to a whole new level,

bringing the hype up for the final boss and the true finale. Undoubtedly, at

least for me, Lorule Castle did all of these things better than any final

dungeon in the series.