I have talked at length on many occasions about my fondness for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Some admire that I enjoyed the game thoroughly, and others are still baffled how it flip flops around in my top 3 Zelda games in the series, occasionally occupying the top spot. One of the primary reasons this happens is because I absolutely love the Dungeons, and thus it may be no surprise that my favorite dungeon (at least, from the 2D games) is The Great Palace.

To enter the dungeon involves a gauntlet, a brutal and often death giving gauntlet where you face off against the games toughest enemies just to reach the entrance. However, you are rewarded for reaching the entrance by the game allowing that entrance to be a save point – meaning that when you die in the future you will restart at the entrance instead of at the traditional North Palace.

This was a huge indication that what lay ahead may potentially be the most challenging and arguably fun time one could have playing a game, because the game is essentially telling me I am going to die, and I may in fact die a lot.

Before I dive into that, let’s get into a little history less on The Great Palace. You see, this dungeon houses the Triforce of Courage, but many may not be aware why it houses it. We never learn the true origins of the palace itself, but we do learn in the backstory of The Adventure of Link (which is described in the game manual… you know, back when game manuals mattered) that there once was a ‘wise’ King of Hyrule that ruled the land during a golden age through the complete power of the Triforce.

That’s right, for one of the few times in the franchise’s history someone actually ruled the people (sorry, Hylians and other races) with the complete power of the Triforce. Based upon being called wise and a golden age, we can presume this may have been the greatest person to ever exist in the game, since almost no one has been able to use the Triforce without greed involved. Anyways, when he was about to die he split up the Triforce out of fear future Kings would abuse the power. He specifically placed the Triforce of Courage in The Great Palace as a final test for the person worthy of wielding the Triforce yet again.

The reason this all matters is because it is the only dungeon to end with back to back boss fights. If Thunderbird wasn’t considered hard enough, usually Dark Link (or Link’s Shadow, however you prefer to label it) likely would kick your arse, unless you used the somewhat cheap corner trick. Anyways, back to the dungeon itself!

What makes this dungeon so great to me isn’t the design, as it uses copy pasted sections over and over again like many games did back in the NES days. However, it was the sheer amount of pure unadulterated exploration. Because so many slides were copy pasted, it was easy to forget which area you had already explored, and what dead end you had already hit. Combine that with the enemies and the grand finale of back to back boss fights, and it is the one dungeon I will never forget. Unlike most dungeons in the series, it felt like a true accomplishment to complete the whole of the dungeon. It doesn’t mean it is the dungeon I want to go back and play the most, but any dungeon experience that makes me feel like I truly accomplished something that was very difficult to do is among my favorites in any video game genre.

It also helps that Thunderbird is completely badass. Welcome to Dungeon Week folks. Stay tuned to see what we have in store for tomorrow! What did you think of The Great Palace?

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