Dungeon Weekly #02: Dodongo's Cavern

[GreenGyser]

Dungeon Weekly - Every Thurday

Week #02: Dodongo's Cavern

Dodongo's Cavern acts as a food mine for the Gorons, they just go in, eat some nourished rocks, and go out. When Ganondorf demands the Gorons to hand him the Goron's Ruby, Darunia, the leader of the Gorons resists and keeps it. In anger, Ganondorf infests the cave with Dodongos and seals the entrance with a boulder, so the Gorons will starve. For Link to get the ruby, he must break the boulder and slaughter the Dodongos inside the cavern making this the second dungeon in Ocarina of Time.

Design
Dodongo's Cavern contains only two floors, which is rather small compared to the first dungeon. In the main center room, there's a huge skull which needs to be opened to get to the very end of the dungeon. You must go out and circle round to get above the skull on the second floor and drop bombs in its eyes to make the path open. The fact that you have to circle round and get back to the main room but higher is a good design. The place also looks inhabitable because there's statues and bridges, like they've been built not naturally grown. But, all the rocky rooms look and feel the same which ruins the design. Also, the boss room is simply a pool of lava.

Features
This dungeon mainly contains fire and earth, most of them earth. In the starting room, there's a circle of lava surrounding the center platform with moving platforms round the sides, mainly for, well, platforming! Just to make it even more hard, there's Beamos statues on every ledge and they shoot their lasers at you. The over rooms as basically all the same as eachother, jumping over ledges and beating up Dodongos. There's not much puzzle and variety involved.

Apart from that, to get from room to room is nearly always the same, blasting the living daylights out of a wall, which is quite boring after you've done it ten times before. Leaving blowing up things behind, there's one simple puzzle, lighting torches. This puzzle was already used in the previous dungeon, so it was only a challenge to people who have short-term memory loss. There's barely any features to this dungeon, apart from explosions.

Boss
After you've just finished this horribly repetitive dungeon you've had enough of explosions. The boss can't be anything to do with explosions! Well, you're wrong. King Dodongo just tops it all off, just a cheap huge version of the original Dodongo but with the 'tactics' removed from it. It just rolls at you and the only way of dodging it is by standing a pixel away from the lava. When it stops and randomly takes a deep breath you have to throw a bomb down its throat as it explodes in its stomach. Three times and its dead. They really did top it off, didn't they?

Conclusion
The dungeon isn't just easy, but filled with repetitive so-called puzzles and has an awful boss fight. Come on, Zelda Dungeon could've made a boss better than that! Apart from that, the dungeon is layed out very well.

RATING: 5/10

You may disagree with me, you may agree. My job is to point out the good things, now your job is to tell me what's bad about the dungeon. Leave what you think and your rating in the comments below. Thanks!

- GreenGyser :chu:

 

[DrNedaj]

I think all dungeons have pros and cons. I think dodongo dungeon was better than deku tree and worse than jabu jabu. It fits quite nicely with the first three dungeons.
What I enjoyed is making the dead dodongo's eyes glow red. I thought that was brilliant

 

[Beckira]

I have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. There was a huge amount of variety within the rooms of Dodongo's Cavern. The puzzles weren't ridiculous, and although many were bomb-centric, they weren't all exactly the same as you suggested. You often had to come up with different ways to use bombs in order to achieve the goal that you wanted. Some examples include the room with the line of bombs (where you need to place a bomb in the center to explode the whole line), as well as the puzzle of placing bombs into the dodongo's eyes.

Like DrNedaj said before me, all dungeons have pros and cons. But I think that Dodongo's Cavern was the strongest dungeon of the three during childhood.

 

[superw967]

Meh, i usually come back to the dungeon and have fun with my bombchus

 

[Seth]

I also disagree, I thought it was a great early dungeon. Even now I enjoy playing it, and I thought there were some great puzzles for being early in the game. Dropping the bombs on the Dodongo's eyes was brilliant for one. I do agree the boss fight was weak though.

 

[MW7]

I think all dungeons have pros and cons. I think dodongo dungeon was better than deku tree and worse than jabu jabu. It fits quite nicely with the first three dungeons.

Yes I agree so basically I think this dungeon review is about how I'd sum up Dondongo's Cavern but Inside the Deku Tree would have gotten a lower score than it. Ocarina of Time doesn't really start until you are adult link and they throw masterpieces of dungeon design at you one after the other.

Also you definitely forgot the clever puzzle Beckira pointed out.

 

[Parasite]

The boss fight was awesome, but not my favourite. It was my favourite childhood dungeon, but not my favourite dungeon of the whole game. I'm between if it was good or bad.

 

[TheRationalDove]

Dodongo's Cavern, I think, is probably in the middle for me, design-wise. The Puzzles are pretty varied (especially in the Master Quest), but the boss is just so easy, it makes everything kinda boring...but even so, I though most of the puzzles were clever, especially the one with the glowing red eyes.

 

[Zinx10]

I personally prefer this dungeon the most out of all the child-hood dungeons. Deku Tree is too simple to beat and Jabu Jabu's Belly is way too annoying with carrying Ruto around, although, it was a great puzzle aspect...why couldn't she just WALK?! Sure sure, she is stubborn...*rants*

 

[Tictalk]

Actually dodongos cavern was my favorite of the young link dungeons. I thought it was more complex than the otherones, but that one puzzle after you enter the skull but befor ethe boss was annoying.