So it goes with the wind.
Zodi Plays: The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker [33] [FINALE] Ganon
Video Length: 33:44
We enter into the room we left off last time, and finally confront our foe. Standing over a sleeping Zelda, Ganon taunts us a bit before revealing that this is not the true Ganon, but instead a monsterous puppet the man himself is controlling. Se begins the second to last boss of the game, and the final thing we need a picture of. I’ll post a bonus video later to show off all the figurines and stuff later, for now lets focus on the task at hand. Puppet Ganon is overall not the best boss in the world, but it’s alright. He throws punches at you, and you’ve gotta cut his strings with the boomerang. Simple enough, though because of how the strings move and how the boomerang reacts to them, you end up typically getting more hits in then you actually intend, which is a good thing for the most part! Once all the strings are cut, it becomes easy as pie to shoot a light arrow at the Puppet’s crystal tail, causing massive damage. Three hits, and the puppet is destroyed!
Except that’s not it. This fight is actually divided into three phases, and that was just phase one. Phase two is a spider puppet that is honestly rather easy, but also the best phase of the fight. All you need to do is position yourself behind the puppet before it falls from the ceiling and give him a good arrowing. After that is the snake form, which…is really bad and probably double the length of both phases due to how it’s so wild and chaotic in how it moves around. The only way to stop it briefly is to smack the puppet’s face with your sword, which is no easy task considering it’s entire body is a hurt box effectively. You can also drop bait to make it swirl around in tight circles and turn it into a timing game, but I’ve never been good at that. I find it unendingly hilarious that despite all the awful features of this boss fight, this is my best run of this phase ever. With the puppet destroyed, all that’s left is to climb up to the top of Ganon’s tower to face the big man himself.
We pass the point of no return, and find ourselves on the top of Ganon’s tower, overlooking Hyrule. For his part Ganon is overlooking Zelda, focused more on the triforce than the land he once south to take over. We confront him, and we get a bit of characterization for him. What initially spurred him to act, so long ago, was a sort of greed. The Gerudo people lived in a horrible desert, the days scorched the land and the night chilled the flesh. And the wind, howling as you’d expect, tore to the bone. Hyrule was basically a paradise to him, and so he coveted that. That idea of having a place for his people to live that wouldn’t be terribly hard, where they could survive, maybe even prosper. This is what opened him up to evil. And we know how the rest of this story goes. For the second time Ganon has all three pieces of the Triforce within his grasp…and this time he’s not going to mess around. He very quickly and easily beats the crap out of Link, and combines the triforce shards of Wisdom, Courage, and Power together, creating the full Triforce. One must only lay their hand upon it and make a wish. And then we get one of the best moments in…I think any Zelda game.
The King of Red Lions, good ole King Hyrule, was established relatively early on to be this sort of spirity ghost boy who teleports around. So he sneaks in inbetween Ganon monologes and touches the triforce while Ganon’s hand is just outstretched and…you get this moment, this feeling that Ganondorf is maybe five seconds away from breaking down. This is the closest he’s ever gotten…the closest he ever WILL get. And he got it sniped out from under him at the last possible second. The King wishes upon the Triforce to wash away their past, to wipe out Hyrule and give a future to those above. And so the magic barrier sealing Hyrule off from the rest of the ocean starts to fade, and the ocean comes rushing in. And Ganon breaks. And the Triforce leaves. Witht his last real chance of winning literally snatched from his very palm, Ganon draws his swords (two scimitars, though stylized, which reminds me of the Gerudo guards from OOT) and begins to fight. If he can’t wish for it, he’ll do it himself. Let us tear apart that which binds us!
The final boss fight is actually quite hard. Ganon is the strongest fighter we’ve seen yet, with elaborate moves (all reminescent of the Gerudo guards, incidently) and a lot of power behind said moves. We cannot hit him normally, and no item we have other than the Master Sword will draw his attention. The only way we can win this is by parrying, and for the first time in this game you have to parry at the right time or you won’t actually hit jack. It’s a really good back and forth, and while yes it does involve a lot of waiting it’s also not a lot at all because Ganon is SUPER aggressive, and he gets more aggressive as you fight. Tetra is actually helping you out in this fight too, peppering him with Light Arrows that can give you some extra stun time, though eventually he starts blocking those. And eventually he starts blocking your parries. Oh dear. After surviving for awhile, Zelda tells you the plan. She’s gonna shoot a light arrow at YOU, and the Mirror Shield (which reflects all light) will bounce it back at Ganon with such speeds that he won’t be able to dodge it. Do this a few times, and Ganon will swing one last desperate attack that’ll let us finish it. If Youtube allows you to, try to look at this frame by frame, because it’s fantastic. Link gets the Mirror Shield torn from his arm by the attack, and as he leaps up into the air swinging his sword he knocks Ganon’s head back just enough to position it perfectly for the final downward thrust!
And what a thrust it is. This is a kids game right? Ganon gets that sword shoved right up in their. The wind begins to howl, and Ganondorf, the person, is slain. No more (at least in this timeline…) shall this Gerudo man haunt our steps. We talk with the King, but much as we’d like our good old friend to return with us…he cannot. Hyrule’s days are over, and even when we DO find our new land…it’ll be our new land. It won’t be his Hyrule, regardless of the name. With a happy smile the King fades away, as the ocean crashes down and erases his kingdom from the world. Link and Tetra are shielded by magic, and lifted up once more to the surface, where her pirate crew (and Aryl in a cute pirate skull dress) await. After the credits we get a scene of Link and Tetra’s crew setting off to do what they promised the King they’d do…to find land. And so it ends.
Minor gameplay thing: For beating the game we gain access to new game plus, of sorts. It saves our figurine status but that’s it, buuut it also makes it so that Aryl starts with her pirate dress, and Link’s hero tunic doesn’t replace his lobster pyjamas (in game it’s invisible clothes. Good thing this ISN’T Breath of the Wild or we’d be having Master Shortpants running around in actual shortpants!). This version of the game also has the ancient hylian text come out as readable english, and while it’s interesting it’s also not 100% compelling since it basically just tells us stuff we learn as we play. Heroes, reincarnation, etc etc.
But yeah. That’s it. That’s the end. I hope you all enjoyed.
And so we end the Wind Waker (well, next Monday I’m posting the bonus video for the figurines but this is the last actually important update). This game is…considered a classic, and for reasons that I feel are quite evident. If you’re going for 100% completion, and for the period of time that it takes to get the Triforce of Courage shards, it kind of falls flat. It also arguably falls flat with the last two dungeons, especially Mogera in my personal opinion. But once Puppet Ganon is gone and all that’s left is Ganon himself, and the writing can finally come back to give us some plot…the game suddenly returns to that level it had at the beginning, during the first third of the game, and it ends on such a good note. This game sticks the landing hard, and I think it’s telling just how much people still love this game despite it’s very clear and evident flaws how much that matters.
As I said in video, while Zelda 2 is the first direct sequel, and a few games here and there are like “hey yo look a reference” this is the first game to really make an explicit idea of “a timeline” be a thing that matters, to make an explicit connecting thread between games. This game takes place in the future after Ganon devestated the land, and Link returned to the past. Leaving them without a hero. So when he next rose up, they had no one to fight. So they called on the Gods, and so came down the flood that creates the world of Wind Waker. It’s a really cool plot to me, the idea that…because of time shinanigans Link doesn’t actually die in this timeline so the cycle of reincarnation is kinda borked. Maybe it only matters to me. But yeah, Wind Waker nails the ending perfectly, with some beautifully shot scenes and just…the most heartrending laugh from Ganon. Yes, he’s the villain, but…it’s hard not to feel bad for him when he’s so clearly broken by what happened.
So yeah. In summary…Wind Waker is super great. To those who watched, I’m glad you all enjoyed. It was a little touch and go on the end I was in a bit of a bad place, but we pulled through and finished this bad boy. As always I’d like to thank the support of my friends, my patrons, and you viewer type people. Contributions and just watching and having fun are what keep me going. With that in mind, lets take a look at what’s next for me. Because…it’s time for a vote!
This vote is gonna be for the next just general game. I’ve used the term B side for it before, or “single game playthrough” since Zelda is part of a “Series wide playthrough” where I intend to play all the games". I’m bad at naming things. But yeah, this vote is also special becaaause…while I can make no actual promises, due to emotional "bleh"ness and still being kinda sick and stuffed up and still not being in the best living situation for this sort of thing, I will be at least trying to make this next LP be voiced! So yeah lets take a look at our options this go around. (If you feel any are missing from this last, it’s because I’m holding down some of the options for later to sort of clear the list out and stuff.)
What Will Yon Zodi Play Next!?
1: Zodi’s Choice - I was gonna make this a Patron specific poll if it won to choose between one blind or one not blind game, but the blind game got beat by me so…hey, surprises!
2: Kid Icarus Uprising - The return of everyone’s favorite dumb idiot angel, Pit! A sort of SHMUP/Beatemup crossbreed game that’s super long
3: Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis - A tactics RPG with a good story and interesting mechanics. Also permadeath. Functionally blind, have seen it played but have no played myself
4: Evoland - Let’s talk about the history of RPGS in general. A cute little game that goes through various RPG tropes and stuff. Blind, but seems fascinating to me
5: Harvest Moon More Friends of Mineral Town - Farm’n’Date game with adorable and cute anime boys
6: Custom Robo for the Gamecube - A silly arena shooter style game with customization, and a…lets call it wackadoo plot involving ESPers and micro robots
7: Ronin - Quasi turn based stealth game featuring a motorcycle helmet wearing ninja girl and a katana
8: Psychonauts - Ye old classic story of a circus boy running away to join regular civilization. By which we mean psychic summer camp. Collectathon style game. I have Words And Opinions about this game
9: Bioshock - FPS in the vein of System Shock, about one man’s fun trip down to the water city known as Rapture. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
10: Dishonoured - Please don’t make me play a blind stealth FPS. We’re a cool assassin and also the setting is called “whalepunk” and that’s just really good actually this is about all I know! It involves cthulhu powers!
11: Pikmin 2 - After making use of the native inhabitants to save his life, Captain Olimar has returned to the Pikmin planet for a far more noble purpose: Capatalism.
12: IB - Indie horror game. Intending to go through this blind when/if it wins, literally no idea what it’s about.
13: Deus Ex - The robot cops have to stop the bad guys from doing bads. It’s one of the most famous story driven quasi RPG fps games in history. This is the original not the one we didn’t ask for.
14: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus - Racoon thief must get revenge on the five people who murdered his family and stole his book. One of my favorite games of all time and probably my favorite on this list?
And that’s the list. Goodness that’s…lengthy. Let’s hope we can cut a few of these down yo. Poll is here, please vote dangit. But yeah…again, thank you to everyone for enjoying this. I’ll see you all next time, for a fun little bonus video on Figurines. Also I know I said it’d release Monday but that was me forgetting Friday exists and I can’t find where I said this to fix it rip me.
EDIT: Er, this thread isn’t done ignore that if you got that. Sorry!