Oracle of Seasons Part 2: This dungeon is Gnarly. Also, Holodrum is infested with Jawas.

You can tell it's the right dungeon
because it looks like a gnarled root.

When we last hung out with Link, he'd just gotten a key from the Maku Tree, who was much too busy doing stuff like sleeping and being a tree to save Din from the evil General Onox. It's our job to go through the eight dungeons in this game to grab the essences of nature in order to restore the seasons to their original cyclical format.

The first dungeon is called the Gnarled Root dungeon, and looks exactly the same as anything you might have found in Link's Awakening. Because there are so many of them, the dungeons in this game tend to be fairly short. This one's gimmick is the addition of a few rail tracks that Link can ride around on using a series of switches to get into new areas. The layouts of the dungeons in this game are simple and straightforward - the 2D nature of the game and the fact that it's on a Gameboy Color really limit the amount of complexity possible. That's not to say that they're boring as such, just a little bit less mentally demanding than some in other Zelda games. 

Remember this asshole?

Like in Link's Awakening, each dungeon has a sub-boss and a boss - once the sub-boss is defeated, you're given a waypoint that you can use to teleport yourself between that room and the entrance, which comes in handy. 

The dungeon's item is the Seed Satchel, which is actually one of the coolest key items in this game. There are five different types of seeds that you'll come across, each with their own unique ability. The first you run into is the Ember Seed, which replaces the Lantern in this game - it lets you light things on fire, such as torches. A lot of puzzles in this game depend on the various seeds in your satchel to complete.

Fertile soil! Yeah!

The boss of this first dungeon is Aquamentus, a dragon which is an obvious reference to the first boss of the original Zelda. Like most Zelda games, Oracle of Seasons is very self-referential, which is part of the reason why we love the series, so we can forgive it anything. (Right?)

Anyway, after you waste this guy, you get the first Essence of Nature - the Fertile Soil. Hooray! Just seven more to go. In typical style, Link gets spat out of the dungeon and the Maku Tree lets us know that there's some kind of special item we need to get from the Temple of Seasons. 

Little sidenote here, Oracle of Seasons actually has a surprising amount of subquest-y things you can do, considering how limited it is by the fact that it's on a Gameboy Color. You can plant Gasha Seeds, which grow into nuts that allow you to collect magic rings (a huge part of this game - magic rings give you special abilities.) Like Link's Awakening, there's a trading subquest which eventually ends up in you receiving the Noble Sword, which is awesome. I'm not personally a huge subquest fan, at least not the kind of subquests that show up in a game this old, so I tend to ignore them for the most part. Am I a bad person?

THIS IS SO FUN,
THANKS NINTENDO.

The next part of the game features Link encountering some weird Jawa-looking things, one of whom has a stupid bow and is loudly and conveniently complaining about a temple falling into her homeland of Subrosia. You now have to follow her around a bunch of trees in the best kind of mini-game ever - the "don't let the NPC see you" game! You have to follow her back to a hole in the ground around some trees and if she spots you, you have to start all over. Amazing.

Subrosia is an unfortunately large part of the game, as you'll have to return here to complete several idiotic fetch quests and mini-games in order to progress and get some key items, such as the magic flute and boomerang. We're down here for the Temple of Seasons, though.

The Temple of Seasons has four corners, each inhabited by a spirit of a respective season. As you get more key items from various dungeons, you will be able to access different parts of the temple. This time, we go visit the Winter Spirit's tower and receive the Rod of Seasons, which is basically this game's Ocarina of Time. It is the key item.

In the overworld, you can now change the season from whatever it is normally into winter. This freezes certain paths or covers them with snow, which allows you to access areas you couldn't before, including dungeons and caves. Hurrah! As you might imagine, getting the ability to change the overworld into different seasons is the master gimmick of Oracle of Seasons.

Stay tuned for next time, where Link unexpectedly goes through a bunch of dungeons to get items in order to defeat evil and return peace to Holodrum!