Inching closer to completing Skyward Sword. Did some FAQ checking on the weekend to find a couple Goddess Cubes I missed and why I was missing my last heart piece. All side quests are wrapped up, all treasure chests should have been found, all equipment upgraded. According to the Sheikah Stone, everything is cleared except for the Sealing Grounds and the last dungeon I've just entered.
Minor spoilers ahead.
To get the Hylian Shield, you need to rescue the Thunder Dragon who then has you fight against previous bosses. There are 9 total boss fights to revisit. When I was doing this mode, I'd fought 8 bosses and could quit for the Shield or keep going for 2,000 rupees. I thought I might as well do the last fight and collect everything. The last fight happened to be the 3rd Imprisoned fight and I almost blew it. I got up to Groose's cart and was hitting A to end his dialogue only to accidently fire myself out of his catapult when it ended. I was so upset thinking I'd just choked on the whole thing right at the end. Fortunately, I was able to get back to the cart and stop the Imprisoned in time. Then I found out that all I won was the 2,000 rupees. I thought the rewards were cumulative and that I'd get everything offered up to that point including the Hylian shield and Piece of Heart that were offered.
I don't need any more rupees at this point. So, then I had to play through the bosses again and beat 8 for the Shield and then another 4 to get the Piece of Heart. Ugh.
That means I got to fight The Imprisoned 12 times this game. It didn't come up during my run of 4 for the heart piece. That said, it was kind of interesting to go back to these fights and see how easy they were at this point and when you know what to do. Truthfully, the Imprisoned fights were no big deal at this point. They have an easy pattern / strategy to them. They were all under 3 minutes when doing them again. Same with Girahim. For some reason, I ended up having to fight him back to back each time during the three boss rushes I did. The first time when I beat all nine I didn't even have a shield. So, I just got more aggressive but I had also figured out better sword swinging strategies so I was surprised at how easy and quickly those fights now were. I knew from looking ahead at how much is left in the game I've got one more fight with the dude. Hopefully, it goes as smoothly as these rematches did.
Hoping to be done with this game either today or tomorrow. Pokepal makes a big deal out of Fi but I've had no problem with her. My biggest gripes about the game has been the amount of back tracking and going over the same old ground a bunch of times. I also hate how the game has to relearn all the insects and materials each time you play. While it's sort of been a long time part of the gameplay baked into this brand of games, there just seemed to be a lot of fetch quests and busy work that felt sort of excessive or included for the sake of padding things. For instance, when bringing a basin of water to Eldin to open the sixth dungeon, you can't just warp to the entrance of the dungeon. No, you've got to go up the mountain from the bottom again and defeat enemies for an escort mission. Meanwhile, I just want to get to the point already and get started on the dungeon instead. It's just an artificial reason anyways for having to now do this task. I guess that maybe is what I'm searching for. It just seems or feels like I could see a lot more of the artificiality in this game than in other Zelda titles.
In the first part of the game when getting through the first three dungeons, I was really enjoying the game and got re-enthused by the classic Zelda formula. However, this game wears out its welcome and now gives off a vibe of the formula getting exhausted and running on fumes. It's rather interesting to see how a lot of ideas and concepts in this game were taken over into Breath of the Wild and work so much better there. Justin will love this but playing Skyward Sword just makes me appreciate BotW even more.