The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD - Part 3

 Part 3: Learning the Song of the Hero

The Sealed Grounds, the Thunderhead, and the Sealed Grounds again: After you collect the three Sacred Flames, Fi upgrades your sword to the Master Sword, which is awesome! Not only does it look cool, it is super powerful as well. Unfortunately, this is the part of the game that I remember negatively the most (beyond the Silent Realms) - the revisiting of locations now multiple times. Now you are tasked to find the Triforce. Your journey starts by traveling to the Sealed Grounds and battle the Imprisoned (again), this time with arms and Groose's help. I will give Groose credit for the Groosenator invention, which is amusing.  After defeating the Imprisoned, you deliver pumpkin soup to the dragon Levias in the Thunderhead, who has been infected by the ocular parasite Bilocyte. What follows is a cool boss battle that takes place in the sky. After defeating Bilocyte, Levias tells you that in order to locate the Triforce, you have to learn the Song of the Hero. The dragon that lives in each of the three previously visited lands holds a portion of the song (along with Levias). You can guess what this means - traveling to all three regions again. You start at Faron Woods, but when you try to land there the only landing position is the Sealed Grounds,  where you guessed it again - the Imprisoned has escaped and you have to fight him again, this time with arms and a tail...If the Silent Realms are my least favorite part of any Zelda game, the Imprisoned is my least favorite boss. For no other reason than the ridiculousness of having to fight him three times. I get what they are trying to accomplish by showing how he is growing in strength by escaping more frequently, which puts a sense of urgency on finding the Triforce. But it would've been nice to represent this in a more enjoyable way. 

Faron Woods: After defeating the Imprisoned for a third time, you travel to Faron Woods. Groose launches you there in the Groosenator, and when you land you learn the entire woods have been flooded by the region's dragon in order to get rid of all the bad guys. She will teach you her part of the song, but only after you collect her 17 tadtones, which are little fish shaped like musical notes. She already has the tadtones in her possession, but instead of just giving them to you, she scatters them throughout the flooded woods. Whatever, dragon. After finding the tadtones (which isn't difficult, just a bit tedious), she teaches you her part of the song and drains the woods, returning it to its pre-flooded state.

Eldin Volcano: When descending to the volcano surface, the volcano erupts, blowing Link off course where he is captured and all of his items are taken from him. You have to escape his cell and collect his items without being caught by the guards. I didn't mind this as much as collecting the tadtones. The stealth was kinda fun and reminded me of Metal Gear Solid. I usually enter areas with my sword a-blazin', so this gameplay was unique to most of the play experienced in Zelda games. Though the guards are not intelligent at all. You can literally pelt them in the face with arrows and they won't see you unless you enter their spotlight.

Lanayru Desert: The cool thing about this area is the dragon's corpse is laying on the ground in front of you once you reach a previously unreachable area of the desert. This is the first section in Part 3 of the game that is new, which is nice. Your goal is to navigate a timeshift stone to the corpse's location, making time move to the past and the dragon come to life, which is really cool. Unfortunately, when he comes to life he is quite sick and requires medicine. You then have to take a seed from the nearby Life Tree and plant it at the Sealed Temple. Once the seed grows into a tree, you can take one of the tree's fruits to the dragon in the desert as it has medicinal properties. This takes some clever time traveling through the Time Gate in order to get the tree to grow quickly.

Skyloft Silent Realm and Sky Keep: After you learn the Song of the Hero, you travel back to Skyloft, where you encounter another(!) dreaded Silent Realm. After completing this trial, you unlock the game's final temple, Sky Keep. Interestingly, I have no recollection of this part of the game from my original play. Sky Keep is hiding right in front of your eyes, directly below the massive Statue of the Goddess in Skyloft. Each room of Sky Keep represents a previous temple. While this concept is cool, the temple itself is a bit of a pain because you have to arrange the rooms in certain ways in order to advance. I used a strategy guide for this because it was rather a pain figuring it out on your own. Once the rooms where in their correct locations, the temple itself wasn't difficult. I think the fact that each room represents a previous temple, while cool on the surface, actually makes the temple less memorable as it causes it to blend with memories of the previous temples. There is no final boss battle either. Your goal is to search and find the Triforce, and once you have it in hand you return to the Sealed Grounds.

Sealed Grounds and Final Battle with Ghirahim and The Imprisoned/Demise: After finding all three parts of the Triforce, Sky Keep falls from Skyloft and lands at the Sealed Grounds, where I half way expected to have to fight the Imprisoned again. Instead, Sky Keep's landing kills the Imprisoned once and for all! However, Ghirahim takes Zelda through the Gate of Time to restore The Imprisoned. Traveling through the gate to chase after Zelda, Ghirahim sends hundreds of bokoblins after you at the Sealed Grounds. On the one hand, this is a bit pointless as Link is significantly stronger than a bokoblin at this point with the Master Sword and the game is very generous with giving hearts, so you essentially end this massive battle in the same place you start. On the other hand, there is something very satisfying about the Hyrule Warriors-style epic battle. After defeating the bokoblin army, you once again have to fight Ghirahim. The visuals of the battle at the Sealed Grounds are very cool, but the battle itself is pretty straight forward and similar to previous Ghirahim battles. After defeating Ghirahim for a third time, he is able to summon his master, who this time instead of appearing as The Imprisoned, appears in his humanoid form Demise. Demise looks an awful lot like Ganon, and through research I learned that Demise appears in different forms as the Zelda canon unfolds, often times as the beast Ganon or the Gerudo thief Ganondorf. The best part about Demise is his hair, who has flowing orange hair that changes shades of orange as if his hair was made out of neon sign material or were on fire. Simultaneously cool and cartoonish. The final battle is epic (although I don't remember it at all from my previous play), as you are transported to this arena with shallow water surrounded by dark clouds that form thunderstorms in the second half of the battle. After defeating Demise, he promises to return as a reincarnation of evil (hence the reoccurring Ganon character) and Zelda decides to stay on the surface, setting the events in motion to form Hyrule Kingdom.