For as long as I can remember, I’ve always enjoyed the idea of exploring ruins or ancient pyramids and the like. Navigating the twisting caverns, finding hidden treasure, or maybe finding a lost city or a beautiful underground lake. As an impressionable child, playing video games helped form my imagination, as I would often daydream about all the adventures I’d have exploring these exotic locations.
If you asked me what my favorite Zelda dungeon is, it would easily have to be the Spirit Temple from Ocarina of Time. I love everything about this area; the trek across the dangerous Haunted Wasteland to get to the Desert Colossus, the oasis outside of it, the increase in difficulty with the combat encounters, the aesthetic, and the fact that it uses the time-travel mechanic in a very cool way.
Not to mention that this is it: Finish this dungeon and nothing stands between you and Ganondorf. This dungeon has a strong feeling of finality to me. It takes all the skills you’ve learned throughout the game and utilizes them to their full potential. You’ve worked hard and solved many puzzles to get to this point, and it’s all tested here. It even makes use of many of your items, rather than merely the Silver Gauntlets or Mirror Shield you find here — something I wish other traditional Zelda games would do.
The Spirit Temple is also home to, strange as this may sound, a wall that I got excited about climbing. It’s the wall that moves side to side and slowly makes its way towards some deadly spikes. You have to time it carefully so you can climb without getting stuck — or worse, impaled by the spikes and sent to the bottom. Or, you could just use the Longshot and cheese the whole thing.
I remember as a kid I had a strategy guide and I saw this area in a picture. I thought it was so cool! You had to climb it and time it just right, and my mind went in all sorts of crazy directions and had all sorts of ideas as to how I could scale this dangerous-but-fun wall. It’s such a vivid memory, I always end up thinking about this section when I think of the Spirit Temple. I also may be the only person to get extremely fascinated by a dangerous wall.
This dungeon also utilizes the time-travel mechanic in the best way possible. The first half has to be done as Young Link, as Adult Link cannot move a block to get inside, nor can he crawl in a tiny crevice across from the block. When you do return as a child, you run into Nabooru, who is searching for a treasure she plans to use against Ganondorf. Link ventures into the dangerous dungeon alone, as Nabooru can’t fit through the crevice either, and begins his quest to find said treasure.
Link eventually finds the Silver Gauntlets, which allow him to push and grab heavier objects. Nabooru, however, is captured by Ganondorf’s surrogate mothers, Kotake and Koume. Link travels back to the future, gauntlets on hand, and takes on the second half of the Spirit Temple. He finds Nabooru brainwashed as an Iron Knuckle, defeats and saves her, and then defeats Kotake and Koume as well as her ultimate form, Twinrova.
I love how this dungeon has an actual story that plays out inside it. It felt more like what I was doing had an impact rather than just “collect item, get final key, use item to beat boss.” Sure, you still do that, but it feels like there’s more on the line this time. Even though it’s very simple, it’s enough to make it stick out in my mind and make it a memorable experience. While telling a story in a dungeon was done in others before it, such as Jabu-Jabu’s Belly or the Fire Temple, I feel the story in the Spirit Temple was fleshed out more.
The Spirit Temple remains to this day what I consider the ultimate Zelda dungeon. It has everything I look for in a dungeon, and it’s just a fun place to run around in and explore. It utilizes a lot of the mechanics you learned on your journey thus far and presents a fun challenge that truly makes it feel dangerous, and it really sinks in the feeling that you’re close to the end.
