Parapa Palace

Entrance to Parapa Palace

The Parapa Palace lies in the northeastern corner of the Parapa desert, very close to our starting location.  On the element of complexity and puzzles, this palace is actually rather lacking but the only major reason for the straight-forward nature of your first dungeon is that it is packed full of action.  Here you meet the dreaded Ironknuckle, an enemy who even late into the game is an annoyance.  This guy takes and matches Link's swordplay, and as you go they get to be better at defense (and eventually learn to copy Link's ability to shoot sword beams) which for them, means they are also a lot better at hurting you.  Ah well.  The perpetual point of making the first palace straight-forward is to tell the player that puzzle-solving is not the forte of this game: action is.  And if you don't like it, put it away right now.  I'll actually tell you right now that several times playing this game previously, before I knew that you needed to invest some time raising Link's stats before you set foot into this first dungeon, I gave up on it mid-way through this dungeon.  

Link Finds the Candle

The Candle is the first item you find in the dungeons, and your first inventory item in your quest.  This introduces the largest difference between this game, its predecessor and its successors.  The items you obtain are perpetually active and always offer their assistance; but we only ever have one offensive weapon: the sword.  What this means is now that we have the candle, underground caverns will be lit.  Of course, one must think how we were able to see down here in the first place since I don't see any torches anywhere.  But that aside, this opens many doors for us (and that is what Zelda is all about...opening doors, one at a time, until the entire world is open to us).

The Parapa Palace Statue - One Crystal Set

The boss of Parapa Palace is Horsehead, a warrior with, quite obviously, a horseface for a head he is quite dangerous.  After this palace has banged us up pretty badly, we are left only with the option of being extremely cautious with this very tall enemy in trying to strike his head with our sword.  At first, and without knowing anything about his movements or patterns, Horsehead is intimidating and often hits and kills Link.  However, we soon realize he moves predictably and can easily be struck.  Not to mention the magic we learned back in Rauru town helps us to survive (and will be one of our most valuable spells, finding useage throughout the entire game).  After the boss meets his end, we find our way to the final room of the dungeon, which has a mysterious statue.  These statues are in each palace, and are the key to our story: Link must place a crystal in each of these statues in order to get into the Great Palace to lay claim to the Triforce of Courage, which is the final piece in settling peace in Hyrule and removing the curse on Princess Zelda.  Compared to a usual theme of eight, this game has six palaces (excluding the Great Palace).