Update 3: All right, one final update and then I'm done.
Spirit Temple was kind enough to gift me the Hookshot, finally, as well as the Minuet of Forest. Both of those together are my ticket into the Forest Temple.
Literally the first Hookshot-only gold skulltula I find, above the Sacred Forest Meadow maze near the Forest Temple, gets me the Longshot. There's not a skulltula I can't reach now.
I already found the compass and boss key for the Forest Temple, so I'm feeling good that I'll complete it. I forgot how creepy the music was though.
Forest Temple got me the Golden Gauntlets. I think I use these exactly once? Outside of the final dungeon, anyway. Sadly, Forest Temple's a linear dungeon and I don't have all the keys for it yet, so I'll have to come back later.
(I believe the Golden Gauntlets and Longshot are what randomizers call "progressive items": that is, items that have multiple instances where you'll start with the weaker version and work your way up the chain regardless of what order you find them in. E.g. had I found the Golden Gauntlets in the Forest Temple before the Silver Gauntlets in Mido's House, the Forest Temple pair would be the Silver Gauntlets instead.)
The Golden Gauntlets open the way to the Ganon's Castle Great Fairy. She normally gives you the half damage upgrade, which would've been an amazing boon to get early in a randomizer. This time she gave me bombchus. Gee, thanks.
Forest Temple and Fire Temple are now both stymied by a lack of keys. I've at least defeated Volvagia, but as long as there's still chests/skulltulas in there I can't stay away just in case one of them has something vital inside.
The Fire Temple revisit (with the Longshot) did net me something big though: the Adult Wallet. I can fill up on some rupees and hit the Carpet Merchant.
The Carpet Merchant in the Haunted Wasteland has the second most expensive item in the game at 200 rupees (joint with the Goron Tunic), but it's usually bombchus so it's supposed to be a rip-off. However, the randomizer changes everything, so now it's... oh, still bombchus.
A Spirit Temple revisit (which meant going through the desert with no Lens of Truth again...) unexpectedly netted me Ruto's letter, so now I can finally visit Lord Jabu Jabu and finish off the young Link-exclusive dungeons!
Lord Jabu Jabu is the MQ version, which means lots of fun with wallcows. I also grabbed the Iron Boots here which, in conjunction with the Zora Tunic I found in the Spirit Temple, means the MQ Water Temple is next. Can't wait.
Since it was on the way, sorta, I completed the smaller Ice Dungeon as Adult Link now that King Zora had moved. Worth it, as I got the Requiem of Spirit. No more trying to memorize the very specific speedrunner route through the Haunted Wasteland's "Phantom Guide" section, hooray.
With that, and a few more Boss Keys I found along the way, I'm now all set to complete the four remaining Temples. That is, if I find enough small keys.
MQ Water Temple was as unpleasant as I remember. Didn't have any (randomizer-related) issues clearing it out, though: I think it only needs two keys and so it only took one visit to complete in full. If I'm being honest the first thing I did was defeat Morpha, since its boss door is right in the starting central column area, because I was flirting with the idea of not even touching the rest of the dungeon.
As I ended up with the last Gemstone after the Morpha fight, my trip back to Hyrule Castle as Young Link was suddenly interrupted by Zelda's escape from Ganondorf.
The Ocarina of Time is a nothing item, turns out, since its sole purpose is to teach you the Song of Time (which I already had and used to open the Temple of Time).
Likewise, the randomized song I gained from finding it was the Serenade of Water: the warp song for the dungeon I'd just completed. I don't have any reason to return to Lake Hylia either.
All the same, Young Link had a mission: complete the other half of the Spirit Temple, as well as net the last few seed-related items in the Desert Colossus area.
Though I had to bounce between the Fire, Shadow, and Spirit Temple a bit for keys, the rest of the game was smooth sailing.
Of the few major items I had left, I managed to find most of them: Light Arrows (very important) and Farore's Wind from Spirit Temple, and the final Quiver and Bomb Bag upgrades from Shadow Temple.
Also, I'd received the Water Temple Emblem from the Spirit Temple, which triggers the "Burning Kakariko Village" cutscene. This normally gives you the Nocturne of Shadow warp song, but instead I received the Song of Storms.
The Song of Storms, in addition to opening a bunch of secret holes, lets me access the Bottom of the Well dungeon as Young Link, which had almost all the remaining dungeon items I needed for the last three Temples.
One of those items was the much appreciated Double Defense upgrade. Too bad I didn't get that way earlier when I was taking on adult dungeons with four heart containers.
And, most importantly, the Bottom of the Well had the Boss Key for Ganon's Tower, obtaining the last vital item needed to finally beat the game.
Of course, Zelda decides to give me the compass to the Fire Temple (it's normally the Light Arrows in the dramatic Sheik reveal scene), which would've been useful a few hours ago.
When it was time to face Ganon in his tower, I'd amassed almost my entire inventory and every upgrade. Not really a threat at that point.
When the dust finally settled, I had two missing heart containers and only 97 of 100 Gold Skulltula tokens. Also missing: the Giant Wallet, one Fire Temple key, and the Spirit Temple map.
Since the run was successfully over, I took the liberty of perusing the Spoiler Log (generated with every seed) to figure out where I'd forgotten to check. You know, in case I ever wanted to put myself through all this again.
The last ¼ piece of heart was with the Five Froggy Tenors: a mini-game I was ill-equipped to handle with this Steam controller's lousy touchpad subbing in for the C-buttons. (Seriously, playing with the Steam Controller was a mistake for this and for many other reasons, but that's my bad for not using something better equipped for the task at hand.)
That last Fire Temple small key required completing the Mask of Truth side-quest, one of the longest and most involved in the game. No thanks. (The other long trading quest, for the Biggoron Sword, would've netted me 20 rupees in the end. Glad I skipped it.)
The Spirit Temple map was in... the composers' grave? Huh. I wonder how I missed it. (Turns out I needed Din's Fire to light some torches, a tool I lacked on my first visit.)
The Giant Wallet was on a Golden Skulltula, which of course was the one behind the locked door in the Fire Temple.
Or two, I should say, since there was another up there with the last Heart Container. C'est la vie.
As for the Golden Skulltula tokens, one was definitely from the advanced Horseback Archery mini-game. I had no idea there was a second reward for it. No clue about the remaining two: OoT has a lot of "freestanding items," as the log calls them, which are just out in the world instead of in chests, and therefore don't appear on maps. Some are even buried under rubble and crates, so I imagine a missed a number of them.
That's going to do it for this randomizer run. It really demanded a degree of competency over this game I didn't think I could muster, but it's surprising how your mind works when you're cornered and desperate. I recalled stuff about this game I thought long buried; dunno if that says more about my perspicacity or just how memorably designed Ocarina of Time was. Only thing I needed to check was the non-Lens route through the Haunted Wasteland (and the game glitching away my Lens was some real BS) and the locations of some of the secret holes in the ground.
My final advice for other rando-runners? Do NOT mix in the Gold Skulltula Tokens with the general item pool. But also keep in mind that some necessary items might be tied up with the Gold Skulltula rewards anyway, so you might as well keep an ear out. Also don't do Keysanity for your first randomizer run through the game; that's just dumb, c'mon. Also, also, Ocarina of Time is still amazing and I can't wait to watch a professional take on the randomizer when it shows up at SGDQ 2020.
Thanks for sticking around this far! (I wonder if The Wind Waker has a randomizer yet...?)
@arbitrarywater: I believe we still have that simultaneous Tales of Graces F playthrough to consider eventually. Not sure it's dubious enough to qualify for your wheel, but I might have space in the near future for it. Gonna have to work it around my Yakuza 6 playthrough though; I've been looking forward to that.
I'm another that played Sacred 3 on Xbox 360 for about three hours. Fortunately in my case it was a rental. When it came to the Xbox 360 and RPGs, it was really a "take what you can get" situation in the gaps between all the Bioware and Bethesda releases. I think I ended up playing every poor-to-middling RPG for that thing.
I might object to Anachronox being considered "dubious," except I always lose focus towards the end. Feels like a game that gets progressively weaker as it goes.
...Yeah, so this definitely mirrors a couple of my attempts, though I'm not sure which guides told you to go to Dernholm and Blackroot before clearing out some of the easier quests in Tarant.
Most did, including the "Before I Play" rundown, which was initially the only thing I was going to check.
Granted, in retrospect, the city was probably going to be less dangerous given the first step of the main quest was there and that centers of civilization usually have fewer high-level monster encounters, but I got spooked by various sources saying "don't go to the city straight away" like I was going to get jumped by half the antagonistic cult as soon as I arrived. Some of that comes from residual Baldur's Gate memories too: heading to the titular city right after starting is generally inadvisable (and probably impossible, though I don't recall the finer details).
None of Arcanum felt that great to play and the time investment was starting to look enormous, so I don't think Tarant would've saved it. Being first level in any RPG is rough, but hitting 7th and still feeling unable to do anything reliably was rougher.
Hey, great work with this. Seems like a pretty definitive ranking. I mean, I couldn't find Ys 8 on either the finished list or the 40 runners-up list, but pobody's nerfect.
I appreciate that a good 25-30% of the final list are indie games too. I've been putting my top 100 Indies of 2010s list together, but keep running into weird technicalities (e.g. Does Life is Strange count? Does Child of Light? Does Journey?).
Since there's no Hottest Mess category this year, I'll nominate a game for it: Outer Wilds.
Outer Wilds's PS4 port has a save corruption bug in it, and one that happens fairly frequently if the user response on Twitter and the developer's site is any indication. It happened to Fanbyte's (formerly Waypoint's) Danielle Riendeau. Suffice it to say this is the most deleterious issue a game can have - even a glitch that prevents you from completing the game means, at worst, you just have to sit twiddling your thumbs next the finish line until they fix it - and absolutely not one that should be in a finished product of any repute. Games are hard to make and bugs happen, granted, but there are issues of a certain severity that should never be allowed to see the light of day and that it's still there (figuratively) kicking people in the junk several months after release is pretty shocking.
Control chugs harder than The Little Engine That Could on a core PS4 and the decisions made for its checkpointing may be the Oldest House's biggest mystery of all, but at least it didn't consign hundreds of save games to the great beyond.
I swear, we're the only people on this whole site repping Horace. There's a lot of really good, inventive stuff in there that's worth weathering the awkwardly tough platforming and backtracking. I even would've been happy to explain all the British references to Dan if he'd stuck with it (and asked me to do so (and knew who I was)).
I'm just getting started with my Best Music homework myself. Sadly, even though a new Ys came out in Japan, there's no localization yet so it's not eligible. Kinda hard for much else this year to compete with this or this. Trails of Cold Steel 3 was an acceptable consolation prize at least.
Bloodstained's OST was really good fun though, I'll have to give that another listen.
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