What began as a humble search for warm safflina, ended leading me to both starting AND completing the Lightning Temple. I decided to bear the sand shroud on foot as my hover-bike would've just trivialised it. Sneaking into the Gerudo bunker and passing through, reunites us with Riju, and her ability is to channel lightning and call it down where ever your arrow lands. Now to bring up the elephant in the desert (wait, where it go?), the decision to not assign hotkeys to ANY of the companion abilities is absolutely trite. Not only do they constantly get in your way when you least want them, but when you DO want them, they're 10 metres away from you or on the other side of a goddamn fucking cliff. Riju's could've just been tied to ZR + A, since A isn't used for anything while your bow is drawn. Now sometimes you might want it to charge up while your attacking, so perhaps replacing the redundant map quick-select from the ability wheel with a 'call companion' sub-menu would've been ideal.
As for the dungeon itself, I liked this one, although I think 'Mirror Temple' would be a more fitting name, since the only instances of using electricity are for activating the tablet and harming gibdos. The puzzles themselves were decent and the dungeon felt slightly more cohesive, rather than separate trials spread throughout, you had to move around mirror's on the top floor to open doors on different levels (only 2 but hey, it's something). Queen Gibdo gave me some trouble during it's 2nd phase with all of minions, and maybe I'm a bad shot, but I just couldn't for the life of me hit the darn thing while flying. Initially I thought I could shoot an arrow underneath and they'd be caught in Riju's lightning, but to no avail. In the end I just fused a mirror to my shield and knocked them down with the light, sure I'll get a chance to correct my method on repeat encounters in the Depths.
Did all of the shrines in the desert afterwards and cashed in all my blessings for hearts. One mechanic used was blowing off sand with a fan, however, the shrine that stuck with me was 'Drifting Flame'. My solution was to trace the path of the torches with the candle and then use recall of it while stood on the button.
I wrapped up by sorting out the Cece Vs. Reede electoral campaign, which means I can finally wear my hood down, just like in the promotional material! Seriously what was the thought process behind locking this feature behind a multi-staged questline? Why not just make it a convenient option in the inventory screen? Why Nintendo!? WHY!?
