Warning: This post contains slight, indirect spoilers concerning the end of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

I'm actually a bit surprised that I'm writing this journal entry, especially so quickly after my mid-way progress report, although the game dramatically picked up once I made it through the Arbiter's Grounds.

While I stand by most of the comments I made from the halfway mark, some of the temple layouts and general level design are really just fantastic, especially once I had got some distance between myself and the Lakebed Temple and the Arbiter's Grounds. Sure, a lot of it wasn't groundbreaking, innovative stuff, but the sheer economy of some temples (like the Temple of Time) packed a lot of neat gameplay twists and puzzles into a small number of rooms.

Also, while I previously said that I was largely apathetic concerning the Wii controls, the final, final boss fight sold me on using the Wiimote instead of your standard Gamecube controller. Not necessarily because it was more exact (it wasn't), not because it was less frustrating (it was almost certainly more frustrating), but because it was much, much more exhilerating. It was a grinding, drawn-out duel, and I had a fantastic time with it. It was perhaps the only time where I felt the swordplay worked with the hardware, but boy did it.

I know that I picked apart the visual design of the game last time, but while I was busy needling the blurry textures, I seemingly failed to notice some fantastic framing work. Really, any time that the game takes total hold over the camera, it looks fantastic. There's some great use of depth, engaging compositions that actually say something as opposed to just looking cool and, of course, there's the 'golden hour'.

Ah yes, the golden hour: A cinematographer's best friend. It's the hour post-sunrise, and the hour prior to sunset, where everything is bathed with soft, rich, warm tones and everyone's filled with diffused light. With that kind of color and contrast, practically anything looks gorgeous! This isn't to be confused with the 'magic hour' (another close friend to anyone capturing outside imagery), which is the hour prior to sunrise, and the hour post-sunset, which encompasses the titular twilight of the game. But back to the golden hour, Twilight Princess puts it to good use by using it as a thematic bookend. There's the title sequence of the game, which is bathed in the rich hues of the setting sun (still visible in the sky) and the diminishing daylight as Link steers Epona towards Hyrule Castle. The entire sequence looks marvellous and the effect is nicely complemented by the accompanying melancholic soundtrack.

And of course, there's the closing of the final battle, where daylight and twilight's conflict comes to a close – it's a great visual touch, and a nice way to end the game, bring everything together (although the credit sequence shouldn't be ignored). It's hard to say, but if the sun was setting in the title sequence, one would assume that the sun's rising here, finally exorcising twilight and darkness from the lands. But that might just be wishful thinking on my behalf.

Perhaps I wasn't quite as astute about noticing other specific golden hour times during the rest of the game, especially since, if you weren't in a temple or dungeon, you had to contend with rapid day/night cycles. Regardless, both the golden and magic hours hours during those times also looked fantastic, especially with the shimmering of the sun in the sky.

The only other game I can think of off the top of my head that really milks the golden hour so prominently is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which opens at approximately 6:45am, just at the tail end of the sunrise, and casts a rich orange hue over the city. I imagine this is more out of practicality though, to allow the player the most amount of daylight during their inagural session of the game.

But I digress. I do agree with Mr. Riley that this perhaps wasn't Link's finest hour, but it certainly wasn't his worst. I would have liked to have seen a good bulk of the villagers sub-plots dropped, they felt like dead weight after a third of the game. An unwarrented callback concerning some of the ancillary characters in the final temple certainly didn't help matters either. But it certainly was a solid adventure with some great moments, intriguing level design, and some fantastic sunrises.