Not quite Hallway-Hallway-Hallway-Boss, but still...

All right! Face Shrine down, two more dungeons to go!

Actually, that particular dungeon has made something clear. The top-down viewpoint lends itself to more complex puzzles and orienteering.

Now, I haven't played much of the handheld Zelda games beyond Minish Cap, but all of the console Zelda games to date have had fairly straightforward dungeons. That is, rather than delaying your getting the map and/or the compass, most of the dungeons in Zelda games since Ocarina of Time have lead you to one or the other (or both) fairly early on.

On the other hand, in the Face Shrine, I only found the compass and map shortly before getting the big key. Part of this might be some rust on my gaming skills, but I also think that the 3D Zelda games have much more linear dungeons. That is, you're much more hamstrung into going in one set direction (more often than not because other rooms branching off of the first couple of rooms are only accessible only with the dungeon's special item).

Skyward Sword's dungeons are huge and impressive, but even they are designed in a similar way. You go in, early on you get the map or compass (or both) and then find the dungeon's item, and finally the boss key.

Sometimes the pattern is broken up with a late compass or early item, but the boss key is almost always the last thing you come across. This pattern makes sense in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, where the full freedom of 3D motion coupled with a third-person perspective might have been overwhelming in dungeons that can be almost freely wandered around. But, that the same linearity is still detectable in Skyward Sword is disappointing.

Perhaps we'll finally see something mirroring the difficulty of the top-down Zelda games' dungeons' designs in WiiU Zelda, where the gamepad (even if only used as a map) opens up some excellent possibilities.