With a new Legend of Zelda game hitting the shelves, there’s a lot of expectations for Nintendo. The company’s offering several new aspects to Zelda, but also continuing many traditions, including one of the most beloved and iconic components of the series: dungeons. With puzzles, items, bosses, and a variety of theme songs and aesthetics, dungeons provide the most entertaining and well-designed challenges within the Zelda series.
However, many dungeons in the series are looked down upon by players. These dungeons can be too unoriginal, too confusing, too difficult, or downright boring. Dungeons can suffer for a multitude of reasons, but every dungeon helps the series progre🌞ss. Many dungeons build off of previous games, with repeated themes, locations, weapons, bosses, and styles continuing from game to game. Almost every dungeon tries to offer something new—unfortunately, new ideas or the combination of new and old don’t always benefit dungeons.
In honor of the new game in the series, Breath of the Wild, this article reviews the worst dungeons in the history of The Legend of Zelda. These dungeons explore a variety of gameplay styles, with some solely centered around combat while others focus on puzzles and platforming. All have faltered in one way or another, and while Nintendo has made up for several of these problems, certain mistakes reoccur throughout the series. With the hope that future Zelda games will benefit from the mistakes of their predecessors, here’s the 15 worst dungeons in the Legend of Zelda series.
15 ඣ 😼 Jabu Jabu's Belly (Oracle of Ages)
A 2-D water dungeon may sound odd, but Oracle of Ages incorporates the idea fairly well. While you normally tread carefullꦅy around cliffs and dark holes, in Jabu Jabu’s Belly you can swim across depthless abysses by raising tꦯhe water level. Unfortunately, this mechanic falls short—for some reason you can’t cross low walls and you still have to swim up ramps to reach elevated platforms and “jump” off ledges to get down.
Because each water level affects rooms difܫferently, you must revisit rooms multipඣle times in order to complete the dungeon. The dungeon’s large size, combined with the clunky swimming mechanic that only occasionally lets you avoid obstacles, prevents this dungeon from being as fun and original as it could be.
14 Skyview Temple (S꧒kyward Sword)
This is actually a pretty good level when you first play through it—it’s the second visit that turns this dungeon into a bad memory. By forcing players to redo Skyview Temple, Nintendꦏo tries to revitalize the dungeon formula but instead demonstrates why temples should only be used once. The trek involves brief uses of your newly earned swimming and digging powers, but neither of these abilities add much to the original temple. Only the enemies at the end are exciting, but they don’t last long. Instead of encountering new challenges, you pass by puzzles and rooms you’ve already completed. Hardly anything changes in a dungeon you finished way back at the beginning of the game, making your second visit an errand rather than an adventure.
13 Earthꦫ Temple (Wind Waker)
Despite its creepy enemies, music, and aesthetic, the Earth Temple is lacking🐬 thanks to its vast number of negligible tasks. Discovering puzzle solutions in the Earth Temple can be exciting, but the thrill vanishes when you have to carry out those solutions. Only after slowly pushing blocks, pausing to conduct songs, and awkwardly aiming the Mirror Shield do you finish the puzzles in the dungeon.
Maneuvering through the temple with two characters is a great idea. Switching from Link to Medli requires far too much time, however. To complete the dungeon, you must play the Earth God’s Lyric several times and the Command Melody too many times to count. If playing the Wind’s Requiem throughout the game hasn🔴’t already made you🥃 want to throw the Wind Waker into the sea, the songs in this dungeon certainly will.
12 ♑ Eagle's Toweౠr (Link's Awakening)
Eagle’s Tower almost works really well, but the dungeon carries its central mechanic a bit too far. To finish the dungeon, Link must throw a ball around the map to break four pillars. While the ball produces great puzzles within individual rooms, the mechanic becomes wearisome when you have 🎐to throw the ball over a wall and maneuver through the entire dungeon just to return to the ball.
Despite the repetitive💃 ball, Eagle’s Tower wouldn’t be on this list if not for the boss. Instead of utilizing the Mirror Shield found in the dungeon, Evil Eagle may be defeated with your sword. After a long and challenging dungeon, the boss battle ends quickly as you wait for Evil Eagle to appear, turn toward it, and simply tap the attack button.
11 🐻 Forsaken Fortress (Wind Waker)
With a simple but well-contained map and obvious destinations (literally beacons of light), Forsaken Fortress works well as the starting dungeon of a Zelda game. The setting may be a🌄 bit bland, but the music fits the fortress nicely.
The only problem with the dungeon is its large amount of sneaking. Replaying the dungeon transforms the sneaking mechanic from an exciting test of patience to a time-consuming chore. If you happen to get caught, you must restart from the beginning and replay the dungeon. For players who don’t realize the necessity of sneaking, are too impatient to sneak properly, or think they’re safe but are suddenly caught, this dungeon must be played through multiple times—an outcome that won’t make players very excited for the rest of the ga🌌me.
10 💮 Fire Temple (Ocarina of Time)
This dungeon is the greatest example of why 3-D Zelda games aren’t meant to be platformers. With very few enemies, this dungeon involves a lot of jꦛumping from platform to platform, pulling yourself up ledges, and navigating narrow, crooked paths that are easy to fall off of due to the poorly angled cꦇamera.
The rest of the dungeon actually functions really well. Because of the perfectly sized map, completely exploring the temple to find the missing Gorons is quite fun. The boss flies and moves through lava beneath your feet, nicely combining combat previous Zelda games with 3-D mechanics. Unfortunately, the other contents of the dungeon are boring and clunky. While it would have fit within a 2-D Zelda game, the Fire Temple feels out of place in Ocarina of Time.
9 ✱ 🔯 Ice Cavern (Tri Force Heroes)
The Ice Cavern offers another bad sample of platforming—which is surprising because the rest of the game works wonders as a Zelda platformer. Instead of offering difficult puzzles or platformꦓs, the Ice Cavern requires players to hit a pad with the Magic Hammer, stand atop that pad, and wait for the pad to throw them to the platform above. Your objective and its solution are obvious, yet you must stand and wait instead of quickly progressing through the dungeon.
While the waiting in this dungeon would be forgivable if presented in small doses, the dungeon takes far too lon💎g. All ice dungeons require patience due to their slippery platforms, making this an✨ extremely slow-paced dungeon that’s hard to sit through.
8 Midoro Palac🐓e (Zelda II)
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is known for its difficult combat, but Midoro Palace disorients players through its sudden difficulty. Se🧜veral rooms in꧂volve enemies attacking from three different angles at once, including the boss. While the dungeon before Midoro Palace and the two dungeons after it are similarly difficult, Midoro Palace is extremely challenging and may force players to leave and level up before they can complete the dungeon.
The palace is also the most visually nauseating dungeon in the game. With four to five times more bricks than the majority of dungeons, Midoro Palace hurts anytime the screen moves. The hard lines and universal, vertical arrangement of the bricks turns the dungeon into a bad optical illusion where it’s impossible to focus on anything 𝔉onscreen.
7 𝓡 City in the Sky (Twilight Princess) ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ
Instead of paralleling the Palace of Twilight or contributing to Zelda lore, the City in the Sky feels extremely out of pওlace. Disjointed music and a strange, advanced bird-species inhabit the dungeon, but the game fails to justify their presence. Combine that with boring puzzles in a massive map and this dungeon functions as one of the most empty and forgettable dungeons in the series🍷.
While the Double Clawshots are initially exciting and make for an intense boss battle where you must quickly ascend towers, it results in uninteresting puzzles. Puzzles generally involve pointing and clicking or locking onto a🌄n object and clicking. Even if you liked the first Clawshot, the Double Clawshots threaten this enjoyment, for you spend the majority of the dungeon using them for simple tasks.
6 ꦓ Temple of the Ocean🐼 King (Phantom Hourglass)
The idea of a central dungeon you visit multiple times is fun and it works quite well in Spirit Tracks. In Phantom Hourglass, however, the dungeon can easily frustrate players due to its repetitive nature and a timer which undoes all progress if it should run out. Players must visit the Temple of the Ocean King a minimum of five times; the dungeon is reset each time, requiring players to complete the same puzzles they finished during their previous visits. While Spirit Tracks removes the repeated puzzles and the timer, Phantom Hourglass forces players to retrace their steps over and over. Completing a dungeon throughout the game🐠 would be fun if the dungeon were spl♊it into segments, but completing the entire dungeon five or more times eliminates the temple’s excitement.