Zelda LEAST favourite Zelda game and why?

Pretty sure it's safe to exclude the CGs.




As a diehard Zelda fan, I have pretty high faith in the series. However, there are a few games that I really hate, loathe and despise. So, what are/is your least favourite game in the Legend of Zelda franchise and why? It can be anything from the controls to the graphics to the storyline or even the entire game in general.

One of the games that I really... dislike... is Twilight Princess. I've sufferred and pulled through with the graphics, but the controls are appallingly bad. I found myself stuck at a specific point in the Forest Temple because the controls were so damn bad. Now because of this, I haven't been able to progress further and as a result I'm contemplating abandoning it. Not only this, but Midna. She's cute and quirky but so damn useless. The only information she's giving me is THINGS I ALREADY KNOW. Maybe I'm too used to Skyward Sword, but I really appreciated that Fi told me enemy information when Z-locking and calling her.

Obviously not everyone will agree with me, as that is the way the world works, but maybe I just needed to vent lol.

Twillght Princess is without a doubt one of my favourite video games of all time. Nothing has come close.

That gritty, historic, semi-depressing aesthetic is beautiful. I long for the day Nintendo makes a game with a similar look. Now everything is way too colourful and cartoony. Not to say that's a bad thing, but I'd like some balance.

I find it difficult to choose a least favourite, though. They're all great in their own ways. They're always very different to each other both visually and fundamentally.

Least favourite is Spirit Tracks. It was pretty boring to operate the train and I hated the method of "fast travel," and also thought that controlling phantom Zelda was pretty annoying a lot of the time. I did love the character interactions though, so it wasn't a complete failure for me. It was just the weakest Zelda game I ever played.

Definitely Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Touch screen controls weren't responsive most of the time.

... I liked Twilight Princess (except Midna, I can't stand her).
And I loved Spirit Tracks dearly. Maybe because I like trains, so that wasn't a downpoint for me, but the fact you actually can play as Zelda totally won me over! The graphics were beautiful and the dialogues very funny!

I dislike GREATLY Alttp, being the first Zelda game I ever played, but for that my opinion is biased and I'm aware of it. No need to explain that I didn't even try with Between Worlds, because the whole thing of becoming a picture that everyone seems to enjoy I find annoying as heck. The plot of that game was also completely nonsense.

The worst? The combo Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass. Now PH is not to blame, being just the sequel of WW, so... But to me WW was so absolutely bad I remember to think for the first time this Link was an idiot. I couldn't get how a fish becomes a bird for adding more WATER and go to live in a volcano. Zelda being rude wasn't my cup of tea either. Seeing only water for miles around felt so boring and tyring! But the unforgivable was how easy the supposed bosses were. Most of the time I told myself "No, this was way to easy and fast, surely there's more to come. The real, actual boss, or maybe a second phase... right? Right?! Well, no". And let me tell you, it's not that I am that great of a player... Only Ganon felt like a real challenge.

If we're only talking about the major games then I'll have to say Twilight Princess. The character design was one of the worst in the series for me and I found the story to be quite boring too. It does have some great dungeons, especially Yeti and Yeta's mansion which is probably in my top 5 for dungeons in Zelda, and turning into a wolf and finding different scents was really cool.

It's not by any means a bad game but there's so many games in this series that did so many things better than Twilight Princess. And that's why it's my least memorable Zelda. Would still give it a solid 7/10.

If we're counting the minor games then I'll say Phantom Hourglass. It had some nice puzzles but the touch controls and that one temple you have to do over and over again almost killed the game for me. I haven't played Spirit Tracks so I can't speak for that one but Phantom Hourglass was borderline-bad.

I'm going to say Zelda II. I mean, the problem with this game is that it feels unpolished and stiff combat-wise. It's a good game but compared to other 2D games at the time, it feels a bit erratic difficulty wise.

What doesn't help, if you get a game over in just about everywhere, you lose all EXP you had attained and you usually have to restart from North Palace and it usually takes a few minutes to retrace your steps.

Handheld: Phantom Hourglass
Home consoles: Twilight Princess Wii
Neither are bad, but they're definitely my least favourite games of the series, mainly due to the controls.

The DS Zelda games never really caught my attention, but since I never finished them I can't really comment on their quality.
The gameplay style and presentation just didn't excite me enough to keep playing them.

Twilight Princess was boring as **** but honestly Phantom Hourglass was pretty bad too

Probably Majora's Mask, but it's still a great game despite being my least favorite. I hate having a time limit because it stresses me out and I waste even more time doing stupid mistakes because I stress out.

Phantom Hourglass easily. The music is as repetitive as the NES games except even worse, none of the places or characters sans Linebeck are memorable, dungeons felt lazily designed, and Temple of the Ocean King... "hey I heard you like doing puzzles, how about doing the exact same ones 5 times. Oh yeah here's a time limit as well gg." However I really enjoyed Spirit Tracks since it fixed basically every problem I had with PH.

I've played every Zelda game except for Four Swords Adventures (can I find a copy that doesn't cost over $100 please) and the CDi games (like I'd want to), but all Zelda games have their flaws. Including Breath of the Wild. Especially Breath of the Wild.

Unrelated, but I started replaying Oracle of Seasons yesterday. Almost at the 3rd dungeon, and of course I'm going to play Ages with I'm done. All 3 of the Capcom Zeldas are really fun.

Zelda is by far my favorite game series, so I find it hard to downplay any of the games I've played (Except Zelda II, that side-scrolling mess of a game is driving me crazy rn)

I'm always curious about the Twilight Princess discourse though. It's always so hit or miss.
I really enjoyed it. I definitely understand the sentiment they were trying too hard to be dark and gritty. But for me I feel like that was an embodiment of the series in general. If you look at the timeline(s), Zelda is not a very happy series. I think that's what Twilight Princess was doing. It wanted to remind people that this game isn't about a joyous kingdom that has its little bouts of distress (as demonstrated by Mushroom Kingdom).
It's about a prophecy that in all installments turns out to be a curse that the player must fight through in hopes of restoring peace for however short a time period.

The only game I haven't played is Spirit Tracks so I have no idea how to feel about that...

Wind Waker. I feel like they (developer) could've used more dungeons and bigger towns. Most of them are just small islands scattered around the map. Also, dungeons aren't that memorable and the bosses are really easy. I love the graphics and art style though.

I don't necessarily have a least favorite in the Zelda series, but at the moment, it has to be Skyward Sword. I got the Wii Virtual Console version a week after Breath of the Wild released and I got Breath of the Wild day one, so that may be apart of it, but I can't stand the motion controls. When I go into the main menu, the pointer speed is slower than the setting I have set on my Wii U for some reason, so that is a little nerve-racking to me. I also dislike how precise I have to be with my sword swings.

My opinion may change, but I never was a big fan of motion controls in the Wii-era and this game seems to use them...A LOT!

Phantom Hourglass is the Zelda game I enjoyed the least. I remember the touch screen was fiddly to use, and I just didn't enjoy it as much as other Zelda games.

I did play Twilight Princess, but I didn't find it very memorable. I remember everything I enjoyed about OoT, Majora's Mask and Wind Waker (especially Wind Waker) but I wasn't overly keen on Twilight Princess. I did enjoy a particular dungeon that had some snow yetis, it was different, but apart from that nothing really stood out to me. I didn't mind the darker tone either, I just enjoyed the previous Zelda games a lot more.

man i didn't know people hated twilight princess so much..

it's my favorite game of all time, mostly for nostalgic reasons but the game itself to me is amazing. i love the story and of course my queen midna!! i will agree that the game has trash controls, i got stuck on one part forever because i couldn't land this one jump that i didn't understand how to do lol. but if you can look past that, the game is just AUGH so good!! words literally cannot describe the love i have for this game. it was one of the first zelda games i ever played and i was fairly young so it stuck with me and my love for it never wavered.

my least favorite zelda game is probably majora's mask. i think it's far too overrated. the bosses are pretty sick tbh but the game just isn't my type

I've really hated all of the 3d ones. I played through Ocarina completely as a kid but I hated every minute of it. I also tried Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, and Majora's Mask and just stopped after about 30-60 min because they were so boring.

I have to say though, Breath of the Wild looks awesome. I played about an hour of it with a friend and would love to play more. I feel like the developers improved upon most of the things that made the previous 3d Zeldas so unplayable which is really impressive!

Tri force heroes. Lol.

I love pretty much all of them though, and have played through them several times. It's crazy that people don't like MM and TP, but to each his own I suppose haha. o:

Well keeping in mind the ones I've not played:


I would say the original is my least favourite. It's just so basic, but rather than Super Mario where there's appeal in its simplicity, I feel that the Zelda series has done nothing but improve the formula over time. There's a lot of guess work as well where even though there are visual clues on what to do and where to go, there'll still times it's very unclear or just tedious to find your next goal.

Sort of the same way I feel about Metroid. The original wasn't terrible, but even just the addition of something simple like a map in Super Metroid was a big game changer.

I see the appeal, but I just have a hard time enjoying it after I've played its successors.



Or for a 3D Zelda, Skyward Sword.

Motion controls aren't something I fundamentally hate, I actually didn't have an issue using them with a majority of Wii games, but Skyward Sword is the main one where I did. It required an amount of precision that the motion controls just weren't capable of consistently providing 100% of the time, and if the controller isn't letting me be in full control any less than 100% of the time, it's failing as a controller.

It also felt way too slow paced. The 'tutorial' felt like it lasted forever and it felt like gameplay was being stopped constantly for somebody else to have a conversation with you. I appreciate they tried to do more with the plot, but I just wanted everybody to shut up and let me 'Zelda'. I can't remember how far in I got before I stopped playing, I at least made it out of Skyloft and spent a few hours in the first 'zone', but I'm fairly sure I racked up at least 10 hours and it still felt like I hadn't made it out of the 'tutorial portion' of the game.

There's a lot of things I liked about Skyward Sword, but those two things really killed it for me.