History ThatOneLevel / TheLegendOfZelda

* Death Mountain is an extremely confusing maze filled with obnoxiously hard enemies (even by [[NintendoHard this game's standards]]), and it comes fairly early in the game, too.

[[folder:''Majora's Mask'']]
''Majora's Mask'' is notable for its time limit, which means you don't have time to hang around in ThatOneLevel and try to figure it out. The best you can do is play the Song of Time backwards, which slows down time threefold but won't stop it outright.
* Snowhead Temple isn't terribly difficult, but it is a huge pain in the ass and a huge drain on time, in a game where time is always of the essence. It has a very confusing design, involving a lot of Goron curling and trying to find the right staircase and the right room. Its switch puzzles ''seem'' simple but really aren't. Its minibosses are very disorienting, flying around in random directions and filling the area with speeding images of themselves. And its massive pillar will screw with you just when you think you have the place figured out, especially given the game's nightmare camera and movement controls:
-->'''LetsPlay/NintendoCaprisun:''' I love how the camera pans up to show you just how much shit you have to do.
* The Great Bay Temple features a complicated series of switches, currents, and waterfalls that must be frozen and thawed. It's based almost entirely around hitting switches that are blocking barely visible water flow through multi-colored pipes. You have to follow the pipes to the next switch, despite their aggravating habit of exiting through doors that can't be opened from the side you're on. Its worst room has three switches -- if you press the wrong one, it reverses the current in the entire level, making it impossible for you to proceed until you turn to hit them again. And again, the game's time limit means you don't have time to sit there figuring it out.
* Beneath the Well isn't difficult, but rather tedious and [[SolveTheSoupCans entirely bizarre and pointless.]] Instead of having to navigate areas full of creepy monsters and fake walls, you have to go on a tedious FetchQuest. You need to get a Red Potion and five Magic Beans just to enter the place, which requires some backtracking. Then you're hunting for stuff to give to all the Gibdos. What? That one wants one more bomb or arrow than you have? You gotta go out to get more, and do it all over! How anyone at Nintendo thought that would be fun is anyone's guess.
* Stone Tower Temple is a nightmare to get to in the first place, and you constantly have to switch masks, play the Elegy of Emptiness (consisting of eight notes), and watch endless cutscenes of blocks moving. The slightest slip-up could cost you a lot of progress, if not force you back to the beginning. There's a bizarre LightAndMirrorsPuzzle where the mirrors absorb light, and you have to figure it out while GoddamnedBats attack you (it's ''slightly'' easier with a GuideDangIt solution). It also contains ThatOneSidequest, where two of the stray fairies you have to collect require you to do something deep in the temple, go outside and flip it upside down, go back to the same room and do something else, and then go back outside and turn it right-side-up again.
* The final area in the game, the Moon, has two difficult segments:
** The Goron Maze requires you to go at high speed on extremely narrow ledges and bounce off objects at the perfect angle to hop onto another platform, with little room for error. Then you realize that by not moving the control stick at all, Link will bounce perfectly off the treasure chests for the vast majority of the level.
** The 3DS remake of the Zora maze made several arbitrary changes to the level design, most of which only serve to make the section drag on longer than it needs to. Previously just an underwater maze, the revamped version adds several timed switch gate sections, branching underwater tubes, and ledges that can only be reached by dolphin-jumping out of the water with impeccable timing, something that the rest of the game almost never requires you to do. To make things worse, missing a jump warps you back to the beginning, and several pipes lead to dead ends, with the correct route vaguely hinted at by a small fish. And Zora Link's swimming controls were completely reworked so that he goes a dozen times slower without using his magic barrier, and you'll ''have'' to use this to get past the timed gate sections, which means veering into pots containing magic power while worrying about everything else. Lastly, just to throw completionists off, [[LastLousyPoint one of the dead ends contains a Piece of Heart.]][[/folder]]

** The dungeon's keys are super complicated, as sometimes the right door to open is not the next locked door you encounter. While it's not [[UnwinnableByMistake totally impossible]] to beat the temple if you use a key on the wrong door ([[UrbanLegendOfZelda persistent rumors notwithstanding]]), you do have to guess the right course of action and access the next area the long way around, and it's very frustrating to always be one key short. The most infamous key was one in a room filled with spikes, which you escape from by raising the water level and floating above the spikes to safety. But one of the spiked platforms also floated up, revealing a key in the nest of spikes below. Most gamers missed the key and never thought to swim back down for it. The 3DS version tried to make this easier by making the key more obvious in the cutscene when you raise the water level.

* ''Legends'' brings chapter two of Ganondorf's chapter. For the most part it plays out the same as the original version, until you get to the final phase, where Lana doubles herself and tries to flee. In the original, both doubles had half health and a fair way to run. This time, Lana splits into ''three'' full-health copies, which start sprinting in different directions. Each still has Lana's "commander" flag, giving her plenty of health and a strong AI. You ''will not'' be able to hunt them down alone. Fortunately, Zant and Ghirahim are there to help, and will run to intercept two of the Lanas... but if you left them to their own devices, they'll be horribly out of position, their pathfinding when ordered to chase a target is moronic, and even if they catch her Lana will ignore them and keep running unless the player assumes control. Manually ordering them to the escape points is the way to go... but unless you're deep into Adventure Mode, Zant and Ghirahim will still be locked, meaning they have default weapons, no badges, and pitiful health and damage, meaning it's difficult to stall them, let alone defeat them. The only reliable way to do this is to start moving Ganondorf to intercept the fleeing doubles before they actually appear, and tie up two while sending both other characters to intercept the last one. Oh, and just to add insult to injury, since checkpoint triggers are processed in the dialogue queue, it's possible for the final checkpoint to save while the level is already UnwinnableByMistake. Have fun!

* It's always the water levels! The Mermaid Cave requires you to take certain actions in the present ''and'' the past, so you have to leave and return more than once if you don't plan just right or get lucky. Also, it's got one room where to continue you have to bomb a spot on a wall that ''doesn't'' have the usual cracks denoting a bombable wall. No, it's never hinted at. Even ''getting inside'' will be tougher than expected because some of what you have to do to get one of the keys isn't adequately hinted at. It's a couple of GuideDangIt points that are less extreme than what's found in the NES games, but it's the kind of thing that would have a casual player wandering for ages wondering where to go or what to do next. What is worse is that the boss key is is found in a room that requires a luck based challenge where pulling the wrong switch will spawn enemies.

* Jabu Jabu's Belly in ''Oracle of Ages'' puts all other water dungeons in all other ''Zelda'' games to shame. It's entirely possible to get stuck with no keys, no way to access the boss key, and no way to start the water levels over from the beginning to fix your mistake. In order to continue the game from this point, you must perform the [[GoodBadBugs Veran Warp]], which can corrupt your save file -- but also allows you to skip this level and everything else after the Tune of Ages. It's also got the problem of the infamous Water Temple of being so damn ''tedious.'' Expect to spend a ''lot'' of time re-re-retaking the long trek back and forth to the room where you can raise and lower the water level.

* The Yiga Clan Hideout is a forced StealthBasedMission where you have to sneak your way around to recover the Thunder Helm. While the Yiga Blademasters can be distracted with bananas so you can OneHitKill them with a Sneakstrike, they move ''very'' slowly and you'll be forced to wait around to make your next move. If you are spotted (which can happen quite easily due to the enemies in the place having a big cone of vision and very sharp hearing), all the Blademasters in the area are alerted to your presence and they'll also summon the more nimbler scouts to fight you. While you ''can'' fight them all and survive, getting hit just once by a Blademaster will instantly kill you no matter how much defense or hearts you have. Getting killed at the hideout won't activate your fairies or Mipha's Grace because it's implied the soldiers are too strong for Link to handle, even though you can fight them outside of the hideout with little trouble and only taking moderate damage from them. Luckily, Ancient Arrows can kill the guards in one shot, but finding said arrows is a crapshoot and getting the materials to craft the arrows requires killing many [[EliteMook Guardians]].

* The City in the Sky is a MarathonLevel that takes an average of four to five hours, and that's if you know where you're going. Just getting to it is annoying enough, since it requires a huge FetchQuest just to start another FetchQuest. It's far too easy to fall to your death, and the level requires precise clawshotting in order to survive. You often don't have long to find the next place to clawshot to, as there are a ''lot'' of platforms and such that begin to fall the moment you're on 'em. And it's huge and easy to get lost in. Fortunately, it's better once you get the second clawshot, if only because using two clawshots is a lot of fun. However, near the end there is an extended path that ends with you descending back into the main room with your Clawshot through a hole in the ceiling. Many players overlook the Clawshot switch that can only be reached from this particular position; if you miss it you have to go through that entire path again just to Clawshot onto that switch.

* The City in the Sky is a MarathonLevel that takes an average of four to five hours, and that's if you know where you're going. Just getting to it is annoying enough, since it requires a huge FetchQuest just to start another FetchQuest. It's far too easy to fall to your death, and the level requires precise clawshotting in order to survive. You often don't have long to find the next place to clawshot to, as there are a ''lot'' of platforms and such that begin to fall the moment you're on 'em. And it's huge and easy to get lost in. Fortunately, it's better once you get the second clawshot, if only because using two clawshots is a lot of fun. However, near the end there is an extended path that ends with you descending back into the main room with your Clawshot through a hole in the ceiling. Many players overlook the Clawshot switch that can only be reached in this particular position; if you miss it you have to go through that entire path again just to Clawshot onto that switch.

* The Shadow Temple isn't much better, seeing as it's filled to the brim with these fake walls and floors to the point where almost half of the dungeon is invisible. The worst part is that the Lens Of Truth is magic-dependent, so if you end up running out of magic and there are no pots nearby, you either have to stick to TrialAndErrorGameplay or just die. Not to mention that dying in this dungeon can be a massive nuisance as it's almost entirely linear following getting the Hover Boots surprisingly early on, so being sent back to the entrance means that ''you will have to do the entire thing again''.

* The City in the Sky is a MarathonLevel that takes an average of four to five hours, and that's if you know where you're going. Just getting to it is annoying enough, since it requires a huge FetchQuest just to start another FetchQuest. It's far too easy to fall to your death, and the level requires precise clawshotting in order to survive. You often don't have long to find the next place to clawshot to, as there are a ''lot'' of platforms and such that begin to fall the moment you're on 'em. And it's huge and easy to get lost in. Fortunately, it's better once you get the second clawshot, if only because using two clawshots is a lot of fun.

* Shorah Hah Shrine is often regarded as the most disliked shrine due to being a very long shrine requiring you to have a torch and many arrows to continuously transfer a blue flame to various torches throughout the shrine, ending with having to use a Spin Attack on a circle of torches, which, if not done right, can leave one torch unlit and cause the others to be put out by water. Though most of the other challenges aren't that difficult, they are impossible to do if you don't have enough arrows or a torch, even though the latter is provided and a wooden weapon could serve similar purpose.

* The road up Death Mountain to reach Goron City is difficult because the area is so hot that without proper protection, Link will [[ManOnFire burst into flames]]. The "correct" method is to find the nearby stable and buy some Fireproof Elixirs, but the game's WideOpenSandbox nature means that many gamers will likely miss the stable. The only other way to make it through safely would be to make your own elixirs (with creatures [[TheKeyIsBehindTheLock found only on Death Mountain]]) or to buy Fireproof Armor (from a shop [[TheKeyIsBehindTheLock in Goron City]]). Meaning that a fair number of players ended up [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-VX0wUwbjE eating a bunch of food and running for it]].
* The battle against Vah Rudania is a combined StealthBasedMission and EscortMission. The escort, surprisingly, is not the problem, because he has a barrier to protect him and you can order him to stay where he is at any time. The sentries need to be knocked out with metal blocks, and not everyone figures out that they should do this (and the controls aren't the best either). And the Moblins you encounter on the way up are powerful and can easily knock you off the mountain.

* Divine Beast Vah Naboris is the largest of the Divine Beasts and has some fairly annoying puzzles in it. The map controls have three different things that can be moved and each of them has four different positions they can be in (compared to Medoh and Rudania only changing between two or three different positions and only Ruta's trunk getting controlled). Some of the puzzles also involve making the controllable portions line up. And when finished there is [[ThatOneBoss Thunderblight Ganon]] to deal with.

* Eventide Island [[NoGearLevel takes away all of Link's gear]] (except the Sheikah Slate) and forces him to use only what he can scavenge from the island. The earliest encounters with no weapons are extremely risky, and the later encounters aren't much easier either, especially if the player accidentally alerts some enemies too quickly and ends up with a pack of Bokos or a Hinox hunting them down. This escalates on Master Mode, which makes all enemies one level higher and gives them a HealingFactor, meaning the weak weapons one will find will do little more than ScratchDamage before breaking.

* ''Legends'' brings chapter two of Ganondorf's chapter. For the most part it plays out the same as the original version, until you get to the final phase, where Lana doubles herself and tries to flee. In the original, both doubles had half health and a fair way to run. This time, Lana splits into ''three'' full-health copies, which start sprinting in different directions. Each still has Lana's "commander" flag, giving her plenty of health and a strong AI. You ''will not'' be able to hunt them down alone. Fortunately, Zant and Girahim are there to help, and will run to intercept two of the Lanas... but if you left them to their own devices, they'll be horribly out of position, their pathfinding when ordered to chase a target is moronic, and even if they catch her Lana will ignore them and keep running unless the player assumes control. Manually ordering them to the escape points is the way to go... but unless you're deep into Adventure Mode, Zant and Girahim will still be locked, meaning they have default weapons, no badges, and pitiful health and damage, meaning it's difficult to stall them, let alone defeat them. he only reliable way to do this is to start moving Gannondorf to intercept the fleeing doubles before they actually appear, and tie up two while sending both other characters to intercept the last one. Oh, and just to add insult to injury, since checkpoint triggers are processed in the dialogue queue, it's possible for the final checkpoint to save while the level is already UnwinnableByMistake. Have fun!

* The Yiga Clan Hideout is a forced StealthBasedMission where you have to sneak your way around to recover the Gerudo's Thunderhelm. While the Yiga Footsoldiers can be distracted with bananas so you can OneHitKill them with a Sneak Strike, they move ''very'' slowly and you'll be forced to wait around to make your next move. If you are spotted (which can happen quite easily due to the enemies in the place having a big cone of vision), all the footsoldiers in the area are alerted to your presence and they'll also summon the more nimbler scouts to fight you. While you ''can'' fight them all and survive, getting hit just once by a footsoldier will instantly kill you no matter how much defense or hearts you have. Getting killed at the hideout won't activate your fairies or Mipha's Grace because it's implied the soldiers are too strong for Link to handle, even though you can fight them outside of the hideout with little trouble and only taking moderate damage from them. Luckily, Ancient Arrows can kill the guards in one shot, but finding said arrows is a crapshoot and getting the materials to craft the arrows requires killing many [[EliteMook Guardians]].

* Eventide Island takes away all of the player's gear (except the Sheikah Slate) and forces them to use only what they can scavenge from the island. The earliest encounters with no weapons are extremely risky, and the later encounters aren't much easier either, especially if the player accidentally alerts some enemies too quickly and ends up with a pack of Bokos or a Hinox hunting them down. This escalates on Master Mode, which makes all enemies one level higher and gives them a HealingFactor, meaning the weak weapons one will find will do little more than ScratchDamage before breaking.

* The Twilight Palace is ''ridiculously'' hard, featuring a seemingly infinitely respawning army of near-invulnerable minibosses, which tend to group together so you have to fight them all at once. To win you have to defeat Zant and Argorok at the same time while protecting your Allied Base will is quick to fall.

* ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriors'' has the first chapter of Cia's tale in the Master Quest DLC pack, which really lives up to the "Master Quest" name. You will be constantly switching back and forth between offense and defense in this mission. In the first part you have to capture four keeps controlled by Volga's army, all while protecting your main base from Goron invasions which include Bombchus, and protecting your ally Wizzro from a series of [[DemonicSpiders Lizalfos and Dinalfos Chieftains]]. The last part of the mission has you scrambling to save your main base from [[spoiler:Wizzro after he betrays you]] as well as Volga and two King Dodongos. That's four bosses at once!
** The Twilight Palace is ''ridiculously'' hard, featuring a seemingly infinitely respawning army of near-invulnerable minibosses, which tend to group together so you have to fight them all at once. To win you have to defeat Zant and Argorok at the same time while protecting your Allied Base will is quick to fall.
** For the best rewards, the "fight against two armies" quest that unlocks Darunia's level 2 weapon qualifies. In order to win, you have to defeat two armies' commanders (general-class versions of the Icy Big Poe and Gibdo), with the army that you're not beating becoming stronger the more you fight the other. Foes will regularly make forays into your territory, frequently requiring you to run back and play defense. Also, there will be three Manhandla stalks that will spawn and start an artillery rain on your base, and allowing it to continue for any amount of time will result in a severely weakened base camp (this can cross over into LuckBasedMission - if all three spawn near your start point, it's manageable. If none do, get running). Even all of that is comparatively manageable. However, due to how spread out everything (including enemy encampments and raids) are, the A-rank requirements of 1200 downed foes in 15 minutes require a combination of serious leveling as well as a highly coordinated plan that must be modified for random factors. (Did the stalks spawn near you? Did either general decide to advance on your base? Can you afford to hold off on rescuing Impa to finish taking this base, or do you run back and risk Raid Captains spawning from it?)
** ''Legends'' brings chapter two of Ganondorf's chapter. For the most part it plays out the same as the original version, until you get to the final phase, where Lana doubles herself and tries to flee. In the original, both doubles had half health and a fair way to run. This time, Lana splits into ''three'' full-health copies, which start sprinting in different directions. Each still has Lana's "commander" flag, giving her plenty of health and a strong AI. You ''will not'' be able to hunt them down alone. Fortunately, Zant and Girahim are there to help, and will run to intercept two of the Lanas... but if you left them to their own devices, they'll be horribly out of position, their pathfinding when ordered to chase a target is moronic, and even if they catch her Lana will ignore them and keep running unless the player assumes control. Manually ordering them to the escape points is the way to go... but unless you're deep into Adventure Mode, Zant and Girahim will still be locked, meaning they have default weapons, no badges, and pitiful health and damage, meaning it's difficult to stall them, let alone defeat them. he only reliable way to do this is to start moving Gannondorf to intercept the fleeing doubles before they actually appear, and tie up two while sending both other characters to intercept the last one. Oh, and just to add insult to injury, since checkpoint triggers are processed in the dialogue queue, it's possible for the final checkpoint to save while the level is already UnwinnableByMistake. Have fun!

** Though it's worth noting that once you get past the first doors, you can find everything else that they ask you for without leaving the dungeon.

** When the [[UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS 3DS]] remake was announced, fans were very excited to see a streamlining of this area, similar to what Ocarina's Water Temple got for its remake, by making the song quicker to play or by allowing you to swap masks easier. When it came out, they were aghast to discover that it had gotten basically no changes and was as irritating as ever.

** When the [[UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS 3DS]] remake was announced, Fans were very excited to see a streamlining of this area, similar to what Ocarina's Water Temple got for its remake, by making the song quicker to play or by allowing you to swap masks easier. When it came out, they were aghast to discover that it had gotten basically no changes and was as irritating as ever.

* Sneaking around the Forsaken Fortress shouldn't be too hard, if it wasn't at the very beginning of the game and the Moblins were placed in the most irritating spots. It's easy to get lost, or to be spotted and tossed back into the cell at the very beginning. It's not hard in NES sense of a lot of difficult enemies, it's just ''so tedious'' as you do a lot of waiting for Moblins to slooooowly walk past (sometimes changing direction, too, so that Moblin you need to sneak past might be between you and the door for ''several'' minutes. Why yes, there ''are'' more on the other side that'll require you to do the same.), a lot of redoing the same rooms, and a lot of walking around the same places over and over as you were ''sure'' you read the map right and knew where to go next but somehow you're back to the same place again. For added insult, the second visit is much easier as Link can now fight his enemies as soon as they detect him. This makes it a ''little'' less painful... but a little less painful than ''that'' is still pretty damn painful.

* The Great Palace. ''Dear goddesses'', the Great Palace. Yes, this is the era where NintendoHard was the norm. Yes, this is a game considered murderous even ''then.'' Yes, this is TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon of that game. '''YES, this is ThatOneLevel even by that standard.'''

* The Great Palace. ''Dear goddesses,'' the Great Palace. Yes, this is the era where NintendoHard was the norm. Yes, this is a game considered murderous even ''then.'' Yes, this is TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon of that game. '''YES, this is ThatOneLevel even by that standard.'''

* Skull Woods. Not that bad on its own...but if you die during the outdoor segments between entrances and exits? Good luck walking all the way back! Oh, and there are these new enemies you haven't seen yet in any level 'til now called Wallmasters. They drag you all the way back to the beginning.[[note]]...well, sort of. Since the level is broken up into several discrete segments, it's possible to enter it from several different locations, some of which are completely disconnected from others. The Wallmaster will take you to the one you most recently entered, so that might actually be midway through the level. Still quite annoying, though.[[/note]] Have fun!

* Jabu Jabu's Belly has an [[ShockAndAwe electric theme]] -- almost all enemies will electrocute you if you attack them, making them very difficult (if not outright invincible) until you get the boomerang. It's also part of an annoying EscortMission, where Princess Ruto will [[ComplainingAboutRescuesTheyDontLike berate you for leaving her alone]] (and sometimes even vanish if you do so). But you can solve one problem with another by [[GrievousHarmWithABody tossing Ruto at the enemies]], which will work as she's impervious to electrocution (and oddly seems to enjoy the experience).
* The Forest Temple can become a real pain if you missed a key. Also at one point in order to progress, you have to jump down a dark hole next to the boss key you'd normally consider a deadly chasm, but since the whole place is rotated at that point, it's actually a corridor to the final small key. Said small key is guarded by the very annoying Floormaster as well.

** The Shadow Temple isn't much better, seeing as it's filled to the brim with these fake walls and floors to the point where almost half of the dungeon is invisible. The worst part is that the Lens Of Truth is magic-dependent, so if you end up running out of magic and there are no pots nearby, you either have to stick to TrialAndErrorGameplay or just die. Not to mention that dying in this dungeon can be a massive nuisance as it's almost entirely linear following getting the Hover Boots surprisingly early on, so being sent back to the entrance means that ''you will have to do the entire thing again''.

* Jabu Jabu's Belly in ''Oracle of Ages'' puts all other water dungeons in all other ''Zelda'' games to shame. It's entirely possible to get stuck with no keys, no way to access the boss key, and no way to start the water levels over from the beginning to fix your mistake. In order to continue the game from this point, you must perform the [[GoodBadBugs Veran Warp]], which can corrupt your save file -- but also allows you to skip this level and everything else after the Tune of Ages. It's also got the problem of the infamous Water Temple of being so damn ''tedious.'' Expect to spend a ''lot'' of time re-re-retaking the long trek back and forth to the room where you can raise and lower the water level.
* It's always the water levels! The Mermaid Cave requires you to take certain actions in the present ''and'' the past, so you have to leave and return more than once if you don't plan just right or get lucky. Also, it's got one room where to continue you have to bomb a spot on a wall that ''doesn't'' have the usual cracks denoting a bombable wall. No, it's never hinted at. Even ''getting inside'' will be tougher than expected because some of what you have to do to get one of the keys isn't adequately hinted at. It's a couple of GuideDangIt points that are less extreme than what's found in the NES games, but it's the kind of thing that would have a casual player wandering for ages wondering where to go or what to do next. What is worse is that the boss key is is found in a room that requires a luck based challenge where pulling the wrong switch will spawn enemies.

* Sneaking around the Forsaken Fortress shouldn't be too hard, if it wasn't at the very beginning of the game and the Moblins were placed in the most irritating spots. It's easy to get lost, or to be spotted and tossed back into the cell at the very beginning. It's not hard in NES sense of a lot of difficult enemies, it's just ''so tedious'' as you do a lot of waiting for Moblins to slooooowly walk past (sometimes changing direction, too, so that Moblin you need to sneak past might be between you and the door for ''several'' minutes. Why yes, there ''are'' more on the other side that'll require you to do the same.), a lot of redoing the same rooms, and a lot of walking around the same places over and over as you were ''sure'' you read the map right and knew where to go next but somehow you're back to the same place again. For added insult, the second visit is much easier as Link can now fight his enemies as soon as they detect him. This makes it a ''little'' less painful... but a little less painful than ''that'' is still pretty damn painful.

* The Temple of Droplets is a long, difficult [[SlippySlideyIceWorld ice-themed dungeon]] full of annoying puzzles, especially after you get the dungeon item.

* The defending of the caravan requires frequent use of the Gale Boomerang, putting out fires, fast-moving targets, pterosaurs dropping bombs on everything, and a horse who handles like she's drunk and makes it nearly impossible to beat.
* Lakebed Temple hangs a {{Lampshade|d}} on the infamy of ''Ocarina of Time'''s Water Temple, as Midna will comment on how hard the dungeon appears to be, especially finding all the keys. It's not nearly as hard to find the keys as in the Water Temple -- but you do have to pull multiple levers in the main room to change its layout, and many of them lead to dead ends.

* Beneath the Well isn't difficult, but rather tedious and [[SolveTheSoupCans entirely bizarre and pointless.]] Instead of having to navigate areas full of creepy monsters and fake walls, you have to go on a tedious FetchQuest. You need to get a Magic Bean and Red Potion just to enter the place, which requires some backtracking. Then you're hunting for stuff to give to all the Gibdos. What? That one wants one more bomb or arrow than you have? You gotta go out to get more, and do it all over! How anyone at Nintendo thought that would be fun is anyone's guess.

** The 3DS remake of the Zora maze made several arbitrary changes to the level design, most of which only serve to make the section drag on longer than it needs to. Previously just an underwater maze, the revamped version adds several timed switch gate sections, branching underwater tubes, and ledges that can only be reached by dolphin-jumping out of the water with impeccable timing, something that the rest of the game almost never requires you to do. To make things worse, missing a jump warps you back to the beginning, and several pipes lead to dead ends, with the correct route vaguely hinted at by a small fish. And Zora Link's swimming controls were completely reworked so that he goes a dozen times slower without using his magic barrier, and you'll ''have'' to use this to get past the timed gate sections, which means veering into pots containing magic power while worrying about everything else. Lastly, just to throw completionists off, [[LastLousyPoint one of the dead ends contains a heart piece.]][[/folder]]

** The dungeon's keys are super complicated, as sometimes the right door to open is not the next locked door you encounter. While it is impossible to beat the temple if you use a key on the wrong door without advanced glitches ([[UrbanLegendOfZelda persistent rumors notwithstanding]]), (in fact, every locked door except for one, which is unintended to skip, is set in a pre-determined order). you do have to guess the right course of action and access the next area the long way around, and it's very frustrating to always be one key short. The most infamous key was one in a room filled with spikes, which you escape from by raising the water level and floating above the spikes to safety. But one of the spiked platforms also floated up, revealing a key in the nest of spikes below. Most gamers missed the key and never thought to swim back down for it. The 3DS version tried to make this easier by making the key more obvious in the cutscene when you raise the water level.

** The dungeon's keys are super complicated, as sometimes the right door to open is not the next locked door you encounter. While it's not [[UnwinnableByMistake totally impossible]] to beat the temple if you use a key on the wrong door ([[UrbanLegendOfZelda persistent rumors notwithstanding]]), you do have to guess the right course of action and access the next area the long way around, and it's very frustrating to always be one key short. The most infamous key was one in a room filled with spikes, which you escape from by raising the water level and floating above the spikes to safety. But one of the spiked platforms also floated up, revealing a key in the nest of spikes below. Most gamers missed the key and never thought to swim back down for it. The 3DS version tried to make this easier by making the key more obvious in the cutscene when you raise the water level.

* It's always the water levels! The Mermaid Cave requires you to take certain actions in the present ''and'' the past, so you have to leave and return more than once if you don't plan just right or get lucky. Also, it's got one room where to continue you have to bomb a spot on a wall that ''doesn't'' have the usual cracks denoting a bombable wall. No, it's never hinted at. Even ''getting inside'' will be tougher than expected because some of what you have to do to get one of the keys isn't adequately hinted at. It's a couple of GuideDangIt points that are less extreme than what's found in the NES games, but it's the kind of thing that would have a casual player wandering for ages wondering where to go or what to do next.

* The Ancient Ruins in ''Oracle of Seasons'' is a massive, five-level dungeon which introduces the Magic Boomerang, which could easily throw you into a pit if you hit something while using it and the controls shift from the boomerang back to Link. The boss key requires a mad dash as TheWallsAreClosingIn, and the boss itself requires quick timing and mad boomerang skills -- in a quicksand pit (although it becomes easier if you have the Quicksand Ring).
* The Sword and Shield Dungeon in ''Oracle of Seasons'' has some brutal puzzles; the Ice side requires you to perform puzzles [[SlippySlideyIceWorld while sliding around]], and the Lava side has some puzzles that take their cue from the aforementioned Skull Dungeon.

* The Water Temple is, by far, the most infamous dungeon of the game, if not the entire series. Its main gimmick is that it's a multi-level dungeon where by changing the water level, you can access different areas. But this was notoriously difficult to keep track of, and it has a bunch of extra quirks that frustrated players. Notably, the game's director [[http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2009/11/29/aonuma-apologizes-for-water-temple.aspx officially apologized for the Water Temple]], ''[[UpdatedRerelease Master Quest]]'' made the entire game harder ''except'' the Water Temple, and the [[UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS 3DS]] remake made the most frustrating mechanics easier in general. But it was still tough:

** The miniboss, [[MirrorBoss Dark Link]], is one of the hardest in the game, particularly because his health will always be the same as yours, so the tougher you are, the tougher he is to beat. (But this also means that he's much easier to beat on a [[LowLevelRun three-heart run]].)

** The Shadow Temple isn't much better, seeing as it's filled to the brim with these fake walls and floors to the point where almost half of the dungeon is invisible. The worst part is that the Lens Of Truth is magic-dependent, so if you end up running out of magic and there are no pots nearby, you either have to stick to TrialAndErrorGameplay or just die. Not to mention that dying in this dungeon can be a massive nuisance as it's almost entirely linear, so being sent back to the entrance means that ''you will have to do the entire thing again''.