YMMV / The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

#-C

• Abandon Shipping: A lot of fans liked to pair up Zelda with Urbosa in the main game. However, this ship started to fall apart when the "Ballad of the Champions" DLC revealed that Urbosa was actually a surrogate mother figure to the princess, and that she was around the same age as Zelda's own mother, who she was good friends with. So some fans started shipping Urbosa with Zelda's mother, instead.
• Accidental Innuendo: The shrines added in The Champions' Ballad have a pillar added on top of them that is rather... phallic. The way they erupt from the ground does not help.
• Adaptation Displacement: This game was such a Killer App for the Nintendo Switch that many people forget it was developed as a Wii U game.
• Adorkable:
  • Link himself. While still a competent hero, he also has a fondness for puns and loves to cook.
  • Zelda, a Badass Bookworm who gets positively giddy about research, such as feeding a frog to Link.
  • Riju, while the leader of the Gerudo, is still a young girl, sometimes giggling to herself and playing with her plushies before going to sleep.
  • Paya. As soon as she meets Link she bursts into a blubbering fit and later mistakes her budding attraction for him for a fever.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • While it cannot usually be said that Link has much of a personality to begin with, the streams at E3 demonstrating the ability to change or remove clothes, the increased availability of bombs, the ability to start bush fires thanks to the new physics engine, and overall the greater freedom compared to earlier games, has caused some fans to forgo the usual noble and heroic Link for a cross between an out-of-control village idiot and a psychopathic, cannibalistic, fire-happy renegade. One of the players in the E3 Event referred to the enemies as “another group of innocent Bokoblins enjoying their evening.”
  • The Gerudo Guards at the entrance to Gerudo town are infamous for kicking Link out no matter how prestigious he is, even if he's already taken down the local Divine Beast, yet are instantly fooled if Link changes into the Vai outfit right in front of them. The sympathetic explanation is that the laws against Voe are so strict that the guards couldn't let Link in even if they wanted to, but letting him in while he's dressed like a Vai gives them Plausible Deniability should Link be busted and they're later questioned. It's also possible to interpret the Gerudo as being trans-inclusive (especially as you get the Vai outfit from a Hylian who is possibly transgender), at which point the guards letting the Vai-wearing, and thus femme-presenting, Link inside despite knowing that they are biologically male, becomes a matter of them expressing basic respect and decency for gender identity.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • "Blood moon" is an actual colloquial name for a lunar eclipse (generally a total lunar eclipse). Some fans consider the name of the phenomenon in BotW to be overly dramatic, unaware of this fact.
  • The ridiculous-looking Durian fruit may seem made-up to anyone who doesn't live in southeast Asia, but it's one of the most realistic items in the game. Despite its enormous size, it grows on trees, and its strong smell and "king of fruits" nickname from the ingame description come directly from the real version.
  • The Lizal Tri-Boomerang is a patently ridiculous-looking weapon, with a three-pronged blade that sticks out at wild angles. It's actually based on a real weapon, some of which have the same configuration of blades. They're even designed to be thrown, but unlike the Lizal Tri-Boomerang, they don't return when thrown.
  • The bizarre mushroom-looking trees growing throughout much of the Ridgelands are real trees.
• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • As you explore the Lanayru Wetlands prior to meeting with Prince Sidon at the start of the path to Zora's Domain, numerous Zoras are patrolling the area and will stop you if you get too close to them to tell you to go meet with Sidon, no matter how many times you've heard the same advice before from other Zoras.
  • Every single time a Blood Moon happens, Zelda phones in to tell you that "The blood moon rises once again..." and play a lengthy cutscene, just in case you didn't notice the scary music and brimstone particle effects floating around you just before this. Once you've seen a couple of Blood Moons and know what's going to happen, this just becomes irritating. You can skip the cutscene, although the game doesn't tell you how (press X, then +), but it still has to load the cutscene and reload the main game afterward. ^note  Given what the blood moon does mechanics wise it shouldn't be shocking it has to reload the game world to replace everything and clear out Link's metaphorical footprints from the world.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Done intentionally with Master Kohga, the leader of the Yiga clan who are the Evil Counterpart of the Sheikah. Despite all the hype and praise he receives from the members of the clan the player will run into occasionally, Master Kohga himself is actually a complete joke. He's a surprisingly chubby, hyperactive Manchild who is even less of a threat than the regular Yiga clan mooks you fought to get to him. His boss fight is also suitably simplistic, being the standard Zelda style of "find the weakness in the attack pattern and exploit it." Even his supposed death is played for laughs.
  • When you figure out the trick to kill them, Moldugas become piss-easy as far as the giant over-world bosses go. Just climb on a rock, where it can't get to you, roll a bomb downhill, wait for it to eat it, then detonate it inside the creature's body. Whack it a few times while it's lying stunned on the sand, then run away and climb back onto the rock when it flops back onto its belly. Wash, rinse, repeat, until it's dead. The Electric Lizalfos that sometimes spawn in their battlegrounds and the harsh weather of the Gerudo desert are likely to be more of a threat than the actual giant monsters are.
  • Most of the Blight Ganons, save for Thunderblight Ganon. They don't have too much HP (on-par or below most Guardians and overworld bosses) and their fights are easily cheesed by spamming arrows, and if you have the Master Sword or Ancient Arrows, you can obliterate them. Even Thunderblight Ganon is manageable if you got the Rubber Armor set or eat something to give you shock resistance before the fight (and the Master Sword is even more useful in this fight than the others, as you can't drop it). Their "Phantom" versions in the Champion's Ballad DLC try to mitigate this by making you fight the memories of each Blight with a limited inventory.
  • Calamity Ganon, if you decide to free all the Divine Beasts and acquire the Master Sword like the game suggests you should. Doing so cuts his HP to half right at the start, and while he still has a large pool of HP left, you have an extremely powerful weapon that is basically unbreakable to work with. If you've mastered parrying and reflecting Guardian beams (or just bring an Ancient Shield or two that will do it automatically, or use Daruk's Protection for the same), most of his attacks are easily avoided and countered. This leaves out that if you did take the time to free all the Divine Beasts and get the Master Sword, you have a large health pool and all four Champion powers, and of course you can eat a stat-boosting meal before the fight as usual, plus, you don't have to deal with a Boss Rush which you would have to go through if you never free any of the divine beasts. You can also exploit a glitch to land a One-Hit Kill on him by shooting an arrow where he would be during the cutscene then triggering said cutscene. Calamity Ganon will take damage during the cutscene at absurd rates and will already be dead when the fight actually begins.
  • Dark Beast Ganon, the actual Final Boss after Calamity Ganon. The fight boils down to waiting until the glowing weak points appear around its body and firing an arrow at them, this only needs to be done eight times, and you're given unlimited arrows to try it with. He only has one attack which is fairly slow and predictable, and the boss himself is pretty slow and makes no effort to avoid your attacks. You can probably beat him without taking damage and will have no trouble hitting his weak points.
  • The final area of Trial of the Sword has a single Silver/Golden Lynel assisted by 8 Red/Blue horse-mounted Bokoblins instead of a miniboss. Sounds horrifying on paper, right? Well, if you're good at conserving the very multiple Ancient Arrows you can optionally find on the way and grabbed a Blizzard Rod you would've likely gotten earlier, you can easily one-shot the Lynel with the Ancient Arrows, and spin-attack with the Blizzard Rod to effectively Smart Bomb the Bokoblins.
• Applicability: The joke behind the reward for finding every Korok can differ between Westerners and the Japanese. For Japanese people, it's a nod to, and parody of, the Golden Poo. For Westerners, it's a commentary on achievements (how they're not worth going though all the hassle for something that's basically worth jack shit).
• Awesome Art: The game's artstyle is simply gorgeous. Much like Skyward Sword, it combines the colorful cel-shading of The Wind Waker with the detailed, realistic models of Twilight Princess, which makes the Scenery Porn that much prettier and gives the characters a lot of coolness, charm and personality.
• Awesome Bosses:
  • The Divine Beasts. Have Zelda bosses ever been this action-packed and fun to fight? Take your pick:
    • Vah Medoh has you fly high into the sky with a Rito partner making an assault on an enormous bird-shaped airship, whose cannons also function as its barrier nodes, meaning a) you have to be flying the entire time and b) you have to get right in the line of fire to take it down.
    • Vah Rudania seems insurmountable, but you actually drive it back up the mountain it's been crawling over by loading a Goron into a giant cannon and using him as high-impact ammunition even a Divine Beast can't brush off.
    • Vah Ruta sees you riding the back of a motorboat, AKA your friend Prince Sidon, taking on a gargantuan elephant construct that tosses giant blocks of ice at you, before you get in close, ascend the side of it at high speed, and shoot it with lightning arrows at the zenith of your jump.
    • Vah Naboris sees you assisting Riju by speeding alongside the mecha as it moves through its sandstorm, having to dodge its lightning strikes while bombing its feet out from under it. You can barely see, you're an inch away from getting blasted if you slide out of the Thunder Helm's shield, and you have to balance surfing and aiming arrows.
  • For the non-Divine Beast bosses, there's Calamity Ganon: a hideously mishapen, many-armed thing that starts its boss battle by collapsing the floor you're standing on and bursting out of a massive tumor-like growth hanging from the ceiling like something out of Bloodborne or Darkest Dungeon. And then during its fight, you get many chances to fly up with your hang glider to shoot it in Bullet Time while dodging hits from its dozens of weapons as it blasts you with fireballs and lasers. It has one of the best, if not the scariest boss designs in the entire franchise, and the whole battle is nothing but badass.
  • Thunderblight Ganon is generally considered to be the best of the Blight bosses due to him being a noticeable Difficulty Spike that tests the player's reflexes and timing.
  • The duel with Sheikah monk Maz Koshia at the end of the Champion's Ballad DLC for being a challenging, multi-phased Final-Exam Boss, who's also essentially an extremely competent version of Master Kohga.
• Awesome Levels:
  • The Great Plateau is widely considered to be one of the greatest tutorials of all time, in no small part due to the fact that the region teaches you everything you need to know without railroading in any particular direction. You're free to complete the Shrines and explore for numerous secrets, ruins, and treasure chests to your heart's content in any order you choose, making it the perfect microcosm of the game's world before being set loose with the Paraglider.
  • Each of the Divine Beast quests is well-liked for introducing Link to beloved characters of each of the game's races, and for culminating in a boss fight against a Humongous Mecha, exploring said mecha as a dungeon and manipulating it, and fighting another boss inside of it.
  • Gerudo Desert is generally considered the best major story region in the game. It has everything; harsh-but-fair survival challenges (especially if you tackle it first or almost-first), unique enemies and overworld bosses that can nonetheless be bested with clever strategy and/or having seen Tremors before, a neat stealth-based mini-dungeon partway through with a fun miniboss at the end, and one of the best-designed Divine Beasts at the end of it all.
  • Eventide Island is usually considered to be one of the best shrines in the game, and for good reason. it is a No-Gear Level set on a secluded, tropical island in the middle of the ocean. You're given a goal (find the orb, and deposit it on a pedestal), but you're given multiple ways to accomplish this, and the fact that you don't have any of your weapons or armor means you'll have to scrounge for stuff. This is one of the few times the game actively pushes the player to use its complex enviromental interaction systems, and as a result, most players will find the challenge satisfying and difficult. There is a way to make the challenge easier, which is dropping your gear at the start of the challenge and picking it up once you set foot on the island, but the game accounts for this and will punish it by permanently taking that gear away once you complete the challenge (but hey, you can just drop it again at the end and pick it up afterwards).
  • Hyrule Castle takes much of what was great about Hyrule Castle in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and builds upon it. When you first enter it, you're treated to a cutscene that greets you with Ganondorf's iconic organ fanfare. Dramatic music that blends Ganon's theme, the Hyrule Castle melody, the main theme of The Legend of Zelda, and (when inside) Zelda's theme, a dungeon-crawl through the castle itself (unless you just swam up the waterfall in your Zora gear), going through a slew of Guardians, Lizalfos, Moblins, and a couple of Lynels, hidden portions that give us insight into two of the main characters, all of this adds up to a dungeon that contends with the Hyrule Castle of Twilight Princess as the best final dungeon in the series. It also helps that down in the castle dungeon, the Hylian Shield can be found, so there's plenty of reason to come here even at a low level.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The Calamity Ganon. Some people appreciate this unique take on the series' Big Bad, and enjoy how it breaks with tradition just like with the rest of the game by turning Ganon into an eldritch force of nature a la Cthulhu or Walpurgisnacht rather than the villainous, singular being he's always been. Others dislike how the most revolutionary game in the series cast away most of the traits that made Ganon(dorf) cool or admirable in previous games, especially in the wake of his beloved, badass Hyrule Warriors incarnation, and also cite the very lackluster final battle against Dark Beast Ganon. The latter group found it especially jarring that Ganon's last canonical appearance as an intelligent, scheming villain was in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, in 2006. Some even thought that Majora should have been a better pick for how similar they are.
  • Vilia, the biologically male Hylian who presents as a female Gerudo and sells Link the Gerudo Set. Fans can't decide if they're genuinely funny and endearing, or offensive to transgender players due to Link's reaction to their face reveal (since the bottom part of Link's face is covered by a veil, fans are also unsure if Link is supposed to be horrified or just surprised). The debate isn't helped by their overly masculine nose and mouth◊ (which aren't shown in-game), which either justify Link's reaction or cheapen the gag even further.
  • Out of the four Champions, Revali is easily the most divisive. Plenty of people can't stand him due to his arrogance and Irrational Hatred towards Link, some even claiming that he deserved to be killed by Calamity Ganon and only freed his soul because of Revali's Gale. Some, however, consider his egocentric attitude to be oddly charming. While some people consider him the least likable of the Champions for the aforementioned reasons and his generally sour, sardonic attitude, just as many will call him the best of the champions for the exact same traits. His striking rudeness in contrast to the other Champions is a sticking point for many, others will argue that he's the only one of them who has an actual personality beyond one-note do-gooder and an actual character arc as he learns to let go of blaming Link for his death. His occasional Pet the Dog moments have also helped saving him in some player's eyes.
  • King Rhoam has split the fanbase between those who are stuck on the way he treated Zelda in the past, admonishing her for failing to unlock her sealing power and contributing a great deal to her frustrations, and those who are more forgiving due to his aiding Link on the Great Plateau and demonstrating how much the years have changed him since then.
  • The Great Fairies. Some players find their behavior toward Link to be humorous and don’t really think anything of it, whereas others feel the way they force their affections on him without any misgivings crosses the line into being uncomfortable (especially since it's clear from Link's reactions that the attention is unwanted).
  • Bolson. Some enjoy his quirky lines of dialogue and flamboyant personality, while others find him annoying for how long it takes to get him to fully upgrade your house, along with the fact that he continues to stay on your lawn even after your house is fully upgraded^note Though you can make them leave if you send them to attend Hudson's wedding and then don't talk to him again afterwards..
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Xenoblade Chronicles 2 quest is this by nature since it's a cross-promotion; the game doesn't even make a token effort to have it make any in-universe sense. It quite literally comes out of nowhere, mysteriously appearing in your inventory after you leave the Great Plateau without being assigned by any NPC, and never has any relevance again once it's eventually completed.
• Breather Boss:
  • Once one obtains a good two handed weapon, such as the Boulder Breaker or Royal Claymore, as well as (preferably) Urbosa's Fury, Talus can become these, combined with Piñata Enemy for the Rare variant. Just wait for it to chuck its arms at you, then when it leans down to regenerate, hop aboard and start whacking the ore deposit with your weapon. Since two-handed weapons spin as their charged attack, you can rip off huge chunks of the thing's health in no time flat, and when you inevitably run out of Stamina, though you won't be able to kill it in one trip on top, due to having a high damage output and activating when a charged attack finishes, Urbosa's Fury will usually finish the job. The Rare variants are easy pickings, as they only drop gems with a low chance of dropping Ambers and Opals and the occasional diamond, which is useful for reforging the Champions' weapons.
  • Hinox, while being relatively more tanky than their Talus counterparts, are even less threatening. Not only are they susceptible to Flurry Rush, their attacks are extremely telegraphed, making them easy pickings with any weapon type.
• Breather Level:
  • Vah Medoh is generally considered to be the easiest of the Divine Beast quests, and as such, it can be this if you've already completed any of the other Divine Beasts beforehand. There's very little you need to do before you begin the assault on the beast (aside from being prepared for extremely cold weather, the only major story trial you have to go through is a simple aerial archery test), the boss fight with the beast itself is the most straight-forward of them all (the weak points can be simply glided towards, Teba doesn't even need to be drawing the turrets' fire for you to attack them, and said turret-fire isn't any different from those of Guardians, being easy to avoid by just cancelling your glide as soon as it fires), and the puzzles for the interior aren't quite as mind-bending as those inside the other beasts.
  • An unintentional case, strangely, Hyrule Castle can end up as this with the right equipment. Despite being full of various types of Guardians and siccing Lynels on you at the gatehouses, the second being a white-maned Lynel, the area is easily cheeseable with the right gear. With the Zora armor being the Game-Breaker that it is, you can swim up the conveniently placed waterfalls and skip large chunks of the dungeon. And even without the Zora armor, unlike inside the Divine Beasts, it's possible to climb the walls of the area, so with enough persistence and strategy, you can skip areas anyway. With the Divine Beast ability to launch you high into the air, you can make it to Ganon easily since he's at the top of the castle.
  • The handful of "Blessing" shrines in the game have no puzzles and no enemies: the interiors contain only a chest and a straight-shot to the Sheikah Monk. Zig-zagged in that getting to these shrines is a trial in and of themselves: you may have to swim through freezing water, or navigate your way through a nest of Guardians.
  • Among the shrines introduced in "The Champions' Ballad" DLC, there are a couple:
    • Rinu Honika's "Block the Blaze" requires zero effort if the player has the upgraded Flamebreaker armor set equipped (which is extremely likely at that point in the game). The main challenge of the shrine is to navigate a corridor full of flamethrowers, using various tools at your disposal to block the flames so you don't get hurt. The upgraded Flamebreaker set makes Link fireproof, completely negating any negative effect that the flamethrowers would have on Link.
    • The shrine that relies on moving blocks to progress while dealing with the threat of electrocution is nullified by having the rubber armor set or the Thunder Helm.
    • Shira Gomar's "Aim for Stillness" also has its challenge negated with a very easy-to-find piece of equipment. The challenge of the shrine is to use bombs with air gusts in order to blow up some bombable wall with the right timing. The whole shrine can be breezed through with just a few bomb arrows.
• Broken Base:
  • Whether this game has taken the mantle of best game in the series from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or not has torn the fan-base asunder. While there's absolutely no question that Breath of the Wild completely surpasses both the original and 3DS versions from a technical standpoint, many people prefer the more traditional gameplay style and more focused storytelling of Ocarina of Time over the Wide-Open Sandbox and Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay of Breath of the Wild. There are some people who appreciate both games, enjoying Ocarina for its timelessness, classic characters and story and role in gaming history, and Wild for providing the biggest, most polished and most engaging evolution of the series' exploration factor.
  • Many fans are divided on whether the changes to the core gameplay were just the overdue shot in the arm the franchise needed or, on the other hand, if they steered it around too much to the point it barely feels like a Zelda game anymore.
  • Many fans of classic 3D Zeldas such as Ocarina of Time are concerned that the game’s runaway success combined with the polarizing fan reception of Skyward Sword will lead to the old style being abandoned for future entries, particularly fans who were not pleased by the radical shift in formula. Other people are fine with that given how they believed that the series’ old formula is dated and wore itself thin by the time of Skyward Sword’s release and believe that future games should instead expand off of the template set by Breath of the Wild.
  • The Weapon Degradation System is extremely divisive. Some say it makes the game better by making sure the player gets good with, and experiences, all the weapon types (since all weapons break very quickly), keeps variety high, encourages careful strategy and planning for all encounters, even making you seek other tactics to deal with enemies less directly, as opposed to blindly rushing in swinging your sword wildly. Others say it's just annoying, arguing that it halts the pace of the game, takes the fun out of getting a new weapon in any scenario when it will inevitably become dust shortly, that the less direct tactics are unreliable, ineffective, context sensitive and unenjoyable, that there are other, better ways to make the player experience all the weapon types, and that forced variety isn't true variety. A middle ground exists that says the system itself is fine in theory, just that the weapons shouldn't break quite so easily.
  • The ease and extent to which the game in general can be exploited and skipped due to its open nature (there were so many entries under Game-Breaker that the game now has its own page just to list them all) is another area people are split on. Those who love it say that it gives players multiple options through which to traverse the game's environment, solve puzzles and overcome obstacles in general, and is better than being led around by the hand or forced to do things a certain way. Others say that it is a sign of poor balance and implementation of gameplay mechanics, devalues much of the game's content due to how easily it is bypassed or gamed, and gives a constant feeling of not being sure if you're missing something, since there's a fine line between "saving time and effort" and "sabotaging the experience by unknowingly doing things in an unintended manner."
  • The music, which forms what is probably the most divisive soundtrack in the series so far. Although everyone agrees it's good and that it fits the general tone of the game, Manaka Kataoka and Yasuaki Iwata used a subtle and melancholic style, rather than the classic epic fanfares the series is known for, as well as giving more prominence to silence and nature sounds. Many people think that they overdid this approach, and that it has given a much less memorable and less varied score as a result, way too detached from what comes to their minds when they think about music from a Zelda game. However, there are just as many people who say the soundtrack still has a lot of memorable tracks and argue that the new style is actually much more nuanced and sophisticated. Some go as far as to state that it's hands-down the best soundtrack in the entire series. There are also people who Take a Third Option and state that they think the soundtrack is just right for Breath of the Wild, but don't want its style to become the new norm in future installments.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • The Keese sometimes come in large swarms. Some bows can launch multiple arrows of a chosen type at once for the cost of one. One of the types of arrows are tipped with bombs. The high price of bomb arrows and low value of Keese drops only sweeten the catharsis.
  • Stal, enemies like Keese, are persistent, annoying and frustrating to deal with, especially since their extremely low health makes hitting them with any weapon worth carrying around a waste of its hardness. However, it's possible to physically pick up their hopping heads and throw them into situations where they'll be damaged by environmental factors or at least stay out of your hair, which comes with a special animation where Link drops the skull and punts it like a football. After having wasted considerable time and effort dealing with bands of these guys, sending them sailing into the void or into deep water is extremely satisfying, especially paired with their bodies' shocked reactions before they disintegrate.
  • Once you get the Thunder Helm, it's immensely satisfying to stand around in a thunderstorm with metal equipment, and watch Link No-Sell lightning. Even better, turning Link into a living lightning rod by equipping a metal sword or shield, then rushing at a horde of enemies to weaponize lightning.
  • Once the player gets access to stronger weapons and the powerful Ancient Arrows, fighting Guardians can be very cathartic. These enemies can strike fear and terror into the player, especially early on when they can easily one-shot Link when Link in return deals only scratch damage to them. But later on, once Link has more hearts, more defense, and stronger means of attack, Guardians can be defeated with ease. It's an immensely satisfying feeling being able to demolish these Guardians with a well-timed Ancient Arrow shot or wailing away with the Master Sword (which doubles in power when fighting them). Even without Ancient Arrows, fighting Guardians can also be a breeze once you have mastered the timing for shield parry. This is because while perfect parry against most other enemies (especially Lynels) merely stuns the enemy for a second and you still have to actually beat them up yourself, performing perfect parry on Guardian laser will send that laser back at that Guardian, dealing massive damage and even one-shotting decayed Guardians, essentially allowing you to farm Guardian parts for free as long as you have shields.
  • After going through the whole game and seeing all the horrors and pain Calamity Ganon has inflicted on the once-proud land of Hyrule, can you not say that finally killing the twisted beast and ending its reign of terror for good wasn't extremely satisfying?
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Watch any walkthrough of the game, and chances are people will be upgrading their stamina more often than their heart containers.
• Contested Sequel: Ask Zelda fans if this is the new best Zelda game or not, and watch as fire erupts from all sides. While Breath of the Wild is the most unanimously-acclaimed Zelda game since Ocarina of Time, it is compared to its predecessors just like Ocarina and other entries. The dungeon design of the Divine Beasts, use of voice acting, weapon degradation, and narrative are particular points of contention.
• Cry for the Devil: Many people have admitted to feeling sorry for Ganon due to being so far gone and having his reincarnation interrupted that there's almost nothing of the person he once was left in there, to the point he can't even manage a form even remotely humanoid anymore.

D-F

• Demonic Spiders: This game has more than usual for a Zelda game. Since it's a Wide-Open Sandbox, these creatures effectively act as beef gates for new players.
  • The Guardians all have 500+ hit points, hit hard with deadly precision, and are present throughout the whole game. Some of them are planted in the ground, but others are mobile and move fast enough to keep up with Link on horseback. It's not until you obtain the Master Sword and the Ancient Armor from the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab that they become easier to take down. Once you figure out the timing for shield-bashing their blasts back at them, they go from being demonic to being rather trivial, but you still need a durable shield and armor in case you mistime it. Guardian Skywatchers are particularly bad, due to how their beams work. When they fire a laser, there's a certain amount of knockback inflicted on the Guardian itself, causing it to rock back a little. With Decayed Guardians and Guardian Turrets (which are stuck in the ground and don't move), Guardian Stalkers and Guardian Scouts (which have all feet on the ground and thus more stability), this feature is fine. But in the case of Skywatchers, it takes a full thirty seconds to re-stabilize, which means a reflected beam will hit their chassis instead of their eye, reducing the effectiveness of the technique considerably. Fortunately, they have another weakness that can be exploited: their propellers. Once all three are destroyed, they drop out of the sky, and since they like to hang around cliffs and valleys, this can easily mean them plummeting to their doom, or at the very least, to a place where they are no longer a threat.
  • The bears. You can't lock on to them, and they stay out of range of all but your longest melee weapons until they rush in to attack. Unfortunately, they hit hard and can take a ton of damage before they finally go down. They can be killed instantly by head shots from arrows and boomerangs, but they are intelligent enough to know when you're trying to lead them, giving you few opportunities to land a hit. And as if that's not bad enough, higher-level Bokoblins ride the damned things, and knocking the rider off means you now not only have to deal with him, but a pissed off mountain of fur and fangs at the same time! And they often travel in packs!
  • Moblins are large enough to throw enemies at Link, carry spears that have a long range, and have a lot of health. Also, they're Immune to Flinching until the final hit in your combo, so they can just tank through your blows and clobber you while you're in the middle of trying to deal with them.
  • The members of the Yiga Clan are fast enemies and very hard to hit. Their dash attack is hard to dodge and can deal heavy damage, and what's worse is that they love to disguise themselves as ordinary travelers attempting to sell you something in an attempt to lower your guard. If they catch you with low supplies and weapons, you're dead. Simply walking close enough to them can trigger their attacks, meaning you can't simply avoid them by not talking to strangers. What's even worse is that after you defeat Master Kohga, the Yiga Clan will forgo disguises and just attack you upfront, meaning not only can they appear anywhere at any time, but they can also appear while you're already engaged in combat against another enemy.
  • Lynels. These affronts to Hylia seem like a bet between the developers on who could make the most grossly overpowered and obnoxious enemy in the game. They are incredibly powerful and large in size, and they're very agile. Their attacks have a great reach, so trying to dodge will be a task. What's worse is that they have an insanely far line of sight just like Guardians. Worse still, they're much smarter than the average mook. If they spot you, they'll watch from afar for a long time until you let your guard down. If you manage to get far enough away from them, they'll snipe you with their bows with terrifying accuracy. Also, if you try to hide or use the terrain as cover, they'll just shoot over the terrain to hit you, and they have remarkable accuracy even then. Atop all this, unlike most color-coded baddies that go from very weak to very strong, Lynels start out as total damage sponges and just get even tankier from there, so even after you've fully gotten the hang of fighting them effectively, actually defeating them is still a very long and brutal slog that will eat its way through a good chunk of your weapons cache.
  • Electric Wizzrobes, while not overly durable enemies, come with the dual quirks of being able to summon thunderstorms, which can force you to unequip metal weapons, and their standard electric attack causing you to drop your equipped weapons. Further, unlike Fire and Ice Wizzrobes who can be killed with a single Ice or Fire arrow (respectively), Electric Wizzrobes have no such weakness. Seeing one in the path of where you are trying to go is perhaps second to only to seeing a Lynel in terms of challenge and annoyance. The Ridgeland Tower takes this even further, as it is surrounded by a lake patrolled by three Electric Wizzrobes. Their disarming attacks can send your weapons to the bottom of the lake, where they cannot be retrieved^note Depending on the depth of the lake where you drop them, you may be able to retrieve metal weapons/shields with Magnesis, but you've likely switched to non-metallic equipment due to the Wizzrobes' thunderstorms if they've been aggro'd., and even if you make it to the tower through a careful application of stealth and Cryonis, their attacks (or lightning from the thunderstorm they summon) can send you falling back down.
  • Silver Lizalfos, especially with shields and heavily perked Lizal Tri-Boomerangs. They have a huge leap in hitpoints over Black lizalfos, their weapons hit hard, and are jumpy and erratic in movement.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Zelda exhibits many symptoms related to depression. These include sadness, irritation, sense of hopelessness, and low self-esteem. Given the pressure put upon her by her father and others on how she hasn't been able to unlock her power, closely tied to the grief she feels over her mother's sudden death when she was six, she may have actually developed it after years of being seen as a failure.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Quite a few, depending on where you go and what you decide to do. The chief ones are the four corners of the map, each which have their own debilitating environmental effects and powerful enemies.
  • The Champion's Ballad DLC is intended to be the final late-game challenge before tackling Ganon. Thus, it's very difficult, with each part of it requiring the player to be very far in the game. Tons of supplies, lots of stamina and hearts, good map knowledge, and powerful weapons are a must. Even then, these will only get you so far, since several aspects of the challenge have "features" that make them more difficult, such as the first part turning every single attack into a One-Hit Kill for poor Link.
  • Enforced, due to a hidden "experience" value that increments whenever Link defeats most (but not all) enemies. When this value reaches certain levels, a specific rank of enemy will be upgraded to the next level upon the next Blood Moon. This isn't so bad at the start, when you've only got the basic red versions of standard enemies beefing up to the only-slightly-tougher blue. However, it becomes much more of an issue the further you go, when you start getting into black and silver variants. Then, eventually, even the Lynels start upgrading.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Sidon is perhaps the most popular new character in the game and is certainly the most popular of the New Champions, with his gleaming smile, optimistic confidence, muscular looks, and kindness and appreciation for Link. The Internet was inundated with a tsunami of fanart and memes surrounding him, including a sizable ship with Link; rather impressive for a character who is very much a supporting player and only contributes to the Vah Ruta quest.
  • Kass, the tall accordion-playing Rito earned a pretty sizeable fanbase despite being a relatively unimportant side character who is only important for the Champion’s Ballad DLC quest. Being one of the friendliest characters in the game and a great dad to boot cemented him as one of the most beloved characters in the game. If not the most beloved.
  • Purah's role in the game doesn’t extend outside of a brief side quest that helps Link utilize the Shiekiah Slate’s full potential, but is well liked for her neat design and perky attitude, as well as having some very funny dialogue and a hilarious backstory detailed in her journal. Many fans were happy to see her get a more notable role in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and eventually become an Ascended Extra focal to the events of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
  • Despite not being involved in the main story and never leaving Kakariko Village, Paya is quite a beloved character by many fans due to being gentle and beautiful, having an Endearingly Dorky personality, and having a not-well-hidden massive crush on Link.
  • Like Paya, Dorian is only a minor character who stays in Kakariko for the entire game, but is just as popular as her. This is due to his incredibly tragic, dramatic, and fascinating backstory as a reformed Yiga Clan ninja that's easily worthy of another game all on its own.
  • Hestu is a difficult person to find, and isn't exactly a major character. Yet he's liked regardless for lessening one of the game's Scrappy Mechanics, and for the sheer absurdity of how he does it.
  • Although he’s only fought exactly once before suffering a Disney Death, Master Kohga has become quite popular for his Laughably Evil and hammy personality that perfectly fits his easy, but hilarious boss battle. Nintendo seems to have caught onto this as well, as he's given a much greater role in Age of Calamity and is even unlockable as a playable character, being just as hammy and hilarious as before. He would later return in Tears of the Kingdom, having survived his fall, and can be fought no less than four times.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • While many Zelda games have heated discussions regarding their place in the timeline (at least before Hyrule Historia), Breath of the Wild has had even more debate for its place given the number of incredibly vague references to all three branches of the timeline. The fact that this game has the biggest Time Skip of any in the series (10,000 years between the events of the game and the first time the Divine Beasts were used, and likely even more time between that and whatever the previous game was) makes it even harder to pin down. There are even those who consider the game a Stealth Reboot that creates a new continuity, or connected to a new timeline split of some kind.
  • None of this is helped by the fact that Eiji Aonuma originally stated prior to release that the game took place in the same timeline as Ocarina of Time (itself a confusing statement, since — as OoT was the branching point of timelines in the first place — this can literally refer to any of the three timelines), but later stated that Nintendo's plans had changed and they deliberately didn't specify the timeline in order to avoid limiting the possibility for further development.
  • It was also at one time stated to take place in all three timelines at the same time, which led to speculation that the timelines had merged somehow. This led to debates over how something like that would come about and what the implications would mean for the existing series (including whether or not the "single timeline" theory had renewed credibility). It was kind of clarified that the intent was that, eventually, all three timelines would have events prior to BotW would lead to a Sheikah-ruled Hyrule with advanced Magitek and Ganon being defeated but returning as the Calamity Ganon and push them back into Medieval Stasis. While this answers some questions (the timelines are still separate but eventually have nearly identical events), it opens up a lot more.
• Even Better Sequel: To Skyward Sword, which received widespread critical acclaim when it first came out, but was heavily criticized in some circles for its linearity and Fi's numerous interruptions, especially as time went on. Breath of the Wild is not the least bit linear and Link is almost always alone. BotW also expands on previous Zelda games (including Skyward Sword) with its Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay, very high level of interactivity, and enormous yet dense version of Hyrule with tons of gorgeous Scenery Porn — that can be interacted with.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • The Guardians, the Mascot Mook of the game, are well-liked for being very nightmarish fantasy Spider Tank robots with intimidating, complex designs.
  • The Lynels have a similar fandom following, due to being fearsome lion-centaur weaponmasters with some of the best gear in the game, reliably tougher and more dangerous than most overworld bosses, and incredibly dynamic and dangerous fighters.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Breath of the Wild has often been compared with Horizon Zero Dawn in terms of which is the better game. Discussion on gaming sites and YouTube usually boils down to which is better, based on their similarities and their differences.
  • Breath of the Wild has one with Super Mario Odyssey, another game that took a more Wide-Open Sandbox approach to its own franchise. There are plenty of fans of both games, but there is disagreement as to which deserves the title of "Best Game of 2017" and which did the most to push its respective series forward.
  • In 2018, Breath of the Wild developed one with Red Dead Redemption II. Both games are open-world, among the most critically acclaimed games of their console generation, and came out after long waits. But while Breath of the Wild is an aesthetically stylized fantasy adventure with relatively sparse storytelling and a protagonist who can perform borderline superhuman feats as he traverses and fights across Hyrule, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a gritty, realistic, story-heavy western that portrays its protagonist as a mundane (albeit highly skilled) human gunslinger. Much like with Horizon Zero Dawn, arguments about which is better also tend to overlap with console rivalry arguments due to the games being on different consoles.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • More like "fanart fuel" (though at least one fanfic attempt exists), but the cyborg Calamity Ganon being an incomplete attempt at regeneration has become this. Many fan artists have attempted to design Ganon in a hypothetical scenario where he regenerates to full completion. Most of these artists imagine him fully regenerating as a cyborg Ganondorf, based upon the Calamity's physical form resembling an undead Ganondorf. Age of Calamity eventually took this route for its own "complete" form of Ganon which likewise resembles Ganondorf, albeit still quite monstrous and near-mindless.
  • Exploring the events of the Great Calamity — such as the final moments of the Champions — in further detail is also a common subject in fan works. The idea even became an official game, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, but due to the Broken Base on whether or not it handles the events well enough, these style of fan works persist.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Revali is often referred to as "Ravioli." On other occasions, he's referred to as "Chicken Man" or "Cucco Man." People who ship him with Link (or just joke that Revali has feelings for him) sometimes call him "Tsundere Birb."
  • Yunobo, Teba, Riju, and Sidon are collectively known as the "Modern Champions" or the "New Champions" due to their roles in helping Link reach the respective Divine Beasts of their region. Their appearance in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity also reinforced this notion.
  • Two of the three special horses you can tame are known by different names. The black horse based on Ganondorf's has been dubbed "Ganonhorse" and "Ganoneigh", while the 4-4-5 horse is known as Ultimate Horse, Ultimate Steed, the Ultimate Horse, or the Ultimate Steed.
  • Magda, the lady who planted an extensive flowerbed around one of the shrines and who will beat Link to within an inch of his life if he steps on them, is sometimes referred to as "Flowerblight Ganon."
  • Windblight Ganon is often jokingly referred to as "Frenchblight Ganon" by fans, due to his theme incorporating gratuitous use of an accordion.
  • Once you complete the Champions' Ballad, available through the second DLC, Link gets his own Divine Beast, a Magitek motorcycle called the Master Cycle Zero. This is known among the fanbase as the Divine Beast Vah Ruum. Others note how it sucks up materials to use as fuel, and have given it the name Vah Roomba. Still others call it Vah Bospho or Vah Rhoa to fit with the theme of the other four's names being corruptions or a Significant Anagram of the elemental sages that were the same race as the Champion piloting it (Ruta for Ruto, Medli for Medoh, Nabooru for Naboris, and Darunia for Rudania.)
  • The game itself has been called Zelder Scrolls and Hyrim/Zeldrim/Skyrule because its Wide-Open Sandbox nature makes it reminiscent of titles from the Elder Scrolls series.
  • Zelda Souls took off among some communities after information from E3 2016 revealed the game's heavier focus on wanting to tell certain story elements through the environment. Also because dodging and parrying properly are the most effective way of taking down enemies, and how quickly weapons break.
  • Metal Gear Zelda: The Phantom Link due to the many similarities the game shares with the open-world nature of MGSV, primarily stealth-based ways to raid enemy camps, marking and tracking enemies on the map, and the Sheikah Slate filling many of the same functions as the iDroid. As well as a story of a man awakening from a coma after being attacked and losing many of their friends.
  • A physics exploit involving slow motion and both types of bombs to launch Link faster and farther than normally possible is known by several names: Bomb Impact Launch, Wind Bomb, Bounce That Boi, and Boomy Zoomy, although Wind Bomb is the most common.
• Fanon:
  • Due to his theme sounding like the type of accordion music you'd associate with France, a number of people imagine Kass as speaking with a French accent.
  • Some fans theorize Link's right-handedness in this game is because of how he was formally trained to fight using his non-dominant hand in order to uniformly fit in the Hylian Knights. They use Skyward Sword as an example of how that game's (right-handed) Link was the only other Link prior to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's that was formally trained in swordfighting, as every other (left-handed) Link in the series didn't receive such training.
  • Artists who are fans of Ganondorf sometimes draw him in the Desert Voe Armor due to him being the only known male Gerudo in all of the series.
  • It's a fairly common assumption among fans that Lynels are extremely skilled weaponsmiths and create and maintain their own gear. This is used to explain how, despite being violently asocial hermits living by themselves in the wilderness, they also all have access to unique and extremely high-grade weapons and shields.
  • The Wolf Link companion available through using amiibos is often treated as the spirit of the Hero of Twilight, lingering to watch over his successor like the Hero of Time did for him.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • In the franchise's Broken Base, fans of each individual Zelda game tend to be at odds with one another, and for the most part, Breath of the Wild is no exception. However, there is one Zelda game whose fans and Breath of the Wild fans are near-universally amicable: Majora's Mask. This is due to many factors: similar structures involving a single set of four dungeons and a final dungeon (as opposed to the franchise's longtime standard of having two arcs of dungeons divided by a plot twist), relatively fast-paced introductory sections consisting of little tutorialization and exposition in a boxed-in area, the idea of rescuing four gigantic figures from the Big Bad's corruption to save the local region, gaining new abilities by easing the regrets of restless ghosts, and a general emphasis on optional side content while downplaying the main quest as shorter. Overall, fans of Breath of the Wild and Majora's Mask connect very well over the perception that the rest of the franchise, particularly the 3D games, overuse much of the same tropes while those two games buck those trends.
  • Outside of the franchise, the game has this with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, due to both of them being open-world installments in what are usually linear-based game series, and both released during The Eighth Generation of Console Video Games. There's lots of crossover art and memes featuring the two, and it probably helps that some of the stealth sections in Breath of the Wild make it feel like a Metal Gear game at some points.

G-J

• Game-Breaker: So many, they ended up getting their own page.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Keese, quite literally. They're extremely weak and can usually be killed in one hit, but they tend to attack in swarms and are very good at being frustrating distractions during more important fights and obstacles during travel and at forcing you to waste weapon durability on their single hit point of health. Their drops are worth very little as well, giving you few rewards for dealing with them. Their elemental variants add damaging auras to the mix, such as Ice Keese that will freeze you solid on contact and Fire Keese that leave swathes of burning grass everywhere as they fly around. Electric Keese are even worse, as they do much more damage and can cause you to drop your weapons. If it's raining, they border on Demonic Spiders — in swarms, they can summon lightning strikes that are a One-Hit Kill.
  • Stal enememies actually fit this the most, because they never leave. They will show up at night, wherever you are, and no place is free of them, not even the peaks of mountains or lava lakes. You will be hounded incessantly by Stals every ten feet of your journey. Chuchus are very similar, but are slow as molasses and easy to run from and don't scale with the player's power level, while Stal enemies do. They're easy enough to kill, but not easy to run from since they follow you at a fast pace and usually spawn with a bow. If you want five minutes of peace, you have to stop what you're doing, hack at them until they fall down and then hack at their heads while they bounce around, and then deal with whatever creature you were trying to sneak up on before three jerks decided to drop in uninvited. Hope for your sake that it isn't a guardian!
  • Lizalfos are very similar to Stals in that they are, while usually not much of a threat until they scale upwards, a humongous pain in the ass. Unlike Stals, they spawn during the day as well. You can't run from them once they've caught sight of you because they're fast and will easily close the distance, and will dance out of the reach of most weapons, meaning your journey will be coming to a screeching halt for two to three minutes at a time until they're dead. Unlike all the other enemies in the game, they scale both by difficulty and by locale, so they can potentially be hurtled all the way from this trope to Demonic Spiders if you're in the wrong situation.
  • Octoroks. While they're trivial generic enemies in most Zelda games, here they are absolute pests. Despite having only 8 HP and being very easy to kill, all Octoroks are hidden in some way, and when they spit rocks, they shoot fast and have ridiculous accuracy, often knowing to aim where Link will end up rather than where he currently is. Water Octoroks aim from water and are easy to pick off, but chest mimic type, forest type, and snow type Octoroks all will be hidden until you get close by. Although easy enough to ignore, if you're getting pegged by pebbles every few seconds while trying to do something requiring your close attention, you will Rage Quit and just blast them with something sufficiently satisfying.
  • Mounted Bokoblins are incredibly frustrating to deal with, whether you're on foot or on horseback like them. They're seemingly always out reach and their constant movement makes it hard to get a bead on them, but you're never out of their reach, and they usually ride in groups, making them even more of a problem. One room in the Trial of the Sword includes about six mounted Bokoblins and a Lynel, and it's not the Lynel that makes the room so difficult to survive.
  • While wolves and coyotes are not nearly as dangerous as bears, they are extremely common in some areas, can detect Link from far away, and will gang up and harass you relentlessly until you disperse them by killing one. They move quickly and will stay just out of reach of your melee weapons until they jump in to attack.
  • With the exception of Silver Lynels, Silver enemies in general are more of a massive annoyance than a threat. The main problem is that, other than their utterly massive health, they're barely different from Black enemies, which are only one step down. While they do have increased strength, they don't offer any new attacks unlike the lower three tiers, and due to their massive health, you are guaranteed to waste a few weapons trying to deal with them, which becomes a problem once they start spawning.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Casting Stasis+ on certain Guardians will cause them to fall right through the world's geometry once the effect wears off! This is a very effective way to defeat them without wasting any materials. However, any item drops will fall right through the world with it, and the trick only works on stationary Guardians that mobilize upon spotting Link.
  • You are supposed to only be able to get one dragon part per day/night, as once you shoot them, they'll go up into the sky to avoid any further shots. At Lake Floria, however, Farosh will come back down over the mountain he flees over even after you take a body part—sometimes within seconds—enabling you to take a second body part, which definitely saves on time and stress if you missed the part you aimed for. Sometimes he'll even come around for a third pass.
  • It's normally only possible to have four fairies in your inventory, as having that many makes them stop spawning outright. This doesn't count to any that you're holding in your hands, meaning you can actually get a max of eleven fairies by going where they spawn, holding as many as you can, and grabbing the fairies that appear out of nowhere.
  • It's a little awkward and takes some getting used to, but it's entirely possible to exploit a Guardian Stalker's AI and steer it by climbing on top of it. Let's break it down: A Guardian will move in the opposite direction of Link's position until a certain point if he's too close to them. Even if they don't see him, being on top of one counts as too close, meaning you can essentially control the game's Mascot Mook.
  • It is possible to take a mine cart, stack a crate or another mine cart onto it, and use Magnesis on the bottom mine cart to use it as a makeshift flying machine. It is precisely as broken as it sounds.
  • At the Bridge of Hylia there is a particular nook in one of the towers that contains a small zone that disables Cel Shading. As a result, Link ends up looking like a plastic doll while inside this zone.
  • Running at full tilt is meant to be time-limited by your stamina, but if you hold down the "call your horse" button (the left down-button) and repeatedly tap B, you can run at near full speed indefinitely, a trick that is essential for speedruns.
  • The Eventide Island quest only removes equipment that is on your person when you walk into the parameter and trigger the cut-scene. Nothing stops you from standing just outside the perimeter, dropping powerful equipment on the ground then picking it back up once you activate the quest. Just don't forget to drop it all on the floor again before the monk starts talking to you when you finish, or you'll lose it all when he replaces your inventory with what you had before you started.
  • A strange quirk in the physics causes the game to wack out whenever you land on an enemy and it ragdolls upon being hit. If one freezes a red Bokoblin with an Ice elemental weapon, then Shield Surf off a high place onto the Bokoblin, then enter Bullet Time just as you're about to hit it, Link hops off high into the air as if he were fired out of a cannon. It's tricky to master, but if done at juuust the right angle, you can perform a super powerful Goomba Stomp that will send you careening through the Hylian sky at Mach 10. You achieve such speeds that the world itself needs a breather, and when you land, your intended destination may not even be fully rendered! See it in all its glory here (courtesy of BeardBear.)
  • Normally, Monster Extract amplifies monster parts' efficacy on the Master Cycle Zero's tank (i.e. four Bokoblin Teeth normally fill around 40% of the tank; when juiced up on Monster Extract, they fill up 80%.) However, Monster Extract itself counts as a monster part, so five bottles of Monster Extract instantly gives you a full tank, and they're the only materials that can do so. That stuff must be like gasoline for ancient magic rock motorcycles, apparently.
  • Apparently the developers forgot to make bosses invulnerable during cutscenes, resulting in players instakilling Calamity Ganon by shooting an arrow where he would be during the cutscene then triggering said cutscene as shown here. If all the divine beasts were not cleared, then whichever blight comes first would be instakilled instead. Think about it. Calamity Ganon being killed with one arrow, and possibly from the weakest bow.
  • Four years after the game released, an exploit was found that allows the player to obtain the Master Sword with as low as three hearts. You have to set up a camp next to the pedestal, get inbetween the two, sleep until morning, and mash the action button while the game loads. If successful (and it is easier than it sounds), you will bypass the sword-pulling cutscene and instantly get the Master Sword. While the Master Sword is perfectly useable, the game won't properly recognize you as completing the "Hero's Sword" quest or give you the free inventory slot for the Master Sword (which means you have to have a free inventory slot beforehand). Thankfully, this doesn't break the game as Link can still "pull" the sword out as intended at any time.
  • The single most important trick to the speedrun, windbombing. By entering bullet time, dropping both remote bombs, lining yourself up, and triggering the back bomb so that the front one flies into Link’s back, you can move at insane speeds, chain them to cover ridiculous distances, and cheese every shrine that relies on a wall that doesn’t go up to the ceiling.
  • Normally a thunder weapon will only be "active" when swinging it, sending electrical currents into an object for that brief moment. However, if you pause the game in mid-swing and drop the weapon on the ground, it becomes permanently "active." The now permanently active weapon can then be placed next to any metal object to create an endless electrical current, which you can lure enemies into to stun-lock them until their health fully drains.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Great Plateau is a rather lonely place to begin with, with the Old Man and a few Koroks being the only friendly NPCs around, but it gets even lonelier when the former turns out to be Dead All Along. It gets even worse once you notice the area around the Temple of Time exactly matches the layout of Hyrule Castle Town from Ocarina of Time. Even the fountain in the square, and the wall Child Link scales to enter the castle itself, are present. One of the central locations of Ocarina is now nothing more than a crumbled and decaying ruin.
  • The fan film The Legend of Zelda: The Sage of Darkness depicted The Skull Kid as a Sheikah warrior that came to willingly serve Ganon. This game features an entire renegade faction of Sheikah, the Yiga Clan, who roam the land of Hyrule to kill his enemies.
  • At one point, Urbosa mentions how one incarnation of Ganon took on the form of a Gerudo, which she and the other Gerudo consider to be a stain on their history, and have practically disowned Ganondorf as a Gerudo, to the point where the name "Ganondorf" has been forgotten. The game's sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, not only brings back Ganondorf as the Big Bad, but also elaborates on his relations with Gerudo. The flashbacks reveal he was once a hero to his people, but his immoral actions to gain ultimate power as the Demon King cause them to turn against him, which only leads to Ganondorf replacing them with demon servants created from his magic and attempts to wipe out his own people for defying him.
  • Zelda's hopeful words in the True Ending about rebuilding Hyrule with Link become this when the sequel shows that Ganondorf isn't done terrorizing Hyrule just yet.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Revali doesn't have much of a high opinion of Link, saying that he doesn't particularly care for "blonde-haired holy knights with sacred blades." His English voice actor, Sean Chiplock, would end up voicing a character that fits that exact same mold: Ky Kiske in Guilty Gear -Strive-.
  • Before of the release of this very same game, this have been speculated that Link would be a gerudo, and there have been artworks depicting Link himself as a Gerudo instead of a Hylian: in BOTW, we got the Gerudo Outfit.
• I Knew It!: During the E3 2016, Aonuma tried to create some mystery regarding the identity of the mysterious female voice that wakes up Link from his slumber. However, most fans assumed it was Zelda's voice, and there never was much of a discussion about it. This was finally confirmed with the Switch Presentation trailer.
• Improved Second Attempt: The supreme chief of the Yiga Clan Master Kogha is a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Zant. However, due to his goofiness being obvious from the get-go and not being built up more seriously, fans have had a much warmer reaction.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Link. He came from a long line of knights and felt the pressures of living up to that responsibility, so he dealt with it by putting up a stoic and silent front. During his time as Zelda's appointed knight, he bonded with Zelda and his fellow Champions and started to open up to them, only for the Champions to be killed during the battle with Calamity Ganon and he himself getting fatally injured in a desperate attempt to protect Zelda. Now he awakens 100 years later to find Hyrule in complete disrepair and his memory gone. Also, some races, such as the Zora, remember him and resent him for his failures, hanging them over his head. And there's the Yiga clan, who actively try to murder him. Despite all that, Link never lets it get to him and keeps on fighting to save Hyrule despite being 100 years Late to the Tragedy.
  • Zelda. While most incarnations of the Princess have already tapped into the powers bestowed to them by the Goddesses, this incarnation of Zelda struggles to do so. Despite all her efforts, her father still tells her that unless she does something soon, everyone will see her as a failure. And when she finally does achieve her power, it's only after Calamity Ganon lays waste to Hyrule. However, that doesn't stop her from spending the past century doing all she can to keep Ganon sealed in Hyrule Castle and even aids Link during the final battle with Dark Beast Ganon by creating weak spots on his body.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • Perhaps as a consequence of minimizing the often lengthy dungeon preludes of its immediate predecessors and moving the bulk of content largely to optional exploration, the main quest by itself has received this criticism from some. The game only has four main dungeons, the Divine Beasts, and one final dungeon, Hyrule Castle. Majora's Mask also faces this criticism in some circles due to its similar structure, but to a much lesser extent thanks to having suitably lengthy dungeons within the otherwise relatively short main quest. On the other hand, Breath of the Wild's Divine Beasts are some of the smallest dungeons in the entire series while Hyrule Castle is all too easy to skip through with the right gear, with the game often encouraging this skipping due to the amount of Malice blockades.
  • Several fans also find the pre-dungeon quests too brief, at best involving only short quests to retrieve some object or character vital to the invasion of each Divine Beast, with much of that time only spent traveling from one important location to the next with little obstacles or challenges. The Vah Medoh questline in particular gets the worst of this, as it only involves a short target practice minigame to earn Teba's trust before attacking the Beast.
• Jerkass Woobie: King Rhoam. Despite the Ron the Death Eater treatment he usually gets hit with and the poor way he treated Zelda, he is not exactly unsympathetic. He is a man who cares greatly about his daughter and his kingdom, but was put in a precarious situation where the fate of the kingdom rests on Zelda's shoulders whether he liked it or not, as her divine abilities are pivotal to averting the Calamity and thus saving Hyrule and thousands of lives; and she was the only one who could fulfill this role. Worse yet is that the only person who could have taught Zelda how to use her abilities, the queen, died before she could do so. The king was left both grieving and in a difficult spot with his daughter's destiny. He became overly stern because he felt he had no choice and had no idea how to actually help her unlock her sealing powers; he deeply regretted his treatment towards Zelda, and wanted to stop being stern and reconcile with her; but the day he intended to was the day of the Calamity. Rhoam died full of regrets, having treated his daughter miserably and having failed to save his kingdom.
• Junk Rare: The amiibo outfits of past Links. Almost all Legend of Zelda amiibo have become extremely rare and expensive on the secondary market^note Though one can find third-party amiibo card sets that will serve the same purpose of unlocking goodies., and while most Link amiibo spawn unique items that can be moderately useful in-game,^note especially the Super Smash Bros. and Twilight Princess versions, which spawn Epona the Link outfits have a base defense of 3 (same as the Hylian Set) and require ultra-rare Star Fragments to upgrade. Their set bonus is Master Sword Beam Up, which doesn't matter much since the Master Sword's beam doesn't deal much damage in the first place and, by the time you even get the Master Sword, Link has access to armor sets with much higher defense that are easier to upgrade. The main appeal of these old armor sets is purely cosmetic; the Fierce Deity Set (from the Majora's Mask amiibo) is an exception because it provides additional secondary effects.

K-O

• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: As usual for most Zelda games, Link.
  • Princess Zelda and Princess Mipha (two of the most relevant characters of the game's main plot) are both flat-out confirmed to be in love with Link, and to boot the player is even able to imply with Link's dialogue options that he returns the feelings of one of them, neither of them or even both of them. ^note Possibly Nintendo's attempt at implementing a Romance Sidequest of sorts, despite the options not holding any weight or making any changes to the main plot or cutscenes.
  • Paya, Impa's Adorkable and easily embarrassed granddaughter, is confirmed to have a massive crush on him.
  • Although she's a few years younger than him, pairing Link with Riju is also somewhat common, though usually a time skip of a few years will be implied (Riju only being about 12 years old in the game, while Link is 17 or 18).
  • There's some subtext that have drawn many fans to ship Mipha's younger brother, Prince Sidon, with Link.
  • Revali is also often shipped with Link both in spite of and because of the fact that the two don't quite get along.
  • All of this is bolstered by the fact that various dialogue options throughout the game give the option to imply that Link is romantically interested in someone without ever saying who.
• Love to Hate: The Yiga Clan are a terrorist cult who wage war on innocent people and seek revenge against Hyrule for something that happened thousands of years ago. Nevertheless, their Undying Loyalty to Master Kohga, general incompetence, and bizarre obsession with bananas make them surprisingly entertaining.
• Magnificent Bastard (includes Tears of the Kingdom): Misko the Great Bandit was a notorious thief from Hyrule's past, infamous for their crimes and their love of riddles. Scattering their spoils across the land, Misko hid the locations to their treasures behind clever puzzles and obscure hints so that only the smartest and most experienced of adventurers would find them. Honorable to the end, Misko even made clues for their prized possession, the Fierce Deity Sword, in a quest that sends Link back and forth across the furthest reaches of Hyrule, with Misko leaving behind a message of congratulations for the hero when he solves it.
• Memetic Badass: Several of them.
  • Link is this both in and out of universe, given that he is skilled with swords, axes, spears, and bows (he can shoot down entire enemy camps in midair!), advancing to the top of his knight group, as well as wielding the Master Sword, he's essentially a One-Man Army. Let's also not forget the fact that he can defeat hordes of Bokoblins, Lizalfos, Wizrobes, Lynels, and Calamity Ganon all by himself, possibly without any weapons or even clothes.
  • The Silver Lynel, for being immensely overpowered and can have more health than the Final Boss. Recurring variants of Lynels are this to a lesser extent in some circles, as many find them tougher than the main bosses. Admit it, the one in Lanayru Province killed you too.
  • Teba had the nerve to say "dammit" in a Nintendo game.
  • Maz Koshia. Just everything about Maz Koshia is badass: his status as an exceptionally difficult Optional Boss after sitting in the same exact spot for 10000 YEARS, or how about the fact that after seeing every single monk sit perfectly still and mummified, he's the first one that MOVES? Forget about it, Maz's badassery is completely unprecedented and unmatched. Oh, and he gives Link the Master Cycle Zero. He doesn't even pass on after his defeat like his fellow monks, instead choosing to meditate in his Shrine until Link requests another battle from him, which he happily accepts.
  • Since deflecting can be done with any shield regardless of size, strength, or durability, some fans give the humble Pot Lid this treatment, claiming it's the only shield a real hero ever needs. Nintendo also seems to have canonized this, as Daruk's Training Journal from the Champion's Ballad DLC reveals that Link used a Pot Lid to deflect a Guardian laser back before the Calamity during an examination gone wrong, which was one of the feats that got him recognized as the Legendary Hero and is entirely possible to repeat in the present.
• Memetic Loser: Poor, poor Chuchus just can't seem to win. Apart from having a pitifully weak and easy to dodge jump attack, their elemental effects can be completely blocked by armor and food, as well as exploited, they have painfully low HP, and they can be easily blown with the Deku Leaf (or just lured) into water, demonstrating their Super Drowning Skills. The fact that they explode into pools of slime with their eyeballs being bounced out makes taking them as a serious threat borderline impossible. Their only saving grace is that these characteristics make them cute to some.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Real horses don't run into trees very often. ^ExplanationAonuma explaining how Epona was going to be given her own AI to allow her to navigate on her own while the player is preoccupied with other things.
  • Being able to remove Link's clothes and being able to play the entire game this way, especially after a Treehouse stream from E3 where two female Nintendo employees forced Link to walk around shirtless in a blizzard so they could enjoy the view.
  • Naked Pyromaniac Link ^ExplanationExtending from the above, the ability for Link to be a Walking Shirtless Scene and being able to Kill It with Fire to enemies, weapons, environment, everything, resulting in... patterns of play with the demo shown at E3.
    • The Legend of Zelda: BURN EVERYTHING◊
    • Further mutated with the discovery that Link can ride bears... after setting said bear on fire. Usually captioned with the phrase "WHO'S THE CALAMITY NOW!?"
  • LINK, WHERE ARE YOU?! ^ExplanationDue to the huge amount of optional sidequests and other time-wasting activities, it's popular to portray Link as spending most of his time cooking, hunting for Koroks, mountaineering, and just generally doing anything and everything except actually saving Hyrule. Zelda will typically be shown either wondering what's taking him so long, or watching in frustration as Link spends several weeks collecting bugs.
  • L Has Come To ^ExplanationThanks to some cleverly edited Breath of the Wild trailer footage combined with the song Sins of the Father and the resulting snowclones, some fans have strongly associated Breath of the Wild with The Phantom Pain.
  From LINK Two Phantoms Were Born
  He played us like a damn Ocarina!
  Punished Link, A Hero Without A Kingdom
  "You're a legend (of Zelda) in the eyes of those who live on the Hyrule Field, so you'll have to handle this quest yourself. That's how Groose would want it. Gerudo Valley is a big place. I expect you'll become quite familiar with that tablet as you find the next dungeon. How and where you explore... well that's up to you. Now go! Let the legend (of Zelda) come back to life!" ... "Did you get all of that?" (No/Yes)
  • The Legend of Zelda: (Other Franchise)^ExplanationDue to the vast environments, weapons, and situations in the game, some users on Miiverse have taken to posting screencaps of their games with these sorts of captions; such as Link dying in soldier armor and calling it "The Legend of Zelda: Dark Souls", Link in a shrine with "The Legend of Zelda: Portal", or recipes with "The Legend of Zelda: Cooking Mama".
  • Windows XP^ExplanationThe game's minimalistic piano soundtrack has been compared to many sound effects from Windows XP, and its many grassy fields have drawn comparisons to XP's default wallpaper, Bliss
  • Some people seem to haven become fixated with Zelda's eyebrows in this game. Some because they think they look good, some because they think they don't.
  • Zelda crying in Link's arms◊. By far, the most talked-about moment in the entire Switch Presentation trailer. The moment it appeared, it became instantly iconic and social media EXPLODED with countless gifs, fanart, and even videos comparing the scene in different languages.
  • Due to a magazine cover by game informer, jokes about Zelda being pregnant have begun to surface.
  • It's time... to scrub all the floors in Hyrule! ^ExplanationOne of the weapons obtainable in the game is a wooden mop. Combine that with the phrase from the Zelda CDi games, and you get this meme.
  • Link's Trademark Favorite Food being apples. ^ExplanationThe first food item shown off were apples. Fans instantly began depicting Link as apple obsessed
  • "Link is hot". ^ExplanationThe line comes from an interview where Nintendo of America's president Reggie Fils-Aime was questioned about how female gamers are drawn to the game due to Link being a Mr. Fanservice. Reggie ended up replying with the quote
  • Lynels' reputation. ^ExplanationPeople really hate them for being Demonic Spiders and common.
  • ZA WARUDO!!! ^ExplanationOnce you obtain and upgrade Stasis, you can temporarily freeze your enemies in time to take them out quicker. Fans caught on with this and YouTube videos will often will have Dio's Catchphrase in the title.
  • Related to the stasis mechanic, the ability to build up kinetic energy in objects and then use them as an improvised vehicle has been compared to Mercenary Tao.
  • The pioneers used to ride these babies for miles!!!^Explanation By (ab)using stasis, it's possible for Link to travel long distances quickly by using it on a rock and then climbing on the side of it, which many people compared to the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Pizza Delivery", SpongeBob can inexplicably use rocks to travel
  • If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best! ^ExplanationThe Master Sword at literally any given point of time. If you use it too much (even in Hyrule Castle when it's in its uninhibited form), it will run out of energy and give you a very long cool-down time before you can use it again. In addition, you have to have at least thirteen heart containers before you'll even be able to retrieve it. Some people interpret it as Fi testing him out of spite because Link ditched her for the last century.
  • Shark husbando/fish husband. ^ExplanationPrince Sidon grew really popular among both the furry and non-furry fandom, with going head over heels for him. Even the guys.
    • I'd fuck that fish. ^ExplanationThe more explicit love for Sidon by fans.
    • Fish bro. ^ExplanationFrom pretty much everyone else.
  • "That fucking robo-[elephant/camel]." ^ExplanationThe two most difficult dungeons in the game (by popular opinion) are Vah Ruta and Vah Naboris. Ruta is likely because it's likely the first dungeon the player would experience in this format and the "Divine Beast Controls" on the map are easy to miss. On the other hand, Naboris is just difficult overall. While the other three dungeons had 1, 3, and 2 configurations you can arrange the map into, Naboris has twelve.
  • The Puzzle-Skip Shrine ^ExplanationThe Myahm Agana Shrine is frustrating if done as intended, so a lot of people either turn it over and use the flat side, or... whatever this is.
  • "I couldn't find the second ball, so I had to improvise." ^ExplanationPrimarially originating from the Breath of the Wild Reddit, a common post often involving the Vah Naboris dungeon is that people not finding the second electric sphere needed for a puzzle and get around it by chaining an electrical current through metal weapons to the second 'socket' to open the gate. Althrough creative at first, the sheer number of people who post this to the Reddit, using this exact phrase in their header, has caused it to go from interesting to downright grating for many. It's gotten to the point of outright parody.
  • Killing Yiga Clan members in ridiculous ways. ^ExplanationEver since a Switch update allowed users to share videos of Switch gameplay, it's become common for Breath of the Wild players to confront disguised members of the Yiga Clan, only to kill them immediately after the conversation is over in increasingly absurd ways. Tricks include dropping boxes on them or hurling a weapon at them.
  • Divine Beast Vah Room ^ExplanationA nickname for the motorbike (Master Cycle Zero) from the Champion's Ballad DLC, after the onomatopoeia of an engine revving up.
  • "It runs on apples!" / Apple engine. ^ExplanationThe motorbike from the Champion's Ballad DLC requires fuel use. Fuel which is basically anything you have clogging up your inventory, including apples. The sheer absurdity of this quickly became memetic.
  • "Yahaha! You found me!" ^ExplanationA line spoken by Koroks when you discover their hiding places. Due to the sheer amount of Koroks you need to find, and the fact that the line pops up every time you find one, it became infamous as a result.
  • "Irule". ^ExplanationThe Latin American Spanish dub translates Hyrule as "Irule", pronounced "eh-ru-le".
  • Press A to Mount ^ExplanationA screenshot from the "Silent Princess" memory of Zelda bent over in front of Link with the A button cue to mount horses photoshopped in, often used in the context of jokes regarding instant turn-ons that are far from sensual in nature (ex: "When she has Smash Bros", etc.).
  • Hylian Deadpools. ^ExplanationBecause of their similar red and black outfits and goofy behavior, the Yiga clan has often drawn comparisons to Deadpool from Marvel comics.
  • Putting the bookshelves in Hyrule Castle in weird and/or difficult to reach places, like in front of Link's house or on Akkala Tower.
  • The Elder Pots have returned. ^ExplanationThe guardians are based on Jomon pottery, which is one of the most ancient types of pottery in the world - it's actually pointed out in-game by an NPC that they look like upside-down pots. So obviously fans started joking that the Elder pots came to take revenge from Link for breaking them in all the previous games.
    • It's bigger... It's badder... Ladies and gentlemen, it's TOO MUCH FOR MR. LINKREDIBLE! ^ExplanationThe Guardians bear some strong resemblance to the various Omnidroid models (Cyber Cyclops, segmented legs with claws) from the much-beloved Pixar superhero franchise, and are also capable of kicking Link's ass just as easily, much like the Omnidroids V8, V9 and V10.
  • This game's Game Over screen and the accompanying jingle are beginning to become synonymous with Dark Souls' infamous "YOU DIED" screen because of how often it appears, sometimes with the two being used interchangeably.
  • Due to The Stolen Heirloom sidequest having a Fade to Black as Impa asks Link to guard Paya for the day, followed by Paya thanking Link in her bedroom at night, some players interpreted this as a Sexy Discretion Shot and turned "Sleep with Paya" into an actual speedrun objective. It even got the nickname "Get Laid%".
  • Playing Devil May Cry.^ExplanationSome Breath of the Wild players will go out of their way to perform outrageous stunts that contrast greatly with the game's seemingly minimalistic combat system, leading to comparisons with Stylish Action games like Devil May Cry and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
  • "It is my pleasure..." ^ExplanationMipha says this every time Mipha's Grace is used, much to the annoyance of some fans. Often, it's used as a Phrase Catcher for any One-Hit KO a player suffers, just to emphasize how powerful a certain enemy/boss is.
  • Flowerblight Ganon ^ExplanationA nickname for the infamous flower lady Magda, who gets really angry if Link steps on her flowers (and eventually attacks him off-screen), which surround a shrine in a small maze-like fashion.
  • Recently, it has become popular to edit the intro to the Guardians' theme over sped-up videos of people or animals running towards the camera.
  • "Am I the only dumbass who thought Vah Naboris was an elephant?"^ExplanationOriginates from this Reddit post where the poster initially mistook the camel Divine Beast for an elephant, despite Vah Naboris' camel inspiration being pretty obvious, only realizing their mistake after seeing the actual elephant Divine Beast Vah Ruta. Scores of parody posts quickly followed that substituted various other characters for Vah Naboris, even if they look nothing like elephants, and the joke soon spread into other subreddits.
  • Link's Awakening◊.^ExplanationThis was the game where the interpretation of Link as nonbinary really went into overdrive thanks to being able to have him crossdress as a Gerudo. Combined with the Switch remake of the series' 4th installment releasing in 2019, some people made the obvious pun on the title.[[/labelnote]
• Moe:
  • Zelda when she shows her more Adorkable side, especially When She Smiles. Plus, look at those adorably big eyes!.
  • Purah is this Played for Laughs since she's actually incredibly old but still lovable nonetheless.
  • Mipha can be considered this. Even more so with Baby Sidon.
  • Paya. Her Adorkable nature made her loved by many.
  • The Koroks in general. Their incredibly sweet and playful nature only makes them more even more cute. Particularly Oaki, a very excitable baby Korok that Link helps guide to a shrine, and Pepp, a Korok who's always sleepy and made a bed for Link to sleep in for free just because he loves him and wants to help him win.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The music that plays whenever the dragons are nearby.
  • The triumphant chord that plays when you deflect a Guardian's laser blast.
  • The badass or gentle voiceclip whenever one of the Champion's abilities recharges.
  • The jaunty music and sizzling sound that plays whenever Link throws ingredients into a cooking pot.
  • The jingle when you clear an enemy camp with an enemy treasure chest (can only be heard once), or a floor in Trial of the Sword.
  • The chime that plays when the Ancient Shrines, Sheikah Towers and towns has been discovered.
  • Kass's iconic accordion tune that means a new quest for the player along with a riddle. Also counts as Awesome Music, especially after the 1:24 mark when it starts including the original Legend of Zelda theme.
  • The sound of a fully-powered Master Sword cutting a foe. The powerful-sounding magical slam sound lets you know whatever you struck was feeling the full force of Fi's wrath.
  • Any of the voice clips accompanying a champion ability recharging. Either you just got thrown lifeline on your side, or you just got the ability to open a can of whoopass on whatever's giving you hell:
    Revali: Revali's Gale is now ready.
    Urbosa: Urbosa's Fury is ready!
    Daruk: Daruk's Protection is now ready to roll!
    Mipha: Mipha's Grace is ready.
  • The voice clip that accompanies Mipha's Grace's activation, and thus you being spared from the Game Over screen at the last minute:

    Mipha: It is my pleasure...

• Narm Charm: The Blood Moon has a name that sounds like something out of a bad creepypasta, as the term is only rarely used to refer to a total lunar eclipse in real life otherwise, but trust us — when it rises, you better be very afraid.
• Never Live It Down:
  • If you ever find a conversation about Teba, the first and likely only thing people will bring up is that he says "Dammit!" in a Zelda game. Which is pretty impressive considering that the way that bit of dialogue is presented (you can only see it after you and Teba subdue Vah Medoh but before beating Windblight Ganon) means that few players are likely to come across that scenario on their own.
  • Fans who dislike Zelda's characterization in this game (usually in Ship-to-Ship Combat with Mipha) always cite Recovered Memory #5, in which she verbally lashes out at Link, as irrefutable proof of her being a rude jerk. This ignores the context of the flashback and how it fits into Zelda's overall character arc (most importantly, how she grows out of her resentment toward Link).
  • Fans often depicts Zelda as a Lethal Chef, making meals so terrible that Link himself is horrified of eating them (and he couldn't say no to her offer). This characteristic is mostly based around Recovery Memory #9, where she discovers a Hot-Footed Frog and tries to make Link eat it raw without cooking it into an elixir like you would normally do. While she does try to get closer to Link by making him food according to her diary, nothing indicates that she's a terrible cook. The trait eventually cements itself with the fandom when Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity features a cutscene where Zelda is happily cooking a meal with a Monster Extract, and Link is seen taking a step back from the pot along with the other knights.
  • King Rhoam gets hit pretty hard with this. Most fans' opinions of him focus largely or solely on his Fantasy-Forbidding Father tendencies and his unnecessarily-strict parenting of Zelda, while ignoring his behavior on the Great Plateau, his secret journal inside Hyrule Castle, in which he confesses that he was too hard on his daughter, or his final words to Link being a desperate plea for him to save her at any cost. It even approaches Ron the Death Eater territory in certain circles, as some fans pin the blame for the Calamity entirely on him and argue that his death was somehow a well-deserved punishment just for being a strict parent.
• Older Than They Think:
  • This was not the first Zelda game to feature voice acting; that would be all three of the CD-i Zelda games, but fans and Nintendo alike would much rather have you forget they existed. However, it's not the first time in the canon series either, since the Japanese version of Four Swords Adventures also had a full party game mode where Tetra and her pirate crew were fully voiced.
  • The more open-ended nature of the game was first seen in the first game in the series. Aonuma has also stated that they have continually tried to recreate the seamless open-ended nature of the first game throughout the years, and that it was with the Wii U that they finally had the power to do so.
  • The claim that Breath of the Wild is Nintendo's first open-world game, in a modern sense. However, since Monolith Soft is wholly owned by Nintendo and even helped with the development of Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, Nintendo's first modern open world game would be Xenoblade Chronicles X for the Wii U.
  • Having a massive overworld that's limited less by what items the player has collected and more by the sheer strength of enemies was present in the original but more prevalent in Zelda II. In particular, that game didn't have any secondary weapon items like bombs or boomerangs, and also didn't have a special item needed to beat a dungeon's boss — much like Breath of the Wild.
  • The game having different endings depending on your completion rate was done in the The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games. To get the Golden Ending, you needed to complete one of the games and then link it to the second game. Story events also changed depending on which game you played first. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening also had a secret scene of Marin incarnating as an angel/seagull added to the ending if you didn't die at all. Also in Majora's Mask, you get a longer, happier ending if you complete all the sidequests.
  • Link being chased by Ganon's servants (in this case, the Yiga Clan) was originally used in Zelda II. In that game, revenge for the Dark Beast's defeat is the reason there are monsters in the overworld in the first place. In this game, the Yiga will become even more aggressive in pursuing Link after he defeats their leader Master Kohga. And just like the Yiga Clan, some servants of Ganon would disguise themself as mere villagers and attack you after talking.
  • Taking enemies' equipment and using it against them was originally done in The Wind Waker, and storing them for later use started in Twilight Princess.
  • Breakable Weapons is hardly a new idea to the series, as seen by the Deku Sticks and Giant's Knife in Ocarina of Time and the Razor Sword in Majora's Mask. Breakable shields have been present since Ocarina of Time, but Skyward Sword gave shields durability bars.
  • NPCs having a routine instead of just standing around the same place was a major selling point of Majora's Mask. Since it ran on a three-day system, some NPCs would be in a completely different area depending on what day it was.
  • Skyward Sword also had a parry move that could prevent damage to the shield while opening up the enemy for a counter-attack. The same was true in regards to deflecting certain attacks with your shield by doing a properly timed shield block.
  • Also from Skyward Sword, the player keeping and even upgrading their wooden shield even when they get the stronger metal shield because metal shields were weak to electricity and could break. Breath of the Wild evolves this system with the player being struck by lightning if they had any metal on them. Wooden shields, just in Breath of the Wild, were also good for catching arrows.
  • Collecting certain material to upgrade your current gear was introduced in Skyward Sword. The same with collecting material to create portions with different effects and even upgrading them. In that game, however, you upgraded your items, not your armor.
  • Being able to place beacons on your map so you could mark important areas was also introduced in Skyward Sword. The same with having a sensor to find certain items.
  • Enemies having an HP bar was done in The Wind Waker, although you could only see it using a certain item, similar to how you can only see an enemy's HP number by wearing the Champion's vest.
  • A snowboarding mechanic was first seen as a minigame in Twilight Princess. In fact, internal data from Twilight Princess implies that the Shield Surfing idea was intended to be implemented in that game first.
  • The ability to start out of control fires originated in Four Swords Adventures. In fact, out-of-control fire was supposed to be in Link to the Past, but was dropped because of time constraints.
  • Using the environment to tell story elements, something that some of the more casual observers believe is inspired by Dark Souls, is actually something the Zelda series has always done, especially in its 3D installments. As a matter of fact, this story-telling technique is one of the biggest sources of Epileptic Trees, something the Zelda fan-base is infamously fixated with. For their part, the developers of Dark Souls responded that they learned much of what they know◊ from "Nintendo-sensei", so the claim that Zelda copied them doesn't hold much water.
  • This isn't the first time Link is seen without his iconic hat. A hatless Link appeared in the intro of The Minish Cap. Also, in your second playthrough of The Wind Waker, Link would be in his casual clothes throughout the entire game.
  • The game taking place in a somewhat post-apocalyptic Hyrule. The Wind Waker did the same thing with the Great Flood. It was that game's Wham Episode, while in Breath of the Wild it's part of the premise of the story, so casual and non-fans can easily be unaware of it. In fact, the Hyrule that appears in the original Legend of Zelda is essentially post-apocalyptic, having been ruined by years of Ganon's unrelenting control and his rampaging monstrous hordes. Ocarina of Time also had a somewhat post-apocalyptic Hyrule setting since the second half of the game takes place seven years into Ganondorf's rule over Hyrule.
  • Link failing to stop Ganon and the world becoming a monument to his failure was the major plot point of the second half of Ocarina of Time.
  • This isn't the first time that Link gets to wear women's clothing.
  • Needing a certain number of Heart Containers before you're allowed to obtain the Master Sword was a concept used in the very first Zelda game, where you also needed a lot of hearts to acquire better swords.
  • Link being an experienced warrior from the beginning instead of a kid or a farm boy is similar to Skyward Sword where Link was training to be a knight and graduated to the next class when the events of the game started, and Hyrule Warriors where he's in Hyrule's army at the start and was quickly promoted to general.
  • This isn't the first Zelda game to feature a mindless, raging Ganon. In the linked version of the The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games, Twinrova attempted to sacrifice Zelda in an attempt to resurrect Ganon, but when the ritual was interrupted, they were forced to sacrifice themselves instead, causing Ganon to be resurrected as a mindless beast rather than the intelligent Sorcerous Overlord he usually is.
  • This game's Link isn't the first to sport a Sailor's Ponytail; the manga adaption of Ocarina of Time gave Adult Link one as well. Also, many fan artist gave him one too back in the day, making this an Ascended Fanon of sorts.
  • The heavy use of Science Fantasy compared to most previous games except Skyward Sword isn't just Later-Installment Weirdness. Miyamoto and company had planned on having such a setting for the very first game, which would have involved Time Travel between a medieval fantasy past and a high-tech future; this was eventually deemed too complex for an 8-bit game. Even ignoring this What Could Have Been, futuristic technology has still been seen throughout the series, such as the laser-firing Beamos (comparable to the Guardians) and the Tron Lines of the Tower of the Gods (which has been adopted as aesthetics of the Sheikah technology in this game).
  • The backstory for the Sheikah says that they were banished from Hyrule 10,000 years ago out of fear of their advanced technology. The manga adaptation of Ocarina of Time also mentions a similar banishment of the tribe, said to be what inspired them to add the teardrop to their eye emblem.
  • The Blood Moon provides an in-universe explanation for Respawning Enemies, but this is not the first time the Zelda franchise provided such an explanation. In the cartoon series, Ganon's minions could not be permanently killed because, upon defeat, they would reappear in the Evil Jar.
  • Many fans find it strange that Light Arrows, rather than the traditional Master Sword, are used to finish off Dark Beast Ganon. However, it is easy to forget that there was no Master Sword in the original NES game, wherein Ganon's sole weakness was Silver Arrows (the precursor to Light Arrows). Even when A Link To The Past introduced the Master Sword, the Silver Arrows were still required to deliver the final blow to Ganon in that game. Essentially, Breath of the Wild is bringing back some Early-Installment Weirdness.
  • Teba's "Dammit!" is treated as shocking for a Zelda game, but other Nintendo games have used mild swearing in the past. This is most egregious with Fire Emblem, which started using mild language rather liberally in later installments. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption also had a Precision D Strike in its original Wii release that was altered for the Metroid Prime Trilogy version.
  • Remote Bombs first appeared in The Minish Cap, though there they were a secret item that served as an alternate option for the regular bombs.
  • Some fans tend to deify this iteration of Princess Zelda for being active, intelligent, capable, for subverting the Damsel in Distress trope by sealing Ganon away of her own volition, for helping Link fight Ganon, and even for wearing pants. These traits of hers have all been present to varying degrees in different games; she helped Link fight the Big Bad in Spirit Tracks, endured her imprisonment to contain or pacify a greater threat in both Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess, was a savvy and intelligent pirate captain who wore pants in The Wind Waker, going all the way back to her actions as Sheik in Ocarina of Time, which included aiding Link in his journey and taking steps to rescue others from danger while also remaining hidden from Ganondorf for seven years.
  • Much ado is made over an NPC who will try to talk you down if he finds you perched at the edge of a bridge, giving him the impression that Link has been Driven to Suicide. This is treated as a shockingly heavy subject matter as though it's never been touched on before. A similar, albeit wordless exchange was shown previously at the end of The Wind Waker, in which Link's own Exposition Fairy was intent on letting himself drown and Link and Tetra tried to convince him otherwise.
• One True Threesome: Given Link is a Launcher of a Thousand Ships in this game we have the following:
  • Link-Zelda-Mipha is by far the most popular, given the shipping war between the two women. The fact that the game's dialogue options allow the player to make Link show interest in both girls helps here, even if said options only affect the dialogues they appear in and don't affect the rest of the story at all.
  • Link-Zelda-Paya in the present day, something seemingly helped along by the close relationship Link, Zelda and Impa have in Age of Calamity. Sometimes Sidon is substituted in, or just plain added to the mix.

P-S

• Paranoia Fuel:
  • The Yiga Clan. They are a clan of ninjas and they are frighteningly efficient at it. Their MO is to disguise themselves as ordinary travelers and attempt to sell Link something or strike up a mundane conversation with him to lower his guard only to reveal their true selves and attack, not helped by the fact that they're some of the toughest enemies in the game. You see that random person passing you on the road? Are they an innocent traveler or a ninja assassin out to get you in disguise? A player's first encounter with the Yiga can come as a very unpleasant surprise, especially early in the game when Link is still fairly weak and doesn't have access to better weapons, leaving them looking over their shoulders whenever approaching another traveler on the road. It gets worse when Kohga is defeated, because now they'll strike anywhere and any time without warning. There is a way to tell disguised Yiga Clan members apart from normal NPCs, however: if an NPC you've already encountered is far away from their predetermined route or if you see an NPC where other NPCs don't usually travel, then there's a very good chance that they're a Yiga Clan member in disguise. By the time you're done playing, you'll never trust a traveling NPC again, even if it means skipping out on valuable supplies and items. Sometimes they don't even wait for Link to approach, calling to him from a distance before attacking, meaning that simply not talking to strangers won't save you. And if you think that defeating Master Kohga will end the Paranoia Fuel, you're oh so wrong, as this will only embolden the Yiga Clan to throw everything at you: Assassins, Footsoldiers, and even Blademasters. They will forgo stealth and just attack you upfront. And they can show up anywhere. As Master Kohga puts it:
    Master Kohga: Coward! I shall be remembered! The Yiga Clan will track you to the ends of Hyruuuule!
  • The player will run into Guardians that may seemingly be inactive and will not attack Link. However, there are also Guardians that at first glance appear inactive, but become active once Link is nearby. If the player sees a field full of Guardians, it can be a little unnerving not knowing which ones can attack at first glance and which ones are just inactive. It's bad enough when an immobile, legless one turns out to be active, but when a fully-legged decayed Stalker wakes up...And just the Guardians in general can make the player feel paranoid due to their insanely far targeting sight. The player could be walking into a new area, and then suddenly, out of nowhere... [laser sight beeping] Doop-dooda-dooda, doop-dooda-dooda... When fighting a Guardian in a battlefield littered with Guardian hulks, a player's worst nightmare is stumbling upon another active Guardian while moving around... or have one sneak up on your from a blind spot. Nothing causes you to panic in terror like TWO targeting lasers suddenly appearing on Link's body.
  • The Lizalfos in this game are based on chameleons. Like many fictional depictions of chameleons, they can blend into the environment and use this ability to ambush Link. On top of that in sand or snow based regions they bury themselves underground to be even less obvious than the above (as the "camouflage" is limited to one solid color roughly based on their surroundings) and leap out and attack Link if he unwittingly walks into their territory. Nothing is more terrifying than finding a treasure chest in a wide-open area, only to be suddenly swarmed by a group of Lizalfos.
  • Taluses camouflage themselves as completely ordinary piles of rocks throughout the overworld. While Igneo and Frost Taluses are fairly obvious even when dormant, regular Stone Taluses often aren't. If you're not very competent at fighting them, you'll probably start to distrust every pile of medium-sized rocks you come across.
  • Stal enemies can appear any time and anywhere as long as it's night and outdoors. Their fragility isn't helping when they suddenly show up while you're already fighting something else, even worse when these stal enemies spawn with high-end weapons.
• Player Punch:
  • Let's face it, no one is going to enjoy seeing Wolf Link lose all of his health. He follows you wherever you go, helps you hunt, and even fights enemies, just like a real dog.
  • Don't get your horses killed, you'll feel pretty lousy after. Especially if the horse is Epona, who can only be obtained by using the Smash Bros. Link amiibo; if she dies, then you'll have to start a new save to get her again. Fortunately, one of the Great Fairy Fountains is home to a Horse Fairy that can resurrect your fallen horses.
  • Finding the Ranch Ruins can be a punch in the gut for anyone who played Ocarina of Time. While they might not be the ruins of Lon Lon Ranch, they look similar enough and are located where Lon Lon Ranch could be. It's depressing to anyone who has fond memories of the place to find it razed to the ground with a Guardian stomping through it.
• Popular with Furries:
  • Kass (a humanoid bird) and Prince Sidon (a humanoid fish/shark) instantly grew popular with the furry fandom once they were shown in game. Both are popular for their good looks and likable personalities.^note The fact that Kass canonically has a wife and five daughters isn't even a deterrent to the fandom's attraction towards him. It helps that they're popular even with non-furries, especially Prince Sidon. The Lynels have also become quite popular in the furry fandom.
  • Then on the female side of things we have Mipha the Zora princess who is also very popular for her sweet demeanor and attractive design. Having a canonical crush on Link and being the older sister of the similarly popular Prince Sidon doesn't hurt either.
• Quicksand Box: In stark contrast to more recent entries in the franchise, which, while allowing for exploration, still keep a clear focus on what your next objective is and where to find it, this is the first game since the NES original that gives you no clear indication of what to do or where to go almost immediately from the very start. This only gets compounded after completing the fourth shrine, when nearly the entire kingdom of Hyrule is opened up. Players used to the modern Zelda formula will almost inevitably find themselves blindly stumbling around for hours in the early game as they come to grips with the vast array of new mechanics and the drastically larger world before finally settling in and getting on track.
• Realism-Induced Horror: The game has the premise of Calamity Ganon, an Eldritch Abomination incarnation of the series' Big Bad, using an army of possessed Starfish Robots to destroy Hyrule's civilization a century before the beginning of the game. But one optional encounter with a character named Brigo managed to unnerve players because of the subtle and realistic Fridge Horror it involves. If you stand on the ledge of the bridge he patrols near the Great Plateau, he'll start Talking Down the Suicidal, assuming that you plan to drown yourself in the river below. The way he brings this up implies that this is a fairly regular task he carries out. While the main After the End premise of the game is pretty fantastical, the implication that people living in such a setting would pass the Despair Event Horizon and try to kill themselves unnerved a lot of players.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: A significant number of fans have warmed up to Fi after her bit part in this game. Instead of being a Captain Obvious Exposition Fairy, she saves Link by telling Zelda something she wouldn't have been able to figure out herself, making her role in the game having a major impact on the plot. Kind of commendable if we keep in mind she's never called by name, is only mentioned in a couple of cut scenes referred to as "the voice/spirit inside the sword that seals the darkness", she only has a couple of seconds of screen time, and the only thing we see or hear of her is the Master Sword glowing purple and her emitting her characteristic chime from Skyward Sword. Plus, this establishes that she is not a One-Shot Character as the Master Sword's spirit.
• Ron the Death Eater: King Rhoam got this from some segments of the fanbase for his overly strict and harsh, borderline abusive treatment of Zelda before the Calamity, refusing to let her pursue any interests or other methods of helping other than what he believed would unlock her sealing abilities. Fanfics often depict him as a cruel, borderline evil *Abusive Parent towards Zelda who cares nothing for her and treats her like complete garbage, with some going as far as to turn him into an outright tyrant who can rival Ganondorf in terms of cruelty and malice. While he was very harsh, people tend to ignore the fact that he was overall shown to be a dutiful and caring king, only treated Zelda as hard as he did because her unlocking her Sealing magic was vital to adverting the Calamity, the king knew that thousands of innocent lives were at stake if she did not unlock her powers and he knew no other options that might unlock her abilities. The only one who actually knew how to help her unlock them, Zelda's mother, had passed away before she could train Zelda. Additionally, he is shown by his diary to have regretted his actions and actually intended to apologize and reconcile with Zelda on the day of the Calamity, which he sadly did not get a chance to do before he died. He still regrets his actions over a century later and begs Link to save his daughter, showing how much he loves her despite everything.
• Sacred Cow: Breath of the Wild was fast-tracked to this status, joining Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past as one of the few Zelda games to be considered an absolute pinnacle of gaming and winning many "best of 2017" awards. As such, many fans consider the game to be immune to criticism (despite the existence of such criticisms for all three games).
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
  • Thanks to complaints over the lack of dual audio options, Nintendo eventually released a multi-language option for free that enables players to choose any combination out of the game's 9 different dubs (including Japanese) and 10 languages for menus and subtitles. (Wii U players could download a separate but free Voice Pack from the eShop to use this option, but only if it was done before it shut down in March 2023).
  • Blessing shrines and combat trials are generally disliked due to being the same. Of the sixteen shrines added in "The Champions' Ballad" DLC, none are blessing shrines and only one is a combat trial, and the latter shakes things up by being much larger and more involved than any other combat trial, as well as playing completely differently due to the unique conditions you're under at the time. The rest are unique puzzle shrines.
  • In the vanilla game, once a Divine Beast has been appeased, you can never see that Blight again in that save file, which makes 100% Completion of the Hyrule Compendium more difficult than it should be. With "The Champions' Ballad" DLC, you have the opportunity to have a rematch with each one as a "Phantom Ganon", giving you more opportunities to take a picture for the compendium.
• Salvaged Story: Many players were let down by the fact that the Champions' backstories had so little attention given to them. "The Champions' Ballad" DLC is designed to give the Champions A Day in the Limelight.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Since there's so much to do in the game, there are a lot of these:
  • The way dungeons are handled in Breath of the Wild is a great departure from vast titles, which can be annoying:
    • While getting the Dungeon Map is required to actually start the dungeon, unlike other Zelda games, there is no Compass. For completionist players who want to hunt down every chest before fighting bosses, not having a Compass to display them on the map makes each Divine Beast much more tedious to complete than simply finding all of the terminals. Also, if you happen to miss a given chest, each Divine Beast is permanently blocked off after you clear it, with no way of getting those items back.
    • The dungeon map itself can be rather unintuitive in larger dungeons, especially Hyrule Castle. With only a small 3D model of the dungeon to go on (compared to the floor-by-floor maps of previous Zelda games), it's difficult to find Link's position on the map because the eye is naturally drawn to the bright orange orbs representing terminals, and the Divine Beasts' controls can also require a bit of trial and error to understand (the standout example being Vah Naboris).
  • Saving is limited to only one slot. If you want to start a new game or let friends or family members play their own games, you'll have to save over the old file or use a different account (Switch) or profile (Wii U).
  • Rain. You can't climb during it, and climbing is something you will be doing a lot. Since it always tends to last an long time when it does show, this provides a lot of headaches as you end up sitting in place for 10 minutes at a time. You also can't produce any fire during it, and the few benefits of rain—easier stealth, amped electrical attacks, certain bugs or enemies appearing—can be rather situational. Thunderstorms are even worse, since you'll get struck by lightning if you have anything metal equipped, and if you don't have any wooden equipment on-hand to fight enemies, you need to be very careful as you constantly un-equip and re-equip your metal gear. Visibility suffers a lot too during rain, which nearly entirely ruins exploration, and you'll need to find a cave if you want to light a fire. And if you want to cook you'll have to travel to one of the very few cooking pans that are located in a rainless area of the map.
  • The Great Fairies. Unlike in previous games, where a visit might give you a neat magic, bomb, wallet, or defense upgrade, the fairies in this game upgrade your clothing, via strengthening its defense. The thing is that there's multiple levels of upgrades for each piece of clothing, and at first you'll likely only get to upgrade one level, which gives an average boost of 3 defense - it'll help, but all things considered, it still won't make a major difference against the tougher enemies. Moreover, to get the following upgrade levels, you not only have to unlock the other Great Fairies - for progressively-increasing Rupee costs; you'll quickly be wanting to sell off your ores - but also having higher, and rarer numbers of certain items needed. For some, this results in a certain level of unnecessary tedium, and they may only bother with upgrading their main combat gear, switching frequently when necessary.
  • Weapons have finite durability and most will break after only a few minutes of sustained use, so you're constantly switching them out as they do. While this was done intentionally to encourage using different weapons and trying new ones, the system can get annoying (mostly when you have to discard weapons to open chests). Hestu and the Master Sword can alleviate this somewhat, but both come with problems^note Hestu can expand inventory slot count, but you have to hunt down Korok seeds to give him, and he needs more for every successive upgrade—plus, he moves around. The Master Sword is technically unbreakable, but will go into a 10-minute cooldown to "recharge" each time you deplete its durability. You also have to beat at least 40 shrines to get it, assuming you spend every orb you get on Heart Containers.. As a result, shield surfing can go from fun to detrimental when one considers it puts a constant drain on a tool you'll want for combat. For some players, the weapon degradation causes a great deal of Too Awesome to Use, where players pick up rare weapons but fear actually using them in case they need them later, and end up having inventories clogged up with weapons for "just in case" or just straight-up avoiding battles altogether.
  • The weapon bonuses. Once enemies start to level up, weapons also have the potential to gain a new skill. Unfortunately, the variety is usually - though not always - easily replicable through other means, not to mention that they also appear in enemy hands, making certain enemies much harder.
  • The Blood Moon. While fairly inoffensive, there's no way to control its appearances, which sucks when you're trying to activate a shrine with it. And, while rare, it's been well-documented that it can occur right after killing a tough enemy, forcing you to take it out all over again. Even so, it was worse before the patch: the mechanic was pretty glitchy, which made the Blood Moon sometimes appear several times in quick succession and/or at times when it's not supposed to. One of the most infamous cases was one unlucky player having Calamity Ganon respawn on him because of a Blood Moon.^note The Blood Moon is supposed to occur at 12 AM at random nights, but it was broken initially, only fixed in a later patch — in the footage shown, the event happened at 7:05 AM.
  • Sprinting drains stamina at about the same rate as in Skyward Sword, which is to say, very quickly. Although you can upgrade your stamina, it won't make much dent in your depletion until you have at least a full extra wheel, which early on is most likely to come from meals (as it takes 20 Spirit Orbs to upgrade your stamina to an extra wheel). Worse still, while there is an exploit that lets you sprint without using stamina, it's not exactly easy on the hands. ^note It's been suggested that a possible solution to this is to reduce the run speed in exchange for making it not linked to stamina at all (thereby making stamina only relevant for climbing, gliding, swimming and attacks, which are either slow-draining or infrequent), since the rate at which it is expended means you watch a little green circle drain and refill instead of the environments when traveling.
  • The "Apparatus" shrines require the use of motion controls to manipulate some object such as a platform, hammer or marble maze. This is (most of the time) not so bad when using the Wiimote-like Joy-Cons on the Switch, but it's very awkward in handheld mode or Off-TV mode on the Wii U, where you often have to rotate and twist the gamepad in such awkward ways that you cannot see the screen or comfortably press the buttons. Made worse with the Switch Lite, since the game assumes you have detachable Joycons. As a result, some players have resorted to simply spinning in a circle until the ball inevitably goes where it's supposed to.
  • Link always has to dress up like a Gerudo anytime he wants to enter the Gerudo Town. While the plot point makes sense, and is even found incredibly amusing at first, there are players who felt that after Link has successfully saved the town, he should have been given special permission to enter the city as a male (similar to how Link earned the Gerudo License in Ocarina of Time after proving himself). Instead, even if Link just wants to visit the Jewelry Shop or the best arrow shop in the game, he always need to pause, enter his gear, and find the one set of armor (among many) that will allow him entry into the town. It doesn't help that the Gerudo outfit not only provides flimsy defense, it cannot be upgraded, making it next-to-useless compared to other gimmicky armor sets (such as the Flamebreaker armor, which is mandatory only in Death Mountain, but can be upgraded and thus can still be used for general exploring if you haven't found/upgraded better armors). This problem was thankfully rectified in the next game, where he is welcome to visit undisguised after saving the Gerudo Desert from the Sand Shroud.
  • The desert around Gerudo Town doesn't fare much better. As the only area in the game that is prone to both extreme temperatures, if you're exploring it, be prepared to switch between your heat-resistant and cold-resistant clothes constantly if you don't want your health slowly whittling down to nothing (or, potentially, wear one of each). If that weren't enough, despite how vast the desert is, you cannot ride your horse or the Master Cycle Zero across it, with Sand Seals being your sole method of transport. Even then, Sand Seals are nowhere near as fast as your typical mounts, are difficult to capture and steer, and will run off if you leave them alone for a few seconds.
  • The lack of a cookbook. Considering how cooking your own items is so beneficial, you'd think that the game would allow the player to save recipes for already cooked meals, but there's no such feature. The sequel adds a recipe-checker function to the ingredients to address this. Moreover, players have to open the menu, hit the option to have Link hold items, fill his arms with ingredients one by one, then exit the menu and dump them in the cooking pot to let them cook, before finally revealing the product and its effects. The game at least lets you skip the animation of the concoction cooking, but the process is still time-consuming, even if you're just dumping five of the same ingredient into the pan and not taking the time to combine different ones. Finally, you can only cook one thing at a time; even if you have the stock to cook the exact same dish multiple times, you need to manually pick the ingredients each time. On occasions where you need to restock your food and potion supply, it can take several minutes of menu navigation.
  • Crossing any body of water can be relatively annoying, especially in the early game when the player has low stamina. Swimming is painfully slow and uses stamina quickly, so the player must either glide across water using the paraglider, raft across (which requires a specific item that isn't always easy to find), or jump across frozen blocks using Cryonis.
  • The flurry system. The issue isn't that the flurry system is bad; it's very powerful and can easily break many fights, and usually once you get the hang of it, its not too hard to figure out when you should attempt to use it. The issue is that the game is very inconsistent for what qualifies as triggering a flurry; many enemies have attacks that either cannot be flurried into, or the game doesn't register it for some reason. Lynels for example have attacks that inconsistently activate.
  • If you have more than 50 arrows of a given type, including bog standard regular arrows, a "flag" is set that causes in-game merchants to stop restocking them.^note You can still buy more arrows if they're already stocked; the merchants just won't restock while this flag is set. Given that 50 regular arrows can be used up very quickly in tougher dungeons, shrines which require their use, and/or simply while hunting, it can be quite a shock to find yourself unable to replenish with zero hint in-game as to why. To get them to restock, you need to drop below 50 arrows and allow midnight to pass, which removes the "flag" and allows merchants to restock. While a case can be made that the rarity of speciality arrows justifies this, it's odd for this mechanic to apply to standard arrows.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Royal Guard weapons, which are intentional and acknowledged by the game itself. They have incredibly high power only surpassed by the Savage Lynel weapons, have cool designs (which are dark Palette Swaps of the Royal Weapons), and are found exclusively inside Hyrule Castle. But when their descriptions say that they have low durability, they aren't kidding. They break as easily as the Spiked Boko Weapons, and Durability Up bonuses won't help much. It's a big letdown for something that's supposedly above the Royal Weapons.
    • When battling Lynels, the Royal Guard's Claymore with a full power attack bonus can become a Cheese Strategy because mounting does not use durability. Good luck finding one, though.
  • As far as weapon bonuses go, the Long Throw bonus is by far the most useless one. There's practically no reason as to why one would want to throw a melee weapon, as the Critical Hit is also triggered on the moment the weapon breaks. What is worse is that Boomerangs do not carry this bonus, despite being the one weapon that would actually benefit from it. Once Level Scaling starts making the most desirable weapons carry bonuses, Long Throw weapons might as well be identical to their base forms with no bonus. It also does not help that Long Throw is considered a higher tier bonus than Critical Hit, meaning the latter virtually disappears from the game while the former starts appearing everywhere.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: There's a lot of potential for players to challenge themselves however they wish.
  • Going through the game without any armour robs you of vital protection.
  • You can choose to disable the Champions' Gifts.
  • It's entirely possible to challenge Ganon immediately after leaving the Great Plateau. This is a lot harder than it already sounds, because not only are you doing what's effectively a Minimalist Run, but trying to challenge Ganon immediately after the tutorial area means a surprise Boss Bonanza against ALL four Blight Ganon bosses before you can actually fight Calamity Ganon himself, and all of the fights must be done in one session. On top of this, Link is effectively a One-Hit-Point Wonder with the lack of hearts and armor this early in the game, so a mistake at any point during the challenge means Game Over. A successful run will require a ton of planning, resources, and good reflexes. …Good luck!
  • Complete the Hyrule Compendium without purchasing a photo from Symin.
  • If you want a really hard but fun challenge: Throw a cucco into Death Mountain. What makes this so hard is that you have to travel half the map carrying a cucco, avoiding enemies and bypassing obstacles. This can take hours. Real-world ones.
  • Try getting through the game without using the Paraglider. You'll have to get creative with Vah Medoh.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: This game has a much steeper difficulty curve than its predecessors do. There are enemies that can one-shot you even in the first area, and the puzzles require more a lot more spatial and logical awareness.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: As per use in the series. However, Breath of the Wild is somewhat unique in how the possible ships are handled, which has intensified the shipping warfare quite a bit. For starters, the fact that Link's The Stoic characterization in this game, coupled with his traditional Heroic Mime portrayal, prevents him from showing where he stands, one way or another, meaning that the room for interpretation is wide open.
  • By far, the biggest one is LinkXZelda VS. LinkXMipha, which is probably the biggest shipping rivalry a Zelda game has ever had regarding possible pairings from the same game. Part of the reason is that, unlike earlier games, this one explicitly confirms both girls are in love with Link. To further elaborate:
    • For Zelda, she's more subtle showing her feelings, more in line with her previous incarnations as an Implied Love Interest. However, all possible doubts are put to rest with Kass telling Link after a side quest how his poetry mentor fell in love with Zelda while working at the castle, only to find out that she already had a Bodyguard Crush on Link, and he admitted his total defeat after seeing Link sacrificing his life to protect her during the Great Calamity. Supporters jump in due to Zelda's massive Character Development, which makes her the most sympathetic incarnation of the character yet, and the fact that she falls in love with Link little by little, thanks to the fact that they turned out to have quite a lot in common. And of course, Link and Zelda being the de facto ship of the entire franchise, with an inferred Reincarnation Romance in addition to serving plot purposes in this story as his sacrifice acted as the catalyst for Zelda's powers to awaken in the first place to protect him. As for detractors, they find her love for Link not as "pure" as Mipha's, who when we see her loved Link 100% unconditionally, while Zelda was incredibly rude to him when they first met. There's also vocal minority who doesn't like Zelda's character at all, since they find her too mopey and whiny (see Wangst). The fact that one of the most crucial pieces of information about their relationship, namely Zelda's diary, is quite hidden and thus a lot of players may miss it, doesn't help either.
    • With Mipha, she is far more direct, both through her bold Declaration of Protection and, above all, her intention of proposing to him, including crafting the Zora Armor, which is a traditional Zora betrothal gift. Supporters join her due to how tragic her story is, and the fact that she was one of the Zora Link was friends with since he was a kid, meaning she was close to him for far longer. Even her gift, Mipha's Grace, turns her devotion for him into a game mechanic, which has a very powerful effect. Bonus points in the Japanese and non-English versions, where she repeats her Declaration of Protection every time her power is activated. Detractors, however, don't find her as compelling as a character, since she's nowhere near as developed as Zelda is, and her interaction with Link in the entire game is reduced to only two short cutscenes leaving too much of this as their relationship being bluntly told about in a single dungeon storyline unlike how his relationship with Zelda was shown to develop throughout the game. Plus, they argue that her being dead renders the whole debate moot anyway. Not to mention, given that Zora live for a lot longer than Hylians do and Mipha is explicitly mentioned to have known Link when he was a child, the ship can take on some somewhat squicky overtones to some, as the lack of evidence that Link was aware of Mipha's feelings for him come off a bit like Wife Husbandry on Mipha's end, especially since she had special armor made for Link because she intended to give it to him as an engagement present, without the player getting any sense as to whether Link liked Mipha back or was even aware of her feelings. At least with Zelda he's shown several times in flashbacks to be extremely protective of the princess and a listening ear to her problems.
  • To a lesser extent than the other two there's LinkXPaya fans, who also joined the fray, due to Paya's feelings for Link combined with her Shrinking Violet tendencies, Adorkable personality, and how in her diary you learn that, if Link returns Zelda's feelings for him, she thinks they would be a good match for each other. Perhaps it that last part that makes the ship rivalry between Link/Zelda and Link/Paya less intense than with Link/Zelda and Link/Mipha.
  • Then we have LinkXPrinceSidon, which has become THE non-straight ship of the game, and probably the biggest in the franchise so far. He's gotten a massive fanbase thanks to his charming personality and "I believe in you" attitude towards Link, as well as being the most charismatic of all of Link's four companions during the main storyline. Although he still has some detractors, who argue his behavior is a bit over-the-top, making him hard to take seriously. There are also people who find him irritating when he interrupts you several times on your way to Zora's Domain for the first time, and are unable to shake that first impression. Plus he doesn't actually come with Link once you manage to subdue Vah Ruta, he just wishes him luck and then leaves the dungeon to him, and after you've completed Zora's Domain he basically serves no further purpose in the story.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The Snow Bowling, or "Snowling" mini-game; a player can easily spend hours working out how to get that perfect strike every time. In fact, as it's the only repeatable source of rupees in the game other than selling Shop Fodder, the game practically encourages you to do this, what with the massive costs of the items you'll actually want to spend rupees on.
• Signature Scene:
  • Right at the beginning of the game, the wide shot of Hyrule after Link gets out of the Chamber of Resurrection. The breathtaking landscape was a perfect representation of what's to come in the game, and leaves an image that players are unlikely to forget.
  • The crying scene from memory number 16, aptly named "Despair", based on the 12th photo in the Captured Memories quest line. It became instantly iconic when it first appeared in the Switch Launch trailer and spawned countless of renditions and fanarts, a trend that kept going after the game was released. Albeit the overall impact can vary a lot depending on when you see it in regards to the other memories (most people agree it's the most effective if you see it last, while seeing it early on may undermine it), the scene has become the most memorable cutscene in the game.
• Signature Song: While the main theme is usually cited as this for being representative of the game as a whole, people also like to characterize the dungeon music for Hyrule Castle as this thanks to its dramatic and complex orchestral combination of the traditional Hyrule Castle theme, the main series theme, Ganon's theme, and Zelda's Lullaby. It even has the melody of the Ballad of the Wind Fish playing as part of the score in the most breathtaking way possible. It's frequently deemed the best final dungeon music in any Zelda game.
• Special Effects Failure: Due to how much Link's outfit and weapons can be customized, shields float behind Link's back, rather than be attached to the diagonal strap of his tunic.
• Spiritual Licensee:
  • A hero who doesn't talk much is sent into the future to fight a shape-shifting evil. He often stops to help other people and is constantly attacked by giant monsters and assassins. The hero's greatest weapon, a sword forged with the purpose of defeating the shape-shifting evil, is also missing, and he must prove he is still worthy to wield it after all this time. Are we talking about Link or Samurai Jack?
  • With its colorful graphics and general story beats, this could be the closest we get to a Princess Mononoke game. Adding the optional clothing and mounts, it's very easy to recreate Prince Ashitaka's outfit and Yakul.
• Squick:
  • Drinking cooked and crushed up bugs as potions makes a return from Skyward Sword. Now, you make them by cooking up severed monster parts with them, such as Bokoblin teeth, or even Bokoblin Liver! The latter is extra creepy when you consider Bokoblins, and several other monsters are sentient beings.
  • In the "Special Delivery" sidequest, you're supposed to help a young Zora named Finley to find out who's been replying to her letters sent floating down the Zora river. In the end, Finley's correspondent is revealed to be an adult Hylian named Sasan, and the quest ends with with the two of them starting a romantic relationship. The squicky part comes from the fact that Finley looks like a child, and even though some dialogue of hers implies she's actually a teenager (as Zoras age differently and more slowly than humans), it's still rather unsettling to the childish-looking Finley together with an adult-looking human twice her size. Furthermore, the romantic aspect was largely inserted by the English localization, which added entire sentences stating that the two getting together is fine because Finley is older than Sasan despite looking like a child.
• Strangled by the Red String: Some fans find that the romance between Hudson and Rhondson to be coming out of nowhere, especially when they cleared the whole From the Ground Up side-quest in one go. After joining in Tarrey Town, Rhondson only talks about Hudson to complain how much she dislikes having to fix and clean Hudson's nasty shirts all the time, and how he gets so defensive when she brings up her problems with it. But immediately after the next person is recruited in, she talks on how sweet Hudson is, and dialogue is easily missable is you go straight to clearing the next mini-quest before speaking to her. The final factor the fans asked What Does She See in Him? is given when he follows in his boss's footsteps by making "we will continue the Bolson Company Theme Naming mandate in our children" as part of his wedding vows — she outright looks like she's considering cancelling the ceremony right there and then. Some have even complained that it seems like the only reason Rhondson ultimately married Hudson is because she's desperate and Hudson was available. However, talking to them both immediately before and after the wedding has her comment on how despite him being a bit unorthodox and a little simple, she's happy to be with Hudson.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The beginning of the track that plays in the trailer sounds a lot like "In the Bleak Midwinter."
  • There's a snippet of the "Field (Day)" track that sounds just like the login jingle from Windows XP.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing:
  • The inclusion of voice acting has caused a drift in the fanbase. Arguments over whether the English dub or Japanese dub are better have began. As soon as the first fully voiced trailer came out, fans began arguing over Zelda's crying cutscene. The Japanese version uses loud sobbing while the English version is far more subdued. Arguments have risen on whether the English version is poorly acted or simply realistic, against the Japanese version being either far more emotional or overacted. Also, which is more of a Tear Jerker, and which is overall better. The English dub is hotly debated in general, with factors affecting its quality such as the copious use of lesser-known American VA's,^note although most of the BotW voice actors are from Los Angeles, rather than being from the more limited pool of Washington voice actors that older Nintendo games used as well as Zelda and Mipha being voiced with Fake Brit accents rather than by actual British voice actresses such as with Xenoblade Chronicles 1.
  • The debate intensifies when you go to the communities in other languages that also received localized voice work^note namely Spanish, French, German, Italian and Russian regarding their dubs against these two. Spanish and French are particularly noteworthy, since they received two different language options for each one of them. Spanish had the usual Latin American Spanish dub (made for the first time for a Nintendo game in Mexico) and European Spanish dub (made as usual in Spain by Nintendo of Europe). The decision to include a Mexican Spanish dub was highly praised by Latin American fans (See Win Back the Crowd below), and although both dubs were overall well received by their respective target audiences^note The two voice actresses for Zelda, Jessica Ángeles in Latin America and Nerea Alfonso in Spain, were particularly beloved, the Subbing Versus Dubbing debate intensified even further in the sense that Spanish-speaking fans not only compared their voice tracks to the Japanese^note original and English^note most widely-known internationally, but both Spanish tracks to each other. Something that is actually very common in the Spanish-speaking world when it comes to dubs in general^note And as any native Spanish speaker aware of this situation would tell you, to say this rivalry is very rarely civilized would be an understatement.. French, meanwhile, received one dub for France and one for Canada... except that it just uses differently altered versions of the same European French voice track for both its Canadian and European options. Quite a few French-Canadian fans felt cheated, especially in light of Nintendo of Canada controversially importing European French versions of series such as Pokémon, Professor Layton and Yo-kai Watch rather than creating local translations; many of them just played with English voices, to the point that Patricia Summersett was invited as a guest to the Montreal Comiccon Fan Convention.^note Although her Francophone counterpart, Adeline Chetail, was invited to a convention in another city (G-Anime in Gatineau) where English literacy is less common.

T

• That One Attack:
  • Lightning attacks. There is a reason why the Zora fear electricity. When hit by anything lightning, Link will not only be stunned for a second, but automatically drop the equipment he is currently holding, forcing the player to either pull another weapon out or scramble to pick up the dropped equipment, leaving them open for additional attacks. Also, the Lynels love using such arrows. Thankfully, this applies to enemies as well, so carrying Lightning equipment can be a surprisingly good way of easily stealing enemies' weapons.
  • Laser blasts from Guardians. Unlike in previous Zelda games, getting hit by a laser in this game results in a ton of damage, around six hearts of damage at least in a game where you start with only three. They also come out fast and are very accurate. Fortunately, they take several seconds to fire and can be parried back, although if you mess up, you will either lose your shield or get blasted. The Guardian Turrets are much worse, however, as once they have their sights set on you, they will just continuously spam lasers at you for as long as you're still in range. Get ready to have to restart from your last save if you were trying to sneak up on one, get caught, and then get trapped on the environment.
  • The Yiga Blademasters inside the Yiga Clan Hideout have a really nasty ability that their brethren elsewhere don't have: Their melee attacks instantly kill Link should they connect, even if he has fairies and/or Mipha's Grace.
• That One Boss:
  • Thunderblight Ganon is tougher than Calamity Ganon due to it being difficult to time the Flurry Rush in the third phase of the fight, and if you miss the Flurry Rush and simply dodge, it won't do any good against his next few strikes, which are sometimes charged with electricity. To make matters worse, it breaks most of the patterns established with the other blights: it doesn't always need to do a Ball of Light Transformation to teleport, and will sometimes Flash Step instead; it has a shield that needs to be worn down to hurt it and renders it effectively immune to arrows (while all the other blights can effectively be stunlocked by shooting them in the eye); and when it is stunned, it usually only stays down for a swing or two, unlike the other blights. And of course, blocking its attacks in the second phase will stun YOU, giving it plenty of opportunity to finish you off with a flurry attack of its own.
  • The Illusory Realm rematch against Waterblight Ganon in "The Champion's Ballad" DLC. You get just 10 arrows for the whole fight, which is really troublesome when you eventually are limited entirely to ranged attacks in the second half. You'll either have to aim very carefully with your bow or make strategic use of Urbosa's Fury (and maybe Revali's Gale) in order to hit it. You also have the option of using Stasis on its ice blocks to launch them back at him if you run out of arrows... but at that point you're most likely low on durability and it might not do much to help.
• That One Component:
  • Star Fragments randomly drop from highly occasional shooting stars and can only be found at night, disappearing the morning following them landing. You'll need to track where one lands to have it for yourself, and they're required for a vast selection of powerful armor upgrades.
  • Dragon Parts are similar, and unlike Star Fragments, you'll need to collect at least one Scale from each dragon to unlock three shrines in the game. On the positive side, the three dragons—Dinraal, Naydra, and Farosh—have set schedules, appearing in certain places each day and night, unlike the completely random Star Fragments. But the negatives outweigh that one benefit: you can only collect one part from each dragon every day; you have to hit increasingly-small areas on the dragons to get particular parts (in order: Scales, Claws, Fangs, and Horns), and a single misfire will result in you having to wait another full-day cycle to try again; the dragons might not appear in their predetermined spots because they can follow multiple routes; and like Star Fragments, high-level armor upgrades require multiples of each part. And as the icing on the cake, Naydra can only be unlocked after freeing her during a challenging sidequest that involves freezing temperatures and firing arrows at globs of Malice goo from mid-air.
• That One Level:
  • Out of all the Divine Beasts, Vah Naboris is often considered the most difficult to navigate. It 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 at the end, you have Thunderblight Ganon to deal with.
  • Most of the towers that are farther away from the Great Plateau are harder to scale for one reason or another. Perhaps the one aversion to this is the Ridgeland Tower to the West. The west coast is harder than the east coast, but the average player may attempt to head for the tower as you can see it from the tower in the Plateau (that, and the fact that the player is given no notification that the west is harder other than the fact that they are pointed in the other direction in the main quest). When they get there, they'll find that the tower is located in the middle of a lake, surrounded by 200~ HP Lizalfos, Electric Wizzrobes, and a few swimming Lizalfos, long before you get some bomb arrows or a weapon good enough to combat any of those. Most players found this out the hard way, and were forced to come back later — though a skilled player can certainly climb it with patience and stealth, and snag a decent spear or two for their travels as a reward.
  • Central Tower qualifies for much the same reason as the Ridgeland Tower. It's actually closer to the Great Plateau than Ridgeland, which makes it another ideal target for players fresh off the Great Plateau. Problem is, the surrounding area is swarming with Guardian Stalkers, which will flat-out murder you if they catch you this early on. Even if you find a way to slip past them, you've then got a pair of Decayed Guardians which will constantly be trying to shoot you down as you make your way up the tower. You've got an extremely tight window to go from foothold to foothold and get behind cover. If you're so much as a fraction of a second too slow, you're dead.
  • Akkala Tower. First, it's at the top of a ruined citadel patrolled by flying Guardians and Bokoblin patrols. Then you get to the actual tower and find that the ruins surrounding the tower are crammed to the gills with Pools of Malice. Like other towers with Malice goo surrounding them, you have to find the Cursed Eye to clear it out. Except it only gets rid of the tiniest bit of the stuff, which uncovers a metal plank that you can use Magnesis on to bridge the gap from the top of the ruins to the Malice-covered ledge on the tower. And the beam is barely visible in the goo, which is a similar color to metal items when Magnesis is active. There are also several strong Bokoblins in the area, and seemingly arbitrary Pools of Malice in the ruins whose only purpose seems to be a minor inconvenience.
  • The closer you get to Death Mountain, the higher the temp gauge rises... and then suddenly Link bursts into flames in a spectacular aversion to Convection, Schmonvection. To stop this, you need to have Fireproof status, which is made possible in potions by Fireproof Lizards, which are, you guessed it, native to Death Mountain. There is a small patch where they can be farmed before the temperature becomes too high (the Maw of Death Mountain), but thanks to the non-linear structure of the game it's easy to miss it. You can buy pieces of the Flamebreaker armor set in Goron City (and can get one piece as part of a quest in the Southern Quarry before then), and/or buy three Fireproof Elixirs from a woman in the Foothill Stable at the bottom of the mountain. The alternative is to stuff healing items down your gob like there's no tomorrow or die. Add the fact that you'll have to contend with two Guardians that are patrolling the main path up the mountain, as well as Rock Octoroks, which can be a real nuisance, more than the Water and Plains ones (they hide under their rock and become immune to attacks once you get too close) until you figure out their strategy and this becomes a very aggravating and hot trip indeed. Fortunately, there are geothermal hot springs interspersed here and there which you can rest in if your health dips too low.
  • The trip to Zora's Domain. It is a long and winding stretch of road filled with Lizalfos, Moblins, and even a Wizzrobe. In addition, the area is under a constant rainfall due to Vah Ruta, meaning that you can't cheese the area by climbing up the cliffs. And as a few very upset players will tell you, you should not use your paraglider to save time unless you know exactly where you're going. The path is winding and disorienting, so straying from it will only lead to frustration. Oh yeah, and the Lizalfos? They're packing Shock Arrows, and between the rain and the amount of health and defense that you'll likely have at that point in the game, those things will be a One-Hit Kill. While you can sneak around them for the most part, you will get spotted a few times and your only choice when you do is to run like hell. Though if a player is more patient, they can instead get to the very top of a mountain the player is sure to encounter if trying to head to Zora's Domain from Kakariko or Hateno by heading in the direction of the spot marked on the map, and Paraglide straight there, but it requires a long Cryonis climb up a waterfall. It's even worse in Master Mode, which adds numerous Sky Octorok platforms near the bridges manned by Lizalfos.
  • The trip up Death Mountain to confront Vah Rudania. It is an Escort Mission where the player needs to guide Yunobo up the mountain to fire him at the beast to drive it further into the summit. However, the mountain is being constantly surveyed by Rudania's flying drones, and when one spots you, Rudania will start raining a lot of magma bombs at your current location. To make matters worse, this causes Yunobo to stop, shield himself, and cower in fear, which can end up triggering more drones. Nintendo has thrown the player a small bone in this challenge, though, since it's possible to run ahead and destroy the drones, subverting the entire gimmick. The metal blocks that are scattered around the path can one-shot the drones, saving valuable arrows. Additionally, if spotted, the player can whistle for Yunobo to continue following despite the magma bombs raining from above, as additional drones being triggered won't cause Yunobo to stop again as long as the alarm is still active.
  • The Yiga Clan hideout, which requires you to know how to stealth properly if you want to live. Blademasters serve as the patrolling guards and if they spot you, they seal the room, summon other Yiga assassins to attack you, and other Blademasters in the room will also attack you. You see, Blademasters deal One-Hit Kills inside the hideout as to punish you for trying to brute-force the level, but these aren't ordinary One-Hit Kills that just drop your Health to Zero. These guys not only drop your Health to Zero, they also negate any Auto-Revives you've been carrying around, so Mipha and your Fairies will not be bailing you out here. Even if you lure them with a Mighty Banana, a Blademaster's line of sight is much wider than it appears to be since they can spot you if you're directly at their sides. To make matters worse, saving and autosaving are disabled during the stealth segment, thus you have to start from the beginning if you die. Luckily, the boss fight that comes after the stealth segment is a Breather Boss.
  • The Trial of the Sword is already quite the ordeal in normal mode, but in Master Mode it becomes borderline unfair. The enemies will be far stronger than the weapons they give you, and whittling them down is nigh-impossible since they regenerate health. However, special mention goes to Floor 10 of the Beginning Trials of the Sword. In Normal Mode, it's a relatively forgettable room with two Black and one Green Lizalfos on some narrow docks surrounded by water. In Master, it turns into two Silver Lizalfos with a Blue one standing on guard. Not only do these Silvers have an absurd amount of health for the level of gear you're granted in the Beginning Trials, but Master Mode's health regeneration mechanic combined with the room layout means that if you're forced to fight these Silvers head-on, you'll be knocking them into the safety of the water where they're free to heal off all of the damage you deal. Stopping the Blue Lizalfos from alerting his buddies by immediately sniping him with arrows is the only reasonable start to this labor; figuring out how to assassinate the Silvers afterwards either takes a lot of stamina and resources, or a lot of AI exploitation. It's to the point where people agree that the Middle and Final Trials as a whole are easier.
  • Also from Master Mode, Eventide Island. While Eventide is a rather pleasant nod to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening in Normal Mode, it turns nightmarish in Master. The gist of the mode is that you have your equipment taken from you and you have to scavenge for resources and place three orbs into their pedestals. On paper, not bad. In Normal mode, not bad with proper hearts and preparation. In Master Mode, not so. With all of the enemies now being tankier, but the weapons on the island not changing, you are forced to avoid combat altogether because all of your weapons will break. In addition, there are two pedestals with things covering them that must be removed, and they are surrounded by high-level monsters, meaning you have to uncover them while avoiding getting hit by them. And if you die, you have to start the entire level over again, and you can't even skip the Shrine Monk's cutscene.
  • The One-Hit Obliterator trials. As the name implies, you are required to play the shrines with a weapon that causes you to die with one hit. The hardest one is Rohta Chiga, the shrine where you have to travel through an obstacle course full of spikes and moving platforms, as if you die, you have to start the whole shrine over.
• That One Puzzle: A few of the Korok puzzles fall into this. There's a few obscure ones, sure. But then there's some where the objective isn't hard to figure out, but the act of actually doing the puzzle certainly is.
  • One Korok in Lurelin Village requires you to complete a rock formation on a rooftop. The rooftop is too high for Link to throw the rock onto from the ground, so you're expected to use Stasis to launch a rock up there, which is extremely difficult. An alternate solution is to chop down a tree so that it lands against the building, Stasis it while it's still leaning and quickly walk up it with a rock.
  • In the Wasteland, there is a Magnesis puzzle wherein you must insert a block into the middle of a structure from the front. The catch is that the hole is the same size and shape as the block itself, so you need to position the block perfectly in order to slide it in. And if you miss, you'll have to keep reorienting the block's position until you get it exactly right.
  • Does the prospect of pushing a boulder up a hill sound like fun? Well, there are a few Korok seeds that expect you to launch a boulder up a hill with Stasis so that it lands in a hole. If you're not extremely careful, the boulder will just roll back down the hill. The worst of these by far can be found in the Akkala region; between the boulder's starting point and the hole it needs to go in is the stomping grounds of a Lynel. Because the puzzle apparently wasn't frustrating enough without the threat of death hanging over your head.
  • A few puzzles in the game, including at least one shrine and one chest on divine beast, require you to freeze a metallic object with Stasis, move another object blocking it with Magnesis, and then use Magnesis again to quickly catch the frozen object before it falls once Stasis wears off. While Stasis is basically a Hitscan ability which hits instantly, Magnesis has a slight delay between activation and when it actually affects the object, with the distance between you and the object making the delay longer. Perfect timing is required in these puzzles, which the delay in Magnesis can make very frustrating to accomplish. Further, because shrines and divine beasts send you back to the beginning if you reload a save while inside, you cannot simply Save Scum in front of the puzzle in question to keep trying without having to go all the way back through the shrine/beast.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Korok Seeds. There are 900 of them, but you only need 441 to open all of your inventory slots. They're sometimes in remote or hard-to-reach locations, and they're needed for 100% completion. Some of them are even in Hyrule Castle. The prize you get? A poop-shaped Korok Seed called Hestu's Gift, which lets you see his dance any time you want now that you're done with the inventory.
  • Upgrading your gear. Outfits are worn situationally, for things like climbing or swimming or staying warm, but all start with very low defense. The only way to get an outfit to toughen up is with the Great Fairies, who are in remote corners of the world and charge 100, then 500, then 1,000, then 10,000 rupees to open up. Only got one Fairy open? Only one upgrade for you. Which would perhaps not be so frustrating if each upgrade for each individual piece of each outfit did not also require you to scavenge materials to pay for the upgrade. The full stats for the Champion's tunic, which is often the first (and, for the easily-frustrated, only) upgraded item, requires 19 Silent Princess flowers, an extremely rare item, and two shards of each dragon's horn (requiring extensive effort and freeing Naydra), on top of the 11,600 rupee expenditure.
  • Completing the Hyrule Compendium, especially certain enemies, if you don't want to "cheat" and just pay Symin to unlock them all piece by piece. Trying to take a picture of the Lynel at Ploymus Mountain from way, way up the peak? Careful not to get attacked. Beyond that though, plenty of items and materials will become unavailable once all the enemies that use them are upgraded to black and silver, like Lynel gear.
  • Finding all of Link's lost memories. Some of the picture hints are fairly obvious and there's an NPC who can give further hints to a few, but others are incredibly vague (the last one is just a forest with no other landmarks visible, good luck finding which one of the game's hundreds of forests that is) and one is in Hyrule Castle. You also need to visit most of the world to find all of them, making the quest very time-consuming.
  • Beating all 120 shrines. Doing so grants you the Cap, Tunic and Trousers of the Wild, an armor set that's the game's version of Link's iconic green tunic. And yet it doesn't even give you the highest defense rating, as all three pieces max out at 28 defense when upgraded to 4 stars, while the Champion's Tunic, which is much easier to get, maxes out at 32 defense points. On the flipside, they can be dyed with any color, whereas the amiibo counterparts can't be dyed at all.
  • The Zora Monuments sidequest. You have to locate and read ten monuments scattered throughout the Lanayru territory, which is massive, and lined with huge mountains, ridges, valleys, lakes, rivers, and other such vertical applications. The road on which you find the first half is notoriously windy and branching, and the rest are just scattered around the Zora's Domain locale. Try and find all 10 without a guide, and see which gets done first, the quest or your patience.
  • The Eventide Island shrine quest. The shrine's monk strips Link of his equipment and inventory, forcing him to scavenge very limited materials he can use to deal with several high-level enemies, including a Hinox. If the player finds the island early, they likely won't have enough hearts to survive many of the dangers; if they find it later, they will probably be so used to their power they'll have a hard time adjusting to having nothing. The other annoying part is that dying during the challenge bumps you back to the last landmass you were on before you set foot on the island, which means you have to slowly boat or fly your way back there every time you fail.
  • The Mijah Rokee/Under a Red Moon shrine quest. The gist of the riddle is that Link needs to be on the pedestal with absolutely no clothing on during a Blood Moon (from 9:00 PM-12:00 AM). Problem is, Blood Moons are random, though they can be slightly impacted by killing enemies. As well, the only two ways to tell if one is coming are a) talking to Hino at the Dueling Peaks stables and asking the phase of that night's moon, and b) waiting till night at a campfire and checking the moon. Many a player have reported having to continue waiting at campfires for hours just for a Blood Moon to occur. [[labelnote:Here's a useful trick, though]]If you're inside a shrine when a Blood Moon is supposed to happen, the game will delay it to the next night. You can play the game normally until you see a Blood Moon, warp to any shrine before midnight and enter it, let midnight pass, go back outside and hustle over to the Mijah Rokee dais, and wait until midnight. You'll only have to wait a few minutes for a guaranteed Blood Moon.
  • "The Lost Pilgrimage" sidequest from the Korok Trials. Per the Korok's sibling's request, Link has to follow along behind Oaki, who will lead him to a shrine, but as Oaki insists on doing it himself, you fail the quest if he spots you. You have to stay close enough to avoid being warped out, but not so close you're spotted, which isn't easy as Oaki is tiny and absurdly difficult to see in all the grass and fog. The game will also try to trick you into revealing yourself; at one point he'll scream he saw a ghost (the same thing he says when he sees the player, except it's as an overhead caption and not a dialogue box), and when he sees a wolf he'll scream for help from "Mr. Hero", but if you actually attack the wolf to save him you fail the trial. After you finally make it to the shrine (which takes several minutes of sneaking), a scene plays where Oaki says he finished the trail after noticing you, and the quest is completed. But in early builds, the end of the quest was far more confusing and counterintuitive ^note Since Oaki didn't speak, there was no indication as to what you were intended to do... which was actually just speak to Oaki, who can be approached safely now. Players who managed to enter the shrine without him noticing and complete it were taken back to the start of the trial, and the sidequest didn't count as complete until they went back and finished it the "proper" way..
  • The Horseback Archery minigame. Most minigames in Breath of the Wild are fairly easy to win; not this one. The minigame has you riding on horseback while firing at a series of targets. The challenge is that you need to control your horse's speed (and potentially make minor course corrections if you don't like where the "autopilot" steers you) while at the same time aiming and firing your bow. In order to get the Knight's Bridle, you need to hit twenty out of the twenty-five targets and to get the Knight's Saddle you need twenty-three — either way, your margin of error is punishingly small. Oh, and you have just one minute to complete the minigame, meaning you need to be averaging at least one hit every three seconds. And the kicker? Weapon durability and ammo depletion are not disabled for this minigame, meaning you either need to bring a LOT of arrows and replacement bows or resort to Save Scumming whenever you fail. One final bit of annoyance: you'll need to sit through two loading screens every time you start/reset the game and if you're Save Scumming you need to go through four different dialogue trees EVERY SINGLE TIME before you can start ("Yes, I want to play your stupid game", "No, I don't need any arrows", "Yes, I'll pay your 20 rupee fee", "No, you don't need to explain the rules again"). Bomb arrows (if it doesn't start raining rendering them the same as normal arrows) and multishot bows (especially the Great Eagle Bow) take a bit of the sting away, but not much — this minigame is hell, no matter which way you slice it.
  • On a similar note to the Archery minigame is the Horseback riding obstacle course. Unlike the Archery one the only real way to help your odds is picking a fast horse with a fair amount of stamina that likes you, as you will be actively fighting against your horse's AI instead of your weapons and inventory. You can also only win one piece of the Extravagant horse gear per race so beating the best time on your first go won't be enough to be done with it and both times needed to win cut it pretty close. The issue with the horse's AI is that if you don't hit the jumps at the right angle (and the horse thinks there is enough room beyond it to land safely, making the ones near the cliffs harder) they stop where they are so you need to turn them around (to get the right angle and speed) and try again, wasting a fair amount of time so you can only afford to mess up once or twice. Enemies can also spawn on the course, hitting you off your horse, requiring you to restart and pay the quest giver again.
  • "The Weapon Connoisseur" from Nebb in Hateno Village. The premise is that you have to show Nebb a series of different weapons. This can be especially challenging because it's very difficult to tell where to find those weapons. It's even worse in Master Mode, because several of the items are primarily found on low-level enemies that are much rarer than in the normal mode, and he will not accept upgraded versions of the weapon he asks for.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Continuing the trend of previous installments, the game has been criticized for changing things compared to past Zelda games simply for the sake of changing them, without considering whether or not the changes were for the better. For example, fans who enjoy finding new items that allow them to reach previously inaccessible items and areas were disappointed with Breath of the Wild's almost complete lack of it, claiming that the game goes too far towards pleasing those who enjoy Zelda for exploration (and a bone throw towards puzzle solving) over the series' other core elements, leading to a game that can only be fully enjoyed by one type of Zelda fan to the exclusion of others. The way dungeons, breakable weapons and enemy variety are handled are likely to be brought up negatively in discussions of this nature.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: With such elements like the Wide-Open Sandbox nature of the world, more minimalistic storytelling, a wide variety of equippable Breakable Weapons, cooking, the Stamina Meter, enemy marking, and the nature of the collectibles found across the overworld, there have been debates over how much the game seemingly borrows from other popular games such as Skyrim, The Witcher 3, Dark Souls, Minecraft, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and fellow Nintendo game Xenoblade Chronicles X. Whether these additions add to a series that needed a shake-up or introduce superfluous elements to a series that didn't need it is a debate in itself.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Champions have interesting personalities and designs that could easily bounce off one-another and Link, but they're all dead by the time Link wakes up, leaving most of their scenes to the Memories, and thus they end up underdeveloped. A lot of people see this as a huge waste of potential, as the Champions could have added to the story in a much more direct way, allowing for fleshing out what is a fairly sparse story by Zelda standards. That they all died at the same time for the exact same reason also hampers their story a bit. The DLC pack "Ballad of the Champions" only added insult to injury, since Nintendo promoted it as content that would fix this issue, but the overall fan reaction in this respect is that it wasn't enough. Overall, the expansion mostly just reiterates character traits and backstory details that were already present in the main game, and the sparse new information there is gets mostly relegated to the Champions' respective diaries.
  • The characters that help you board the Divine Beasts: Prince Sidon, Riju, Yunobo, and Teba, the latter two in particular. The main storyline seems to be building them up to be super-important characters since all of them have significant connections to the old Champions, but after you seize the Divine Beasts, they are just brushed to the side and are never brought back again. Some wish they had taken on the roles of the original Champions as new commanders of the Divine Beasts, with guidance from the Champions, rather than having the spirits take back control. Tears of the Kingdom beefs up their roles significantly (though Teba's son Tulin takes his spot) by keeping them as the regional heroes now unburdened by their ancestors' presence, making them dungeon partners, and making them the post-dungeon power-bestowers and endgame allies as elemental Sages.
  • Supporting characters such as Impa, Purah and Robbie all fall short in the same way. None of them every appear outside of the areas they are met, or offer any greater role than giving some backstory or at best, repairing and upgrading the Sheikah Slate. Once that is accomplished they serve no role in the story or game-play and could be missed entirely due to the non-linear nature of it.
  • Epona. The game provides horses based on those of Ganondorf and Zelda, and both provide quests and a bit of lore behind either of them. But due to being an amiibo-locked extra, Epona does not get a special quest nor any lore beyond being a "legendary" horse, and you can't give her the DLC saddle that enables the horse to teleport to you.
  • Wolf Link for the same reasons as Epona. Despite being heavily advertised before, Wolf Link is limited as a Amiibo as a silent companion instead of being useful as the spirit of Link from Twilight Princess without any real quest or lore.
  • Dinraal, Naydra and Farrosh, despite being incredibly cool Kaiju-sized dragons named after the three Goddesses (Din, Nayru and Farore, respectively) with their respective elements, never impact the game at all besides sporadically appearing, besides the one sidequest where you free Naydra from Malice. Since they seem to be highly revered spirits, they're named after the Goddesses and the Hyrule Compendium states they bear no ill will towards humans, you'd think they could become assist characters in the fight against Ganon or serve a greater purpose in the game, but they're mostly just a cool prop than anything.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Many feel that the Amnesiac Hero approach could have been a good opportunity for a Jigsaw Puzzle Plot. The Memories could have been used as a way to tell this story by slowly revealing the events of what happened in the past, using Anachronic Order to allow the audience to piece the story together. However, King Rhoam spells the whole ordeal out by the end of the tutorial instead of letting the player figure out the plot on their own. As a result, the Memories never reveal any major events and only serve to showcase the characterizations of Zelda and the Champions. Seemingly in response to this, Tears of the Kingdom opted to showcase new information and events through its own series of memories, though this decision has also been met with a similar response for the opposite reason.
  • While it's understandable that Ganon would be too far gone from humanity to be any more than a Generic Doomsday Villain, his backstory doesn't go anywhere beyond mentioning that he's a continuously reincarnating Ancient Evil. There's absolutely no explanation as to how Ganondorf degenerated into a smoky mass of evil energy, and the resemblance of Ganon's cyborg form to Ganondorf has no impact on the story nor is touched upon. Stranger still, even the sequel Tears of the Kingdom barely touches on the Calamity's connection to the true Demon King Ganondorf, as only Impa lightly acknowledges that Calamity Ganon "is the Demon King of legend" without going into detail how the Calamity spawned from Ganondorf.
  • Despite the game offering several monster masks at Kilton's shop that make the corresponding enemies not notice you and each Hyrule culture and faction having a signature outfit, Sheikah included, the game does not have any kind of Yiga outfit that can be found, in their hideout or otherwise. In addition to being a visually appealing outfit option, it would be nice to have another stealth outfit that had a Yiga-proof effect, which could either make the hideout segment of the DLC easier or just keep Yiga from spawning on the overworld and prevent disguised Yiga assassins from attacking you. Besides, it'd be pretty funny for the Yiga to be so secretive that they don't even know each other's identities, and that's why they buy costumed Link being a member. Tears of the Kingdom realizes this potential by adding a Yiga armor set that unlocks some sidequests, allows the Yiga Clan Hideout to functionally become another town for Link, and prevents disguised Yiga from attacking you.
  • The Champions' Ballad DLC seemed determined to make bosses repeatable content within the player's save file, finding a way to allow Link to rematch the Blight Ganons and making the new boss at the end available for rematches as well. Doing so not only allows the player to fight them again for fun and challenge, but also to get another chance to take Compendium photos of them. It's a nice fix... but they didn't invent a way to rematch Master Kohga, despite one trial taking you back to the Yiga hideout. As it is, Kohga is now the only boss who cannot be rematched or photographed after the initial fight, and since the DLC otherwise seemed determined to correct this problem, it stands out more that they still left one boss as a one-time thing.
  • The Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sidequest has very little to do with the game that it was meant to advertise, with the only real ties being Rex's Salvager Set as a reward (which is actually very weak) and its very loose ties to salvaging as seen in XC2. As such, the quest doesn't do much to make the game seem attractive to the uninitiated. It could have easily been an opportunity for more Mythology Gags to give new players a better "feel" for XC2 and advertise it more effectively, such as providing Pyra's Aegis Sword as a reward along with the Salvager Set, or cameo appearances from various characters and enemies (for example, having a random Nopon or even Azurda as the quest-giver).

U-W

• Ugly Cute:
  • The official website describes the Bokoblins as somehow very cute. The playerbase agrees.
  • The Lord of the Mountain is a very pretty glowing horse-like creature, it's just that its four eyes make it look like it's got two faces growing out of its head.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Two of the species featured in the game are the Korok and the Rito, who haven't been seen since their debut in The Wind Waker. Extra surprising considering that the Zora (whom The Wind Waker implied the Rito to have evolved from) are also in the game.
  • Though not physically, Fi has an unexpected role in the story, being the one to tell Zelda that Link can be saved with the Shrine of Resurrection.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Intentionally with Link's design because he needs to disguise himself in drag to enter the Gerudo village during his quest. A lot of people got the impression that Link was a woman in this game because of the game's first trailer. Especially during a brief period when Aonuma said "Nobody said explicitly that that is Link." The next day, he admitted that he was just joking, and that the character was indeed (male) Link.
  • Malanya the Horse God. It's easy to assume that Malanya is female, given that he's revived in the same way as the Great Fairies and has the same hands, but this isn't the case. It's easy to miss, but the NPC that tells you about him refers to him as male.
• Viewer Species Confusion: The Yiga Clan members are said to be sheikah, implying that they're humanoid in appearance. But the fact that they're covered from head to toe in veil, stand in odd positions and their love for bananas has lead some players into thinking Yiga are monkey-like creatures.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: It is the first original HD Zelda game, and it looks pretty, especially during a sunset. While there were some doubts during development about whether or not Nintendo would be able to pull off the level of sheer beauty that was shown in the reveal teaser back in 2014, the game lived up to it and then some, elevating the Scenery Porn to the absolute extreme.
• Wangst: Although Zelda's Character Development was overall well-received, there's still quite a vocal minority that dislikes her portrayal. Although many of them concede that she has good reasons, they still think she comes across as overtly angsty, mopey and even whiny. The memory where she lashes out at Link for following her is usually the main (albeit not only) example they use to illustrate their point.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: After fully developing Tarrey Town, there's a sidequest where Link can talk to a man who claims to be very wealthy, and gives Link a down payment of 100 rupees and promises to give him more if he battles the two Guardians on the wetlands below the town. The reason? For his own entertainment, of course! If Link does so (which, depending on his equipment at the time, can be very dangerous) and goes back to the man, he gives Link just twenty extra rupees, chastises Link for expecting any more, and indicates his distaste for "commoners" like Link. This could just be a textbook Rich Jerk, but given that the sidequest's name is the blanket statement "Hobbies of the Rich", it can easily be taken as an allegory about upper-class people forcing lower-class people to do death-defying things for the sake of their own entertainment but not providing any appropriate compensation or rewards for doing so.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • For Zelda fans who consider exploration the main pillar of the series. This group was by far the most vocal when it came to criticize the series in the decade or so previous to Breath of the Wild for the increasing linearity and lack of meaningful exploration in the series, reaching its peak with Skyward Sword. The most extreme critics went as far as to claim that the only entry that "got it right" was the original NES Zelda, and that the series had basically walked the wrong path for 30 years. Nintendo took these criticisms to heart and created the most open Zelda game ever using the original 1986 game as main point of reference. Needless to say, that group of the Zelda fandom was delighted... even if the rest was a bit more polarized, to say the least.
  • After a good deal of negative backlash from constant delays and the lack of footage, Nintendo's E3 2016 demo managed to impress a good deal of the audience with the sheer size and variety offered from just one small part of the game's expansive overworld. This game singlehandedly did more to repair Nintendo's battered reputation in the video game industry than anything else Nintendo has done in the past few years.
  • The game did this for Nintendo as a whole, and ended nearly all of the issues they suffered during most of the Wii U era. Not only was the Wii U a failing console, but Nintendo's software titles at the time were either considered too "safe" or too controversial to make much of an impact, with even beloved titles such as Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Fire Emblem: Awakening attracting their share of base-breaking. For many people, BotW was the breakthrough game that brought Nintendo back to greatness, especially alongside the very popular console that released at the same time.
  • After years of being neglected by Nintendo of America by not having Latin American dubs in their games, having bad subtitles in many of them, or odd name choices, or only having either the European Spanish dub or a LATAM dub made in Los Angeles (which had enraged many Latin American Nintendo fans), finally for this game, Nintendo made an official Latin American Spanish dub for BOTW made in Mexico. Latin American fans are rejoicing over this.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Link's wardrobe has been massively expanded in this game, but not all of them are winners among the fandom.
  • There is a significant number of people who find the Tunic of the Wild set (i.e: Breath of the Wild's own take on the traditional green clothes) underwhelming, which leaves a special bitter taste on the mouth after having to complete all 120 shrines to get it. The short pants receive a special amount of flak, and the brown undershirt looks kind of off, as if it was a couple sizes too small for Link. Thus, many people only use the cap, and combine it with the Hylian Trousers and either a green-dyed Hylian Tunic instead for the "classic" Link look or the Champion's Tunic with the cap dyed blue to match it. It's supposed to be reminiscent of the tunic from the original NES Zelda game, but these people argue that the game already has that available through the 30th anniversary amiibo, thus finding the Mythology Gag redundant and unnecessary. Even among fans who don't care for amiibo collection, it's often argued that while it looked good on the simpler (especially younger) Link designs, it doesn't have the same effect on the cleaner design used by this game.
  • The Ancient Helm, which looks like a Guardian's head and covers Link's eyes. Some people find it a bit ridiculous, particularly because of how tall it is, and prefer to use the Diamond Circlet instead, even if that means losing the Ancient Proficiency Boost. Something similar happens to the Rubber Helm, which is also considered too ridiculous, and it's often changed for the Topaz Earrings. The majority of helmets, in fact, seem to sport lots of superfluous, decorative "zazz" that ends up looking silly and forces players to choose between better protective ability and basic stylishness when it comes to headgear.
  • The Radiant Armor set also can be accused of this as it's a Lucha Libre inspired set with a glow-in-the-dark skeleton motif, complete with a champion's belt, wrestler boots, and an awkward looking luchador mask.
  • The Flamebreaker Set, despite ironically being more practical than the Ancient Set when fighting Guardian Stalkers and Skywatchers,^note Due to the Guardian beams dealing fire damage in addition to "ancient" damage, the Flamebreaker Set's bonus nullifies the fire damage while still reducing the damage of the beam itself as opposed to the Ancient Set only reducing the damage of the beam while taking the full force of the fire damage. looks awkwardly bulky and rounded, especially for an armor set that only has the "regular" armor values. As such, going to the beachy Lurelin Village while looking like an old-timey boiler doesn't speak "stylish" on it. Thus, it's not strange to unequip it once out of Death Mountain.
  • Rex's salvager suit in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is already a point of contention in its own game, but here there's little doubt it looks (more) awkward when scaled up to Link's proportions.
• The Woobie:
  • Muava, a lonely and elderly Gerudo who can be found lounging near the Goddess Statue in Gerudo Town, happily chats with Link and tell him her backstory. She used to be a beautiful traveler who caught the eyes of men wherever she went. One day she heard about the Lover's Pond and believed it to be a perfect place to meet her true love. She searched for years to no avail and found that she had grown so old that men no longer found her attractive. Now she spends her days taking care of the Goddess Statue, as both are neglected by the people around them. Link is so visibly saddened by her tale that she has to assure him that she is content with her life.
  • Koko of the Sheikah Tribe, gives Link several sidequests to bring her the correct cooking ingredient and beats herself up for not remembering it herself, calling herself a bad sister and saying she'll never live up to her mother's standards. This implies that, unlike her sister Cottlia, she's aware her mother is dead. This poor little kid tries so hard to take up the responsibilities of her mother, despite being about the same age as her sister (it's not made clear but given how similar they look, it's implied they're twins) and she never cuts herself any slack for making mistakes. Fortunately Link can make her feel better by helping her out, but it's still sad to see, especially as Dorian is too busy guarding Impa's building day in and out to notice.
  • Mimos, that one poor guy who climbs a mountain to try and find his true love...only for it to turn out he's on the wrong mountain — the lover's pond is actually on Tuft Mountain and he ended up on "heartbreak pond" on Ebon mountain.
• Woolseyism:
  • The most notable example, by far, is uttered by Zelda right before the Final Battle:
    Zelda (English): But courage need not be remembered... for it is never forgotten.
    Zelda (Japanese): But I believe in you... in your courage!
  • At the end of a flashback where Revali is talking to Link, as Revali flies away he sarcastically shouts at Link "Good luck sealing the darkness!" in the English dub. In the Japanese version, Revali simply laughs.
  • In some EU versions, the Stalhorses are given the punny name of Stallions.

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