History ScrappyMechanic / TheLegendOfZelda

* When you travel back to the First Day in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'', you lose certain sidequest items such as deku deeds or anything involving Anju and Kafei. Considering how much time it takes to get each portion back if you reset time and save, it's highly annoying; especially as Anju and Kafei's sidequest needs to be done twice to get 100% for the game.

* When you travel back to the First Day in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'', you lose the ammunition of your items, meaning that you'll have to collect bombs and arrows again when going to a dungeon.

** While opinions the motion controls vary, the lack of a left-handed option causes no small amount of agony (and [[GannonBanned nerd rage]]) to southpaws.

** While opinions the motion controls vary, the lack of a left-handed option causes no small amount of agony to southpaws.

** All experience goes back down to zero when you get lose all your lives and get a Game Over. 20 EXP away from a level up? Too bad, it's all a waste, [[StopHavingFunGuys should have gone to an easier area to grind that last bit]]. And those big EXP pick-ups you grabbed during this time? Oh, they're not coming back. And this isn't even taking into consideration the large number of enemies who steal EXP whenever they hit you. They can't drain levels from you, but if you've collected 200 EXP and are 100 away from a level, getting hit enough will force you down to 0/300 EXP to the next level. Basically, in order to level up efficiently, you have to make sure you're not anywhere near EXP drainers (and they're annoyingly common).

* Having to pause and go to the equipment screen to change between normal shoes and iron boots over and over and over in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'''s Water Temple, where you need to walk on the bottom in some places and float in others to complete it. (Thankfully, the remake and next games have the Iron Boots as an item you can equip to one button for easy switching.)
** Made worse by the fact that it takes ages to switch to the pause screen, as every time the player presses the Start button, the game slowly generates a screenshot of the game in order to use it as the background for the pause screen, not showing this one until the process is finished.

* Kinstones in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheMinishCap'', for wasting one of the GBA's precious four buttons on a seldom-used function. And the people you fuse Kinstones with keep changing. You could attempt to fuse Kinstones with somebody, discover you don't have the right type, and come back later when you do to discover that that particular fusion has moved to someone else. It's particularly bad when there are certain fusions that will always be from a specific NPC, but they won't always be willing to fuse Kinstones with you.
** Some possible Kinstone fusions will be LostForever if you don't fuse them at the time the game wants you to fuse them. It's especially annoying when at one point in the game, Tingle will fuse Kinstones with you, but come back later in the postgame with only one Kinstone left to fuse and he suddenly won't want to fuse with you.

** The Adventure Pouch. To elaborate, it's essentially a separate inventory where you can store up to 8 (with upgrades, up to 4 initially) items of your choosing. Except that said items are things that ''didn't even use up an inventory slot in previous games'', like Shields and Bottles. By far the most irritating, however, is the way ammo expansions work. Rather than simply getting a bigger quiver/seed satchel/bomb bag that replaces your old one, you have to ''buy an extra quiver/satchel/bag and have it use up an inventory slot'' just to be able to carry even 10 extra bombs/arrows/seeds. Said inventory slot could be used for a bottle or even a ''shield''. Oh, and in order to have a full life meter, you need to equip two 'life medals', meaning if you want it to look like you have OneHundredPercentCompletion, you'll ''need'' to use up two precious slots on those, effectively giving you only 6 slots to work with.

* ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker Wind Waker's]]'' sailing deserves special mention here; while it's essentially the same mechanic as Epona the horse, at least Hyrule Field has more visual diversity. Epona also didn't require you to play a song every time you wanted to change directions for max speed, and the Great Sea is much larger than Hyrule Field. Of course, a BrokenBase has developed around this mechanic, as about as many fans who hated the mechanic also loved it. Slightly changed in the UpdatedRerelease with the edition of a "Fast Sail" that doubles your speed and eliminates the need to manually change the direction of the wind, of course the issue of whether it's needed or it ruins the experience of the game leads back to the same argument.

** The Adventure Pouch. To elaborate, it's essentially a separate inventory where you can store up to 8 (with upgrades, up to 4 initially) items of your choosing. Except that said items are things that ''didn't even use up an inventory slot in previous games'', like Shields and Bottles. By far the most irritating, however, is the way ammo expansions work. Rather than simply getting a bigger quiver/seed satchel/bomb bag that replaces your old one, you have to ''buy an extra quiver/bag/satchel and have it use up an inventory slot'' just to be able to carry even 10 extra bombs/arrows/seeds. Said inventory slot could be used for a bottle or even a ''shield''. Oh, and in order to have a full life meter, you need to equip two 'life medals', meaning if you want it to look like you have OneHundredPercentCompletion, you'll ''need'' to use up two precious slots on those, effectively giving you only 6 slots to work with.

* In nearly every game in this series, there is a low-life warning beep that plays '''constantly''' when you're low on health which is annoying and distracting.

* From ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'': You found a silver rupee! That's worth a whopping 200 rupees... but your wallet is full, so let's put it back for now. Some may find it better than the alternative used in previous games where any found rupee would be ''erased'' if you tried collecting it with a full wallet, but they may think otherwise while searching for the last "unopened" chest in a dungeon.

* A sizable chunk of the Zelda fan base ''hated'' the stylus controls found in the NintendoDS games, seeing it as nothing more than a needless gimmick.

** The train travel is this, mainly for three reasons: One, because of it, overworld travel is on rails, literally. Meaning that you can't freely roam and explore it. Two, if you happen to die (which is gonna be the case quite frequently, given the number of attacking monsters and evil trains in the open fields) you reset to the location you started. Three, somebody thought that it would be funny to complicate [[WarpWhistle the fairly simple teleport mechanics from the previous games]] down to the point where they are barely of any use anymore. Why not just use the [[MagicMusic Spirit Flute]] for that, like in previous games? Oh boy...

** The train travel is this, mainly for two reasons: One, if you happen to die (which is gonna be the case quite frequently, given the number of attacking monsters and evil trains in the open fields) you reset to the location you started. Two, somebody thought that it would be funny to complicate [[WarpWhistle the fairly simple teleport mechanics from the previous games]] down to the point where they are barely of any use anymore. Why not just use the [[MagicMusic Spirit Flute]] for that, like in previous games? Oh boy...

** The motion controls. The game suffers from typical motion control inaccuracy, and for some reason will occasionally transpose left and right, so if you slash left the game registers a right-ward slash. It also uses the same control (swing both items down simultaneously) for the often-used [[OneHitKill fatal blow]] as the rarely-used, stamina-draining vertical spin attack and the two can be easily confused by the game. And finally there's the harp, which often fails to accurately copy your hand gesture, leading to Link's hand vibrating wildly as you try futilely to mimic the unhelpful light pulses of the overly-long song.

** Made worse by the fact that it takes ages to switch the pause screen, as every time the player presses the pause button, the game slowly generates a screenshot of the game in order to use it as the background for the pause screen, not showing this one until the process is finished.

** Made worse by the fact that it takes age to switch the pause screen. Every time the player presses the pause button, the game generates a screenshot of the game in order to use it as the background for the pause screen, which is really slow.

* Kinstones in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheMinishCap'', for wasting one of the GBA's precious four buttons on a seldom-used function.
** Not to mention, the people you fuse Kinstones with keep changing. You could attempt to fuse Kinstones with somebody, discover you don't have the right type, and come back later when you do to discover that that particular fusion has moved to someone else. It's particularly bad when there are certain fusions that will always be from a specific NPC, but they won't always be willing to fuse Kinstones with you.

** Despite being a lot more exciting and fun than the sailing in ''Phantom Hourglass'', the train travel still ends up being this, mainly for two reasons: One, if you happen to die (which is gonna be the case quite frequently, given the number of attacking monsters and evil trains in the open fields) you reset to the location you started. Two, somebody thought that it would be funny to complicate [[WarpWhistle the fairly simple teleport mechanics from the previous games]] down to the point where they are barely of any use anymore. Why not just use the [[MagicMusic Spirit Flute]] for that, like in previous games? Oh boy...

** And of course there's the harp, which often fails to accurately copy your hand gesture, leading to Link's hand vibrating wildly as you try futilely to mimic the unhelpful light pulses of the overly-long song.

** The motion controls. The game suffers from typical motion control inaccuracy, and for some reason will occasionally transpose left and right, so if you slash left the game registers a right-ward slash. It also uses the same control (swing both items down simultaneously) for the often-used [[OneHitKill fatal blow]] as the rarely-used, stamina-draining vertical spin attack and the two can be easily confused by the game.

** The motion controls. The game suffers from typical motion control inaccuracy, and for some reason will occasionally transpose left and right, so if you slash left the game registers a right-ward slash. It also uses the same control (swing both items down simultaneously) for the often-used [[OneHitKill fatal blow]] as the rarely-used, stamina-draining vertical spin attack, and guess which one it tends to prioritize...

** The dash mechanic. There is absolutely no way to boost Link's stamina and given that Link walks so slowly otherwise, you'll find yourself constantly having to press the dash button just to get around. In addition, climbing walls and stuff now takes up stamina whereas in previous games you could take as long as you wanted to climb a wall so long as you didn't fall off.
** The motion controls. The game suffers from typical motion control inaccuracy, and for some reason will occasionally transpose left and right, so if you slash left the game registers a right-ward slash.

* ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker Wind Waker's]]'' sailing deserves special mention here; while it's essentially the same mechanic as Epona the horse, at least Hyrule Field has more visual diversity. Epona also didn't require you to play a song every time you wanted to change directions for max speed, and the Great Sea is much larger than Hyrule Field. Of course, a BrokenBase has developed around this mechanic, as about as many fans who hated the mechanic also loved it.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'':
** Having to pause and go to the equipment screen to change between normal shoes and iron boots over and over and over in OOT's Water Temple, where you need to walk on the bottom in some places and float in others to complete it. (Thankfully, the remake and next games to have the Iron Boots has them as an item you can equip to one button for easy switching.)
* When you travel back to the First Day in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'', you lose the ammunition of your items, meaning that you'll have to collect bombs and arrows again when going to a dungeon.

** Despite being a lot more exciting and fun than the sailing in ''Phantom Hourglass'', the train travel still ends up being this, mainly for two reasons: One, if you happen to die (which is gonna be the case quite frequently, given the number of attacking monsters and evil trains in the open fields) you're reseted to the starting-location. Two, somebody thought that it would be funny to complicate [[WarpWhistle the fairly simple teleport mechanics from the previous games]] down to the point where they are barely of any use anymore. Why not just use the [[MagicMusic Spirit Flute]] for that, like in previous games? Oh boy...
** Another despised aspect of Spirit Tracks are the Pirates. They are far more frequent than is reasonable, and are a severe threat. They lag the game, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard every shot they do after their first is 100% accurate]], and if you have a passenger, you'll have to do a very long, drawn out fight scene, where death and/or failure, requiring a restart of the already Scrappy EscortMission, is a very high possibility. Good news is, you can destroy the cannonballs they fire at you before they even make contact. Besides, you can always slow the train down while carrying a passenger so that you lessen the risk of multitasking to both fend off the pirates and follow the signs.

* ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'': All experience goes back down to zero when you get lose all your lives and get a Game Over. 20 EXP away from a level up? Too bad, it's all a waste, [[StopHavingFunGuys should have gone to an easier area to grind that last bit]]. And those big EXP pick-ups you grabbed during this time? Oh, they're not coming back. And this isn't even taking into consideration the large number of enemies who steal EXP whenever they hit you. They can't drain levels from you, but if you've collected 200 EXP and are 100 away from a level, getting hit enough will force you down to 0/300 EXP to the next level. Basically, in order to level up efficiently, you have to make sure you're not anywhere near EXP drainers (and they're annoyingly common). Maybe even worse: after getting a Game Over any extra lives you've picked up (and there aren't too many of them) are LostForever. It also sets you back to Zelda's palace at the very start of the game, [[AntiFrustrationFeature except once you get to the last dungeon]].