History ScrappyMechanic / TheLegendOfZelda

** There's also treasure. When you pick up a new type of treasure, you get the usual animation of Link holding it up and a text box announcing what it is, followed by your tally of that item going up by one. All well and good, except that this aspect resets ''every time you start up the game;'' anything you haven't picked up ''in the current game session'' triggers the time-consuming cutscene all over again because, evidently, [[ViewersAreGoldfish you are woefully incapable]] of remembering what a bird feather is between game sessions (or woefully incapable of looking it up on the inventory menu). Wanna know how bad this feature is? ''LetsPlay/{{Chuggaaconroy}}'' made a RunningGag counter of how many times this came up in his playthrough. And according to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GShYngULjN0 this video]], the tally ends at ''[[UpToEleven 223 redundant explanations]]''. Thankfully, this can be avoided by picking the item up with the beetle.

** There's also treasure. When you pick up a new type of treasure, you get the usual animation of Link holding it up and a text box announcing what it is, followed by your tally of that item going up by one. All well and good, except that this aspect resets ''every time you start up the game;'' anything you haven't picked up ''in the current game session'' triggers the time-consuming cutscene all over again because, evidently, [[ViewersAreGoldfish you are woefully incapable]] of remembering what a bird feather is between game sessions (or woefully incapable of looking it up on the inventory menu). Thankfully, this can be avoided by picking the item up with the beetle.

->''Enjoy dealing with each installment's signature annoying mechanic like Kinstone merging, the Temple of the Ocean King, *HNNG* cables... all of ''Skyward Sword''...''

** Having to pause and go to the equipment screen to change between normal shoes and iron boots over and over and over in the 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.

** Swimming. Zora Link can be ''extremely'' frustrating to control, giving both the Great Bay Temple and its [[ThatOneBoss infamous boss]] unfavorite status among many players. And the kicker? The 3DS remake made swimming ''even worse''.

* The ''beeping''. Almost every game in the franchise beeps when you're low on health, and while some aren't as bad as others, overall the beeping is loud, incessant, distracting, and absolutely will not stop until you replenish health. [[MostAnnoyingSound It gets very grating very quickly]], and adds unnecessary stress to a player who's already struggling to stay alive.

* Ragdoll physics is the last thing you want to be dealing with when fighting enemies, especially powerful ones like [[EliteMook Lynels]]. If you get knocked down or are sent flying and you're near a hill, you can't do anything but helplessly watch Link tumble down the hill and rack up ScratchDamage the longer he rolls down the hillside until he comes to a complete stop. Fighting near a steep cliff is extremely risky since one good swing at Link is all it takes to send him flying into the abyss and instantly dying on impact.

* Having to return to the central temple in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass'', and repeating the same levels after each new item is found, in a [[TimedMission timed]] [[UnexpectedGameplayChange forced-stealth section]] with [[InvincibleMinorMinion invincible baddies]] gets old ''real'' fast. There's a checkpoint in the middle, but it ''keeps the elapsed time''. So, if it took you 10 minutes to get to the checkpoint, it deducts 10 minutes from your hourglass everytime you skip to it. Thankfully, near the end, the player at least gains the ability to kill the Phantoms. [[MostWonderfulSound Hearing them die]] is worth ''all the trouble''.

->''Enjoy dealing with each installment's signature annoying mechanic like Kinstone Merging, the Temple of the Ocean King, *HNNG* cables... all of ''Skyward Sword''...''

->''Enjoy dealing with each installment's signature annoying mechanic like Kinstone Mergine, the Temple of the Ocean King, *HNNG* cables... all of ''Skyward Sword''...''

* ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker The Wind Waker's]]'': The 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 addition 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 multiplayer system forces gamers to use the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance and Link Cables as controllers rather than UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube controllers in a very clear attempt to foist the peripheral on people. Good luck finding four friends with all the essential hookups to play what could otherwise be an amazing game, especially considering said devices are no longer being made and are quite hard to come by.
** Being able to carry only one item at a time is, in theory, an interesting deviation from the expected gameplay which adds an extra level to the game's puzzles. In practice it merely pads the levels with BackTracking as you're often offered several items with no clue which one you need, reducing the puzzles to "guess which one you need and if you're wrong wander back and get the right one." Most players feel, since the game's core mechanic centers around controlling four Links at once, they could have at least had the option to give each Link a different item.

* ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina Of Time]]'', ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask Majora's Mask]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'' all suffer from some loose and dodgy horseback controls that, while greatly improved for Twilight Princess, still manage to be a source of spontaneous and random frustration. Particularly for jumping fences which, in theory, you need to approach straight or Epona will just stop. In practice, it really boils down to whether or not Epona feels like jumping as you can seemingly approach a fence perfectly straight and still fail to jump it, forcing you to ease her around to get enough distance to jump again.

** Swimming. Zora Link can be ''extremely'' frustrating to control, giving both the Great Bay Temple and its [[ThatOneBoss infamous boss]] unfavorite status among many players.

** When you travel back to the First Day, you lose certain sidequest items such as Deku Deeds or the event items involving the Anju and Kafei sidequest. 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.
** Swimming. Zora Link can be ''extremely'' frustrating to control, giving both the Great Bay Temple and its [[ThatOneBoss infamous boss]] Unfavorite status among many fans who otherwise love the game.

** 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.

* When ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'' was re-released with ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaFourSwords'' on the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance, they decided to add in the "RAAAH! ROOH!! RAAH!!" sword-swinging yells lifted straight from ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime''. You'd be very hard pressed to find even a single player who appreciated it as it seems incredibly out of place and is ''much'' louder than any other sound effect in the game, and since the game has a ''lot'' of ButtonMashing swordplay it [[MostAnnoyingSound gets incredibly annoying in very short order]].

** The emotes used to communicate to other players. Not only are they highly spammable, but they don't do a very good job of conveying what needs to be done in any given situation, and can't be directed at a specific player. According to WordOfGod, working with and deciphering them is meant to be part of the fun, but most players... don't see it that way.

** Rain, and thunderstorms. Rain makes climbing much more difficult, due to making the climbable surfaces wet and slippery and will drain your stamina much more quickly than usual. Thunderstorms are especially dangerous as having metal weapons and shields (which are usually higher-end items compared to wooden items) equipped means you turn into a living lightning rod. You will be struck by lightning, unless you swap out for other, less durable inventory (assuming you even ''have'' them to begin with).

** [[BreakableWeapons all weapons and shields are now subject to durability,]] and will easily break if overused. You will need to constantly switch out weapons in your current inventory, and often replace them with drops defeated from baddies or found in chests. However, the game will still allow you to open chests even if you have a full inventory...meaning you'll see Link open the chest, the item summary pop up, followed by the popup reading "Your inventory space is full", then the chest closing, all of which takes about 10 or seconds, and ''not'' counting how much time you take to pull up the menu to actually discard a weapon to make room for a new one. This gets very tedious very quickly. Even the [[UnbreakableWeapons Master Sword]] does not escape from this. Prolonged usage of the Master Sword will render in temporarily unusable until it recharges.

* 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. Also, some possible Kinstone fusions will be [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost for good]] 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.

** Tying into the above, [[BreakableWeapons all weapons and shields are now subject to durability,]] and will easily break if overused. You will need to constantly switch out weapons in your current inventory, and often replace them with drops defeated from baddies or found in chests. However, the game will still allow you to open chests even if you have a full inventory...meaning you'll see Link open the chest, the item summary pop up, followed by the popup reading "Your inventory space is full", then the chest closing, all of which takes about 10 or seconds, and ''not'' counting how much time you take to pull up the menu to actually discard a weapon to make room for a new one. This gets very tedious very quickly.
*** Even the [[UnbreakableWeapons Master Sword]] does not escape from this. Prolonged usage of the Master Sword will render in temporarily unusable until it recharges.

* ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'':
** ''Zelda II's'' GameOver mechanic is the cruelest out of all the Zelda games so far:
*** When Link loses all his lives, he restarts back at the temple where Zelda sleeps. Some of the palaces are very far from that starting point, which means you're forced to walk all the way back to where you last left off. The fact that the final palace [[AntiFrustrationFeature is exempt from this rule]] shows that it could've been done, the developers just chose not to.
*** After getting a Game Over, any extra lives you've picked up (and there aren't too many of them) are [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost for good]]. Get used to having only three tries in a dungeon before going back to start.
*** All experience goes back down to zero when you lose all your lives and get a Game Over. 20 EXP away from a level up? Too bad, it's all a waste, 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 the 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.

* When ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'' was re-released with ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaFourSwords'' on the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance, they decided to add in the "RAAAH! ROOH!! RAAH!!" sword-swinging yells lifted straight from ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime''. You'd be very hard pressed to find even a single player who appreciated it as it seems incredibly out of place and is ''much'' louder than any other sound effect in the game, and since the game has a ''lot'' of ButtonMashing swordplay it [[MostAnnoyingSound gets incredibly annoying in very short order]].

* ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker The Wind Waker's]]'': The 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 addition 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.

** ''Zelda II's'' Game Over mechanic is the cruelest out of all the Zelda games so far:

*** After getting a Game Over, any extra lives you've picked up (and there aren't too many of them) are LostForever. Get used to having only three tries in a dungeon before going back to start.

* 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. Also, 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.

** All experience goes back down to zero when you lose all your lives and get a Game Over. 20 EXP away from a level up? Too bad, it's all a waste, 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).
** 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]].

* When you travel back to the First Day in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'', you lose certain sidequest items such as Deku Deeds or the event items involving the Anju and Kafei sidequest. 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.