"Excuse me, Princess, but you're on your own with these guys."
- The Legend of Zelda: Blue Wizzrobes. By the time you get the Magical Sword, orange Wizzrobes (and most other foes) cease to be a threat, getting cleaved in two in a single stab, but the blue Wizzrobes (unlike the orange ones) are ALWAYS in motion, take three stabs to kill with the Magical Sword (more if one has a weaker sword) and if you stand in front of one's path, they Beam Spam you with magic that'll take a whole heart even with the Red Ring. They don't flinch when hit, so if they are moving towards you and you hit them they keep coming and hit you back. And, as described in the page on Goddamned Bats, they love to hang out with Bubbles (which temporarily take away your ability to use your sword) and Like Likes (which eat the Magical Shieldnote if they swallow Link and aren't killed quickly). They're impervious to everything except the sword and bombs. To quote The Matrix's Cypher: "You see a blue Wizzrobe, you do what we do. You run your ass off." You can always try killing the other stuff instead and running out of the room, hoping there will be fewer Wizzrobes... except when you are locked in and CAN'T retreat. Oh, and don't think you can safely camp within dungeon doors and strike when they get close— they can phase right into them.
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, having a much different playing style than the other Zelda games, can seem full of demonic spiders to players who haven't got the hang of the mechanics yet. And even then, some border on this. For example, blue Lizalfos, which in this game 1) use a shield that blocks most of Link's attacks, and 2) throw hammers that his shield can't block without the reflect spell. But the champion of Zelda II demonic spiders would be the appropriately-named Fokkas in the Great Palace. Like blue Iron Knuckles and Lizalfos, they have a shield and shooting sword. You can block OR attack. Like every shield enemy, they can block AND attack, and at different heights. They also take huge leaps with no warning, which causes them to kick Link in the head, interfering a lot with the standard strategy for beating enemies with shields. Oh, and with Link's defense power at maximum, they take off 1 and 3/4th of a block of life, out of (up to) 8 total. Oh, and where the aforementioned blue Lizalfos was worth 200 experience points? Fokka are inexplicably worth only 70 (red) and 100 (blue).
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past has the Beamos. Not only are they unkillable, but their beams are stupidly fast, unblockable (even with the Mirror Shield) and also pack a lot of punch. Oh, and the Blue and Red Tunics won't reduce the damage as Beamos's damage calculations ignore defense.
- The one-hit killer Phantoms and the Phantom Eyes that warn them in Phantom Hourglass. The fact that you have to return to their dungeon SEVERAL TIMES in the game really gets frustrating; they get harder to avoid as you progress, eventually teleporting around the place and you can't get rid of them until finding the right sword. When you finally do, it's very satisfying to kill them.
- Better yet, both the Phantoms and Phantom Eyes make a return in Spirit Tracks, and this time there's no Phantom Sword to kill them. Luckily, you get to do something almost as satisfying. Also luckily, unlike the Dark Trains listed further down, "one hit kill" doesn't mean "instant Game Over", so much as it means "get forced back to the beginning", Wallmaster style. (That, and taking a full heart of damage, and getting 30 seconds taken off your timer (Phantom Hourglass only).)
- They get a Spiritual Successor in Skyward Sword, the Guardians of the Silent Realm. First off, the only Safe Zone is the entrance — once you're out, the Guardians are on you like white on rice. Secondly, a single hit banishes you and dismisses your Tears of Light, forcing you to start over. Thirdly, your entire inventory is banished from your person, so no Stamina Potions or shields for you. Finally, even if you collect a Tear of Light, the Guardians are stilled for a minute and a half or until a sentry spots you. Thankfully, you retain the map marks for every Tear you collect before you're banished, so if it happens you don't have to start from absolute scratch. Good luck — you'll need it!
- Darknuts. In the original game, you can't hit them from the front thanks to their shields, and hitting them from one of their three unprotected sides is practically impossible as they walk around in randomly erratic directions (the first game's stiff controls and Denial of Diagonal Attack doesn't help). You think you're about to get a good hit in, but then CLANK! The orange ones are hard enough to get the hang of, but with practice an a sword upgrade or two they are lowered to Goddamned Bats. Then there are the blue ones, who have double the health, and move faster. This alone causes them to remain Demonic Spiders, especially in groups. You could have full hearts and still manage to die because of a single idiot Darknut encounter. And if you didn't think it could get any more ridiculous, in many Labyrinths there's several rooms FULL OF THEM where you have to kill every one in order to move on (Level-5 in particular pits you against two rooms of blue Darknuts in order to get the Recorder). Unlike Wizzrobes, however, Darknuts are slightly weaker to the sword, lack projectile attacks and are slow. Thank goodness for small favors.
- They're such Demonic Spiders that the designers of Zelda Classic went so far as to make it possible to set up your own custom quests such that the hammer can be used to break their shields. Too bad you'll be needing that to even the playing field against the even harder Darknut variants added. The Super Darknut moves just as fast as Link and can take 4 hits from the Magical Sword before splitting into two Blue Darknuts. But worst of them all is the black-armored Death Knight, who moves faster than Link, shoots sword beams, and deals 20 hearts of damage (more than the maximum health of the original Zelda game). Unless the quest sets up the level with safe places to use the Ladder (which it often does), you are dead.
- Near the end of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, you have to fight a roomful of these bastards while on an invisible time limit whose expiration results in a Nonstandard Game Over. Bombs are quite useful on them, however, especially remote-triggered ones— set down a bomb, let it run towards you, set off bomb, and it's stunned, letting you slap them around as you please.
- There's also the Darknut Expy Iron Knuckle in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. They carry shields like their cousins, and they force you to play a guessing game of striking high or low to damage them while they swing their swords right back at you. The orange and red ones get easier once you get stronger (and you realize that striking them while jumping at them can bypass the shield), but the blue ones are what truly belong on this list. They're fast, powerful, they spam Sword Beams, and they have a nasty habit of backing away from you when you get close. Lizalfos, of which the strongest variant is mentioned above, behave similarly to Iron Knuckles but manage to be even more annoying, as do the appropriately named Fokka, also mentioned above.
- The dreaded, temporarily-invincible, stunning, splitting and regenerating, sometimes invisible The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time version of Floormasters. These things are more nightmarish than the Wallmasters. They're actually much more menacing at small size, after the big ones separate. When grabbing you, they take out several hearts, and stopping them from grabbing you is nigh impossible. If all three latch onto you, you are dead, plain and simple. The full-size ones' strikes aren't nearly as bad. Oh, and they re-merge to a regenerated full size Floormaster after a while, requiring you to hit it all over again.
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks has the evil Dark Trains, along with their smarter, tougher cousins, the Armoured Trains. Heaven help you if you find one in your path, because if it moves towards you, you better be near the last fork and it better not follow you or you're on a one-way train ride to an automatic Game Over. Just to make it worse, the Armoured Trains pursue you until you leave the area. Even getting to a fork backward, quickly shoving the train in reverse, and flipping the switch will only get you a few seconds' respite. To make matters worse, they are often found right in front of a station or area that you need to get to.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword manages to escalate Skulltulas (bonus points for them being literal spiders) from mere cannon fodder into this. Players of the previous games should know to aim for their soft underbelly, but will soon find that they'll no longer simply present their back to you. Instead, you have to slash them with your sword to make them start swinging, but you have to get the angle right; do it wrong and they'll be swinging right at you. But you're not done yet, you now have to hit their belly with the Slingshot to stun them. Hitting a rapidly moving target is a lot harder than it sounds. And you're still not done, you have to finish the job with your sword, but only one type of strike will work. Specifically, the forward stab, which the WiiMotion Plus is notoriously unresponsive to. Do any other type of attack, and you'll flip them back and start the whole process over again. Of course, they're much easier once you've figured out this process, but they're the first enemy that requires such a complex sequence of steps to defeat, and they will kill you if you get it wrong. Players can also ignore using the Slingshot entirely and time the Skulltulas swing with the kill stab, but in some ways that's even worse than getting the stun off. Of course, there's the much easier method of cutting them down and fighting them on the ground, where they are instead finished off with a Finishing Blow once they've taken enough damage to be flipped on their backs.
- The formerly manageable Lizalfos were elevated to this status in Skyward Sword. Rather than relying on dodging like in Ocarina or having only rudimentary blocking abilities (as in Twilight Princess), they now have enormous iron gauntlets that can not only block most sword attacks, but will also render ALL ranged attacks useless unless you manage to catch them unaware from behind; you are pretty much forced to take them in close quarters. And then once you do so, prepare to have them either jump away from your sword at the last second or block you with the aforementioned gauntlets. All while occasionally stopping to taunt you with the most annoying noise imaginable (though thankfully, they become vulnerable at this point). A single Lizalfos is usually not too tough, but they tend to attack in pairs, and unlike in past games, they don't practice Mook Chivalry, and will not hesitate to gang up on you. Also, they now have fire breath which lets them attack from a longer range than they could in previous games.
It gets worse with the Escort Mission late in the game, wherein Scrapper will, as usual, get suicidally close to you as you attempt to strike these fiends down. Even later on, they have a variant called Dark Lizalfos, which gains cursed breath which completely disables all of your weapons. No sword, no shield, nothing at all— you're completely defenseless until the curse wears off, which takes a long time. - Beamos, in their Skyward Sword incarnation. They're tall totem poles that fire lasers at you. If you get close, you will be shot and knocked down by the beam, and get knocked down again once the Mercy Invincibility wears off, and the laser beam does about half a heart of damage per hit. To kill them, you have to dash right up to them, slice both segments with perfect precision and timing, then stab them in the eye. Only problem is, if you're the slightest off, your sword will bounce off and it'll laser you in the face. And the forward stab is notoriously unresponsive. It gets much better once you've got the Hero's Bow and can just shoot them, or shield bash their lasers with the Sacred Shield to stun them. They make the past Lanayru region (especially the Lanayru Mining Facility) a pain to deal with at times.
- And, frequently found in the same area, the Skyward Sword incarnation of Armos, which requires the player to walk around pointing a leaf blower at a propeller on the monster's head (without the benefit of Z targeting) while it flings itself at you, and then, you guessed it, forward stab a tiny guarded spot before they make their swift recovery.
- The Beamos in the Gamecube version of Wind Waker are only vulnerable when the eye is open, and they only open it when you're close enough to be shot at.
- Anything in Minish Cap with fire attacks is a pain, since a fire wound inflicted will induce you to run around screaming rather than being controllable.
- This applies to the GBA/DSi Four Swords. Except with damage, and trying to retain the effect of double Rupees.
- Redeads, in any of the games they appear in. Though not too difficult once you've landed a hit, their ability to let out a horrible scream that paralyzes you can often make doing this practically impossible, especially if they gang up on you. It may reach a point where you cannot move at all as they come closer, which, depending on the game, either means you will be hacked to pieces by a zombie skeleton or disturbingly humped to death. These guys are some of the scariest things in the series.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess the Gibdos become this. These enemies will paralyze you as soon as they see you, and they will walk really, really slowly at you. When they are close enough, they will land a hit with their massive sword. And you cannot move in all that time, so you have to watch them walking at you. When they finally hit you, you'll be able to fight back... until you are paralyzed again. If they gang up on you, you are probably going to spend several minutes in that room. They have a lot of hit points, so fighting a pack of them is a nightmare. If you don't have the Jump Strike, which can be initiated outside of their range and kills them in a single hit, then using bomb-arrows or the ball and chain is recommended.
- Lynels in the original game, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Lion-headed centaurs found on Death Mountain in all three games, they not only have a fair amount of health, but do a ridiculous amount of damage with their attacks. How much? Well, in A Link Between Worlds, enough to kill Link in one hit before the fourth or fifth dungeon, especially in Hero Mode. And they have projectile attacks in the form of Sword Beams (in the original game) or fire breath (A Link to the Past onwards) which can only be blocked with the strongest shield in the game. Did we mention that you tend to fight these things in narrow passageways on top of mountains with little room to dodge? Or that in A Link Between Worlds, you have to sneak past two at the same time in at least two different areas to progress?
- Breath of the Wild:
- Guardians, with their most common type (the Stalkers) functioning more or less like a large Beamos with spider legs. Their only attack is an extremely accurate long-ranged laser attack that can do six hearts worth of damage (more than enough to oneshot you at the point you'll likely first run into them), and until you either get the Master Sword or a reliable source of Ancient Arrows, the only way to deal meaningful damage to them is to use a perfectly timed shield parry to bounce their laser attacks back at them, which will kill you in short order unless your timing is spot on. Some of them lack legs, making them much easier to deal with (assuming you have experience destroying Beamos in previous games), while the Guardian Skywatchers are capable of flight and are nearly impossible to defeat unless you have plenty of Ancient or Bomb Arrows.
- The Bears. To an extent they're a lot like the wolves: You can't target them, and they love to retreat outside the range of your melee weapons. What elevates them to Demonic Spiders is that they hit hard and can take a ton of damage before they finally die, meaning you can't pick them off with arrows or boomerangs at range like you can with the wolves (headshots can still kill them instantly, but good luck doing that with only one arrow if the bear is already trying to encircle you). And if that's not bad enough? Two words: Bear Cavalry. That's right, in some parts of Hyrule Bokoblins ride the damn things.
- 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 retrievednote , 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.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom introduces the Gloom Spawns, multi-armed mobile patches of Gloom. They're surprisingly fast and able to follow Link through environments that many other enemies can't. Each Spawn has five arms that must be defeated individually within a couple of seconds of each other (lest they respawn), and it's extremely easy to get completely swarmed as each arm attacks in succession. They're also one of the only surface enemies that can inflict Gloom Damage, reducing your total number of hearts. However, if you do manage to defeat it, it spawns Phantom Ganon, who beyond the initial Oh, Crap! moment is a serious downgrade from the Gloom Spawns. For the most part, he just slowly walks up to you and throws out easily dodged sword (albeit hard-hitting) swings.
