There's no doubt that The Legend of Zelda is one of the greatest franchises in the gaming industry, but even the best products have their faults. Don't get us wrong; we're not saying that The Legend of Zelda is bad by any means. We are fans of the series and have a great amount of respect for what Nintendo does with it.
That being said, there are some games in the series that fell short of the bar it has set for itself. While that may be a bit subjective, as many people feel differently about these games, there are some that many describe as lackluster.
While we don't believe that there are many legitimately bad Zelda games, there are several that didn't quite meet the mark. With that in mind, we're going to look at 15 less than great Zelda games and spin-offs that we have since forgotten about or tried to forget about (in no particular order). Be prepared to let the hatred flow.
15 Link: The Faces Of Evil
Let's start with the most obvious choice. When Philips decided to use Nintendo characters to create their own games, nobody expected it to turn out as poorly as Link: The Faces of Evil. First of all, the game is a 2D platformer, which is the least-liked genre for the franchise itself, but that's the least of this game's problems.
The game has painful voice acting, awful animation, and some of the dullest gameplay to ever be included in The Legend of Zelda. As a matter of fact, many of the lines and settings are so cringy that they've been converted into memes. At the end of the day, Link: The Faces of Evil not only disgraces the Zelda series, it disgraces video games in general.
14 Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link
After The Legend of Zelda came out on the NES and defined what the adventure game could be, Nintendo went a different direction with the design for the next game in the series- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. This game isn't downright awful by any means, but it features a lot of design flaws that leave us wondering.
First of all, the game is a 2D side scroller. Keep in mind that this style has not been used in a Zelda game since then (Philips games don't count). Furthermore, it was a bit odd to progress through, and the style took away a lot of the fun of exploring entire rooms and taking on waves of enemies all at once. Not to mention, the story makes things a little more confusing to follow.
13 Zelda: The Wand Of Gamelon
As if Link: The Faces of Evil wasn't bad enough, Philips had another Zelda game released on the exact same day called Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. The premise is that it follows Zelda's adventure while Link was dealing with "the faces of evil" and working to fight Ganon and save whatever that world was called.
While this sounds interesting, Zelda: Wand of Gamelon plays just about as awful as you'd expect, complete with the abysmal voice acting, clunky controls, and poor animation. This game, much like The Faces of Evil, has also been heavily made fun of for its presentation and dialogue. Since then, the game has become nothing more than a joke among the gaming community.
12 Phantom Hourglass
Before you start to get upset, understand that Phantom Hourglass is not a bad game. However, when compared to the rest of the series, it leaves much to be desired. While it was definitely nice to see the story from Wind Waker continued, Phantom Hourglass on the DS relies too much on the second screen and gimmicky controls rather than building on new ideas.
While the controls appeal to some, the game itself is fairly easy. Because of how differently it's structured, there's not the same level of depth or challenge that you'd find in other Zelda games. It was a solid game on the DS and worth a buy, but if you have access to other games for Nintendo's bigger consoles, you'll be better off looking into those.
11 Oracle Of Seasons/Ages
As we compiled Zelda games together for this list, we heard a lot of complaints about Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. Many of the criticisms centered around how the design was dull and the fact that you had to get both games in order to get the real ending was ridiculous.
These games were also built with the same framework of Link's Awakening, so there wasn't a lot of unfamiliar concepts in either of these games. Furthermore, the sound design itself suffered at the hands of the Game Boy Color. Because we now have titles like A Link Between Worlds, there's almost no reason to return to these games unless you want the specific experience.
10 Link's Crossbow Training
If there were a contest to see which Zelda game was the most gimmicky, I would immediately point to Link's Crossbow Training. This was a game created for the Wii and was designed to use with one of those little gun peripherals. If you wonder how the game works, it's pretty simple. All you have to do is point and shoot.
The game was fairly well-known only for the fact that it had a Legend of Zelda skin slapped all over it. It's a one and done experience in its purest form, and we can't recommend it as a result- especially when that type of aiming is already present in modern Zelda games. If you want to point and shoot like that, just boot up Breath of the Wild and go at it with some Bokoblins.
9 Spirit Tracks
After Phantom Hourglass proved to be successful, Nintendo decided that they needed to wrap up the story that began in Wind Waker. It takes place in the New Kingdom of Hyrule that was founded by both Link and Tetra (100 years after the previous games). While this is certainly an interesting premise, Link is now a young train engineer, which feels out of place for The Legend of Zelda.
In terms of gameplay, Spirit Tracks builds itself on the same foundation that Phantom Hourglass did, and doesn't do much to change the formula. While it does add a new train mechanic, this addition wasn't well thought out and the most criticized part of the entire game. It might be enjoyable for the story and its puzzle design, but everything else doesn't feel quite as refined.
8 Link's Awakening
Another hard decision we had to make was putting Link's Awakening on this list. The first Zelda game to come to the Game Boy, Link's Awakening brought the traditional top-down gameplay into the palm of your hand. However, it suffered from a few fundamental problems that stopped it from being fully remembered.
First off, the grayscale of the game made it difficult to discern what was what; a problem later solved by the DX edition. Other than that, the control scheme was simple but made it much clunkier to use different items and navigate dungeons. The DX version didn't add much to the table, but it at least made it a more polished experience with the color and new dungeon.
7 Zelda's Adventure
What if Link was the one captured instead of Zelda? That's the question that Zelda's Adventure poses. It sees Ganon placing the hero in prison and leaving it up to the princess of Hyrule to save him. While this would be a brilliant change of pace, Zelda's Adventure was the third and final Zelda game to appear on the Philips CDi.
One thing they did right was switching the perspective to top-down, but even that wasn't done well enough to save the game. Zelda's Adventure had the same terrible voice acting, dialogue, and animation of its predecessors. It was also extremely easy to die considering how sloppy the controls were. If you want our advice, if there's a Nintendo character with a Philips logo beside it, it's best if you stay away.
6 Tri-Force Heroes
Continuing the tradition of the few attempts at Zelda multiplayer by Nintendo, Tri-Force Heroes for the 3DS was designed to be played with other people either through a local or online connection. The game puts three little Links in a dungeon that they must work together to solve. While this is interesting, it doesn't do enough to make it legendary.
As you might expect, the game feels very detached and is without a proper story progression due to it focusing more on multiplayer. Furthermore, not all of the dungeons are winners in their design, and without a proper way to voice chat with people you're playing with online, it can be extremely frustrating to win. If that's not enough to convince you, the game has already dropped in price despite coming out not even two years ago.
5 Majora's Mask
Here's another painful addition to this list. After the legendary success of Ocarina of Time, Nintendo decided to have one last Zelda hurrah on the 64 that continued that story. What we received was Majora's Mask. In it, Link has to journey across the land of Termina that has been threatened by a moon crashing down to the planet's surface. Link must then use time travel and new costumes to save the day.
The time mechanic in Majora's Mask is aggravating, to say the least. Most people who started the game never finished it due to this alone. Furthermore, the dungeons don't stand out when looking at the series as a whole. There are also some control schemes for different costumes that aren't exactly the most intuitive. Some of these things were polished in the 3D remake, but that version added a few new issues as well.
4 Four Swords Adventures Anniversary
A lot of multiplayer games are great when you find the right amount of people. When you just play by yourself, the experience becomes a mere shadow of what it could be. That is precisely the case with Four Swords Adventures Anniversary. The game was originally released on the GameCube as a four-player Zelda game and saw a return on the 3DS.
The problem here is that not everybody has the game or can even download it anymore, leaving a mere fraction of 3DS owners with the title. What this means is that you'll probably play through the game on your own, and you'll have to still control two Links. With the GameCube, it was easy for everyone to just hop in, but with the 3DS, it becomes a little more difficult and ten times more tedious.
3 Skyward Sword
When Skyward Sword first came out for the Wii, it was received to stellar reviews, getting nearly perfect scores across the board. As time went on, many people started to realize that the game wasn't as good as they thought, and it's fairly disliked nowadays.
Skyward Sword is a Zelda game that's fully designed around motion controls. Not just the swing your Wii remote controls of Twilight Princess. They went for a 1 to 1 movement scheme. However, the controls weren't nearly as tight as they should've been, and the entire adventure was painfully linear. While linearity isn't a bad thing, Skyward Sword's world is so inviting that we wanted to fly to every corner. Instead, we just had to follow the game's script.
2 Twilight Princess HD
Twilight Princess isn't the greatest Zelda game, with its long tutorial and muddy visuals, but there's still enjoyment to be had. After Nintendo perfected The Wind Waker with Wind Waker HD on the Wii U, they decided to do the same thing with Twilight Princess.
However, it's easy to say that there weren't enough improvements (even in the visual department) to justify re-releasing Twilight Princess for full price. The tutorial is still just as long as you remember, and the visuals are just as dull. Where Wind Waker became one of the most gorgeous games on the Wii U, Twilight Princess is only slightly improved from its predecessor. The climbing animation is sped up and you get added Amiibo support, but other than that, there wasn't much done to polish this game.
1 Hyrule Warriors Legends
When Dynasty Warriors and The Legend of Zelda came together to create Hyrule Warriors, there was a lot of natural excitement. The game was solid and featured tons of characters from across the series to keep players interested. While the story wasn't anything particularly interesting, the gameplay was fun enough to keep many coming back for months.
It makes sense that Nintendo would port this game over to the 3DS. Hyrule Warriors Legends takes the game on the Wii U and brings to a handheld with new characters and missions. However, because of the big hardware gap, Hyrule Warriors Legends suffered a lot of sacrifices. The game doesn't look as good, it runs terribly (almost unplayable on old 3DS), and the system just can't process that many different characters on screen at a time. It's clear that the Wii U version is the definitive way to play.