HYAH! As Link's sword plunges into the fleshy jello of the last green chu-chu bobbling about, a chest spawns in the middle of the room in a cloud of green smoke. Alright, alright, let's get on with the cutscene of Link marvelling at whatever is inside for a few seconds while the game plays our favourite soundtrack before our hero in green holds it above his head for the world to see. We ALL know that it's a small key to open the door to the next room anyway.

"TA-DA TADAAAAAAA" the music plains gayly as Link exhibits his proud reward of... three red hearts. At that point, you're realizing that the actual small key is on the other side of the whole dungeon, across that annoying room with the Skultullas, or another boring room with gaps that you cross with the hookshot, or even that other long room with enemies here and there. Nothing fun, just work.

Crap. Aren't there better dungeons around? Ones with cool atmospheres or fun stuff to do in them? Why yes, yes there are. The Legend of Zelda hasn't always been awesome with its dungeons, but I can assure you that the ones that are cool will make you regret beating their boss.

Since I don't only sale dreams here, I have compiled the best and worst Zelda dungeons in the Zelda franchise prior to Breath of the Wild.

15 BEST: Forest Temple, Ocarina Of Time

This one is by far one of my favourite Zelda dungeons of all time. Yes, I am aware it isn't a very original choice for a favourite, but doesn't that prove my point at how awesome this dungeon is?

In the Forest Temple, Link must locate four ghosts, or "Poes", each of a different colour, around a somewhat abandoned, and very much overgrown temple (wouldn't be called the forest temple if it weren't!). The atmosphere is particularly oneiric in this dungeon, especially because of the wonderful, possibly woodwind soundtrack that anyone could doze off to.

On the other hand, the temple itself is unsettling and a bit spoopy with those ghosts flying around in what seems to be a haunted mansion... which makes it even more awesome!

The only slightly disappointing aspect of this temple is probably the boss. Nintendo went with a simple shadow of Ganon when they could've gotten so much more creative than that. Yet, the creepy forest remains my personal favourite.

14 WORST: Water Temple, Ocarina Of Time

Of course, everyone's bane of their existence had to be around here somewhere. Trust me, there are many reasons why the water temple is here.

The Water Temple, for those who may not know, is a temple in Ocarina of Time where you wear totally logical iron boots in which you have to move Link across three different water levels, making him swim up (ever so slowly) or sink down (even more slowly). You effectively change those water levels by playing your ocarina at the three specific points, each on a different floor (another process to eat more of your time).

The system isn't super complex to grasp, but it sure is annoying when you forget a small key on floor three for a door that's on floor one while you're on floor two. Did I mention that the dungeon is full of tedious time-based puzzles?

13 BEST: Shadow Temple, Ocarina Of Time

Another popular choice in Ocarina of Time would be the Shadow Temple. Why? For one, it contains one of the enemies that have marked your childhood almost as much as Navi yelling "Listen" at you.

That enemy is of course Dead Hand, which you can also find at the bottom of the well mini-dungeon. When you enter its room, you see six long arms sticking out of the ground. When one grabs you (or tries to grab you), Dead Hand, a hideous white creature covered in what seems to be blood, sprouts out of the ground and tries to bite you with its humongous mouth while one of its arms pins you down.

If that weren't creepy enough, the whole dungeon's atmosphere is freaky! Between the sombre music, the Redeads jumping on you (yes, on you) or even the awesome boss Bongo Bongo (that spooky and original drummer creature), the shadow temple is like a trip to a haunted mansion, and boy are haunted mansions fun!

12 WORST: Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly, Ocarina Of Time

It's not that I hate being inside a giant fish, but gosh was that giant fish's insides boring! With only pink fleshy walls, electric jellyfish, freaking holes in the ground and electric tentacles dangling from ceilings to compose the dungeon, Jabu-Jabu's belly was already dull to begin with.

Yet we all know what made this dungeon worse: the whiny Princess Ruto. Besides the fact that she is the most spoiled, ingrate, nagging and just plain annoying character in Ocarina of Time, she also requires Link to carry her around Jabu-Jabu's insides while electric jellyfish (that you HAVE to use your boomerang to kill, which you only find further in the dungeon) try to shock you.

What's that? Does Ruto help? HA, no. Besides being used as a dead weight to activate a switch or two, princess Ruto is the biggest burden, and guess what? SHE CAN'T SWIM. Drop her in water and POOF, you get to go get her back in the first room of the dungeon. Fun times in gastric fluids indeed.

11 BEST: Spirit Temple, Ocarina Of Time

As one of the last temple in the game to explore, the Spirit Temple requires you to make use of most of your items. This makes it definitely more mentally stimulating than inside the Deku Tree now doesn't it?

On top of that, part of the dungeon has to be explored by young Link and the other by adult Link. Sure, making the trip is a bit annoying to age and de-age him, but it really helps the dungeon be more versatile!

However, I wouldn't say that the puzzles are the only element that make this temple one of the best ones. The Spirit Temple's atmosphere and mysterious, exotic music make it an amazing experience to play through. The middle-eastern instruments and synth send your mind to an ancient Egyptian tomb while you battle Keese and Lizalfos(es?). The Spirit Temple is definitely a mesmerizing and almost hypnotic place to play through.

10 WORST: Great Bay Temple, Majora's Mask

Oh look, another water temple made the list. What a surprise. I would assume that it's probably because movement is slowed in water, which makes playing these dungeons longer and more tedious than others.

However, with the Great Bay Temple, it gets worse. Switching between Hylian and Zora forms over and over gets tiring, and you get to do it throughout most of the dungeon. Your goal is to find the different levers to change the water currents, but you find those by swimming through said annoying water currents, and I'm not even mentioning the nagging enemies hiding at the bottom of the water.

Once you've successfully swum through most of this long and tiresome dungeon and reached the boss, you get rewarded with an ordinary boss (it's a giant fish for crying out loud, even Ocarina of Time's water temple boss was more original than that!) and an annoying battle where you use the boring and hard to control skills of Link's Zora form. So much for working the plumbing of Great Bay Temple.

9 BEST: Snowpeak Ruins, Twilight Princess

An ice temple that isn't just an ice mountain? Whaaaaat?

Snowpeak Ruins is probably one of the most distinguishable dungeons in The Legend of Zelda because the dungeon actually has a story to it. Link ventures into a yeti couple's mansion, and has to find the piece of magic mirror for the yeti wife who's sick. She points you around the dungeon to where the piece might be and makes you roam around her home. Meanwhile, her husband is making soup: feel free to take some for the road.

The mechanics in this dungeon are pretty straightforward, and the enemies aren't that difficult. What really makes this dungeon one of the best is the concept of visiting someone's mansion (and not a whole house made of ice), only to see that their home has monsters everywhere in it and they don't seem to care.

If that wasn't original enough, you get to fight a possessed yeti wife as a boss, and let me tell you, her face doing a 180° really creeps me out, even today.

8 WORST: City In The Sky, Twilight Princess

This dungeon is probably the reason why I stopped playing Twilight Princess and never finished it. On top of being dull, with no interesting colors, enemies or without an original concept, this dungeon is incredibly long and tedious as well.

As you may have guessed, the City in the Sky is a sky temple. That means Link gets to explore an airborne dungeon, using his hookshot to "Spiderman" himself through rooms, occasionally getting hit by flying enemies making him lose health not once, but twice as he falls through the clouds. Fun stuff.

The concept of using the hookshot to get around is not necessarily bad, but in the case of this temple, it just slows everything down. Link has to hookshot to spinning panels that spin at 0.000001 miles per hour and stay holding on to them until he can hookshot to another one. Basically, this dungeon is a whole lot of waiting around.

7 BEST: Arbiter's Grounds, Twilight Princess

What does a cross between the shadow temple and the spirit temple look like? Thanks to Twilight Princess, we have our answer.

Picture yourself being in some kind of ancient tomb because essentially, that's what Link gets to explore at Arbiter's Grounds. With armies of skeletons rising from the sands or mummy warriors that chill you to the bone, this dungeon is like an Indiana Jones movie!

Link also finds a pretty original item for the Zelda franchise: the spinner. This Beyblade looking item allows Link to surf the sand dunes and is essential to beat the boss's dungeon, Stallord.

This giant fossil is pretty easy to beat, but man is that battle cool. With your Beyblade, you get to surf the walls of the dungeon and try to knock out that numbskull.

6 WORST: Stone Tower Temple, Majora's Mask

Sorry Majora's Mask, but your dungeons didn't seem to cut it. I honestly hesitated in putting this one in the best ones, but ultimately, Stone Tower Temple was more of a drag to me than anything else.

Stone Tower Temple is one of the last dungeons in Majora's Mask, which gives it the benefit of versatility: Link is compelled to use all masks and most items to make his way through the dungeon. He also is, unfortunately, forced to play the elegy of emptiness over and over again to summon statues to activate switches to get around.

The big mechanic of the dungeon, however, is the main source of its lameness. Link needs to flip the dungeon around by activating switches with his light arrows, ultimately exploring the ground and ceiling of stone tower temple. This mechanic can be amusing to some, but for me, it makes it so that the rooms are simply recycled, and that nothing new or exciting makes its way into the dungeon. The ceiling is not that fascinating.

5 BEST: Earth Temple, Wind Waker

For some odd reason, the creepier they are, the more fun the dungeons are to explore! And boy are the Redeads in the Earth Temple absolutely terrifying when they walk out of their tombs.

The Earth Temple in Wind Waker, besides for being scary, has Link and Medley work together to get around the temple. Link even controls Medley for her to fly to places! Hear that Princess Ruto? SHE'S ACTUALLY HELPFUL.

The mechanic of the dungeon revolves around a few light puzzles, which can be reflected with the mirror shield and with Medley's instrument. Essentially, you need to control two characters to shine a light in the right direction across the rooms of this spooky dungeon, which leads me to rank this dungeon as one of my favourites.

4 WORST: Tower Of The Gods, Wind Waker

I can't believe I'm ranking a Wind Waker dungeon here, but I had to put this one in. The Tower of the Gods has multiple small negative elements in it that piled upon each other really make the play-through a bit dull.

First, the setting is dull. Nothing makes this dungeon oneiric or interesting on a design level. Second, the music that was chosen just makes you want to get out. You get used to it after a while, but those loud male vocals really want to make you understand that this place is holy. Third, the unnecessary rising and decreasing water levels prolong the dungeon in a way that makes Link wait in water for about a quarter of the play-through. Water rarely makes a dungeon any better guys.

And fourth, those stupid tiki-like statues you have to move around. Wait, did I say you could move them around yourself? HA! No. You have to play the command melody, and then control the tiki statues to put them on their pedestal. They're also slow AF, so have fun waiting in the Tower of the Gods.

3 BEST: Forsaken Fortress, Wind Waker

How can a stealth level in a Zelda game be ranked as one of the best dungeons? Well, I for one enjoy the stealth challenges, but this isn't the only reason why the Forsaken Fortress made it here.

In Wind Waker, you get to go to the Forsaken Fortress twice. The first time, you have no sword and have to sneak past the guards. It's the very first "dungeon", so I find it fun that you get to encounter Ganon from the very beginning. It makes me think of Breath of the Wild where you can basically walk up to Ganondorf after the tutorial.

The real pleasure of this dungeon lies in the second play-through. Remember all those stupid pigs you had to creep past lest they threw you back in your cell, making you start all over again? Yeah, now you get to beat the crap out of them. This satisfying feeling really helped this dungeon's case, but the Forsaken Fortress also has this raw enemy hideout feel that makes the experience more realistic. Not every enemy deserves a whole castle or mansion to themselves.

2 WORST: Turtle Rock, Link's Awakening

I didn't develop too much on the more retro Zelda games because not many of the dungeons particularly stood out to me: it would be like ranking Super Mario Bros. levels. However, Turtle Rock changed my perspective.

The dungeon in itself is quite confusing, and it being in 2D doesn't help its case. With its 10000 rooms and keys to find, Turtle Rock is anything but linear. Overall, you get an experience that's more of a burden than fun.

There was a particular room where you had to throw bombs from a ledge into caterpillar-like creatures' mouths in order to retrieve a key, but those caterpillars sure loved hanging out on the other side of the room, leaving you bombless after a few tries and forcing you to go get more bombs god knows where. Frustration at its best.

Additionally, according to YouTuber TheJWittz, there is a route in Turtle Rock in which you can actually get stuck, without the possibility to find extra keys, therefore forcing you to start the game all over. None for me, thank you.

1 BEST: Deepwood Shrine, The Minish Cap

You probably don't even remember this dungeon, but it is the very first one in The Minish Cap, a Zelda game on Game Boy Advance.

This one is often overlooked by many, but it was to me (along with the Temple of Droplets) a dungeon that really made the experience of being shrunk down to Minish size more believable. The Deepwood Shrine combines the simplicity of the first dungeon in a Zelda game with original elements (like the giant barrel you have to run in to spin around), which results in an overall fun and relaxing experience.

The shrine also contains the first item in the game, the gust jar, an item that has a lot of versatility in itself. You could use it to clear floors from dust (an oddly satisfying experience), clear out cobwebs blocking the way, stunning enemies with a  strong puff of air, pulling rubber-like mushrooms from across the room to be propelled to the other side, or even as a motor for your lily-pad boat. With already so many possibilities in your first dungeon, the Deepwood Shrine remains one of my nostalgic favourites.