After almost 30 games, The Legend of Zelda has morphed into one of the biggest video game franchises out there. With Nintendo seemingly growing stronger all the time, there’s no reason to expect that Zelda games will be ending anytime soon. They’re hits with fans and critics, and they’re usually good moneymakers for Nintendo, too.
This is largely because the quality has always been incredibly high. From the beginning, there’s been a love and care put into developing pretty much all the games in this franchise. Of course, they’re not all hits. No game franchise that’s this old can survive without at least a couple of misfires, and Zelda is no different. With this in mind, these are the three worst Zelda games ever made.
3. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Let me preface this by saying Skyward Sword is not quite a bad game, it’s just one of the worst in a franchise full of all-time greats. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword just suffers from a lot of issues. Many of the franchise’s worst impulses are on full display here, and while the narrative is one of the strongest, the gameplay is among the weakest.
The Nintendo Switch remake in 2021 helped fix some of the gameplay issues, but it and the original from the Wii both suffer from poor controls. The motion controls are not great, even when they’re “turned off” for the Switch. The mechanics are lackluster and generally slightly unpleasant.
It suffers badly from repetitiveness. There are three main sections of Hyrule floating below Skyloft, and players have to visit them several times each just to complete different sections of the game. One gets tired of Faron Woods after playing through the same area over and over again.
This repetitive issue isn’t exclusive to the areas, though. The dungeons in each area are massive, sprawling locales that require players to backtrack constantly. They are incredibly tedious at times and often quite difficult, unrewardingly so.
The soundtrack, graphics (it’s among the best Link has ever looked), and story help prevent this from being a truly awful game, but it’s still down there near the bottom.
2. The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
Most Zelda titles are single-player, story-driven puzzle/adventure games. Four Swords gave early fans of the franchise a look at some multiplayer, but it didn’t go very well, which may be why there’s not much on that front in this series today.
It is enjoyable and features a good art style, but that style was done in a better game in The Minish Cap. It’s also maybe not fair to call this add-on sort of game (it came with the GBA port of A Link to the Past) one of the worst, but in a franchise full of incredible titles, something has to be criticized and ranked as one of the worst games.
What Four Swords failed to do was stand out beyond offering some rudimentary multiplayer options. The story didn’t linger in gamers’ memories, partly because it was a rather short game. All in all, it just didn’t do enough to be memorable, and without much going for it, it can easily be deemed one of the most lackluster Zelda games to date.
1. Zelda II: The Adventures of Link
Nintendo thought after one successful game that The Legend of Zelda’s formula needed a shakeup. After the groundbreaking success of the original as a top-down, dungeon-crawling adventure game, they went totally sideways for the sequel. Literally, as in Link moved from side to side straight on as if he were Mario in a 2D platformer.
This shocking change stands out even though it was only the second game. At the time, there was one top-down and one side-scroller, so the franchise could’ve gone either direction. Thankfully, they reverted to top-down before later evolving with more 3D games.
Zelda II combined several elements from other games, making this a strange mashup of side-scroller platforming, JRPG character interactions, and 2D action gameplay. It was odd and off-putting, and it’s a wonder it didn’t result in the premature end of the franchise.
It is unique in this massive franchise, but that’s not really a good thing. It provided new difficulties that can lead to players giving up entirely, so the experiment was definitely not worth it.
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