EVERY Dungeon in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Ranked from Worst to Best 

Wind temple was definitely my favorite I love how the boss battle has the Rito theme mixed in.

@@waterzipper Boss sucked bad though

I have not felt that kind of child like joy playing video games for years, that moment where everything went total silent when you went above the storm gave me chill and diving down into the temple was amazing.

​@@zic3le583 Worst take of all time

@@zic3le583 it was easy af but at least it was epic

Exactly bro that’s how I want the new dungeons to feel like

For people like me, the beauty of it was being able to see it, and just.. do the puzzles, ignoring everything else. I hate dungeons, passionately, so I appreciate being able to cut to *just* what I have to do to get through. With a decent if unchallenging boss fight at the end. Then again, none of the bosses other than phantom ganondorf have been challenging.... I've beaten them all and I'm struggling to remember some of them tbh. The blights from BotW were more memorable. If nothing else, they were more challenging and fun to fight than "shoot the exposed weak point three times to win"

@@stevenn1940 meh. tbh besides thunder blight, the blights are way too easy to stun with arrows because of their huge head hitbox

​@@stevenn1940 many were new versions of windwaker bosses. Gorons had a new version of Gohma, Rito Village's boss was a new version of Molgera

@@Voltricity435 You had to hit the eye specifically to stun, not just the head. Even then, it took more than 18 hits within 45 seconds to kill them.

Exactly! Despite the boss being easy, that has been the case in previous Zelda games as well. What seperates this is the boss theme. Having an iconic and fantasic OST makes this boss fight way more enjoyable. Colgera has one of the best boss themes the franchise has had.

its fun

It’s also a massive spectacle, it’s beautiful

@@theyokester3541 Yeah its weirding me out that were pretending that Colgera (who for all intents and purposes was the first boss of the game) is a bad boss. Compared to other bosses in Zelda Colgera with multiple ways of fighting and a kick ass theme is a great boss. All I can think of is people saying Argorok was a good boss and saying this was a bad one ugh.

@JEVIL_DELTARUNE yes, it was

Honestly, being able to beat the boss without a weapon has a lot of appeal and epitomizes the design philosophy of this game.

It may not have been difficult, but it certainly was cinematic. An ideal first boss in that respect.

yeah colgera was great. its very easy but it feels epic and cinematic. i wish more bosses in the game were as gargantuan

I agree, Colgera is super fun to fight, especially subsequently underground. People saying he was a bad boss must not remember any old Zelda boss for example: WW - Gohma, just swing to win. Barrenaide, just pour water on it and it instantly dies TP - Gohma, arrow, hammer repeat. Argorok, literal on the rails fight Are all of a sudden pretending shooting an eye and then wailing on it with a sword was more fun than skydiving through a worm or shooting its underside?

Ultimately I think Mucktorok was my favourite boss. Not especially challenging either, but it had plenty of personality and was the only boss that gave you a real opportunity to flex your ultrahand a bit. Even just having him chased around the arena by three hydrant-carts is pretty fun.

You're right, it captured that exactly exactly what I hate about every single dungeon of every single previous zelda game.

Also sky bombing the boss’s weak points will never not be fun

i think it's intended to be the first one. when you get the regional phenomona main quest purah reccomends you go to rito village first. so makes sense why it's probably the easiest one

@@Voltricity435 you also get a set of cold resistance pants up in the intro if you explore well enough

@@dragonstouch1042 yup. i got that but somehow missed the skirt on the great sky islands lmao

I did not use a single weapon :D

@@j.s.173 Same

I honestly don’t know how you do the unintentional method without stamina

should've forced the player to do it that way. I just shot it.

colgera was probably my favorite, i loved not having to use my weapons and it was SO fun it felt really epic too

I did Gerudo Town last. (Went just clockwise) and read in the coments about it covered in a sandstorm. When i arrived there, i felt "Oh shit." And then i met the Gibdos. And during the town defense portion, my brother just yelled; "They put f-ing wings on these bastards and made them sprout from funghi?" And then the boss happened.....Combining the classic undead with moths was genius.

Most of the towns give me heavy Majora’s mask vibes when the dungeon isn’t completed yet. Maybe it’s the distorted music and the curses set upon them.

Wait how do you beat it with arrows

Fly above the boss and let it shoot the icicles on it’s back and when there is cracked ice you can skydive though it to damage the boss

​@@jacoboloughlin7869 shit that sounds hype as hell

@NotWesley RIGHT?! with the exception of the finale phase of the final boss it is the best spectacle in the whole game

don't even get me started on the music ❤️

I didn't see most of the fire temple as I used 3 springs fused together to jump around and avoid all the mine cart stuffs :p

Me too! It’s like I knew I had to use the rail carts and change the tracks but I didn’t feel like doing all of that

lmfao i just climbed

I just climbed and since I did it second to last I had max stam

I didn't Hate it personally, but it was definitely my least favorite. I found the map very difficult to read when it came to the minecarts, although I'm not sure how to make it better. I also prioritized hearts over stamina my first (and only) playthrough, so I literally Couldn't climb through it lol. It was the only one were a had a moment or two of "okay I'm just frustrated right now, instead of having fun."

I just have Tulin activated lol

I just love the chaos lol

Nah I love the sages, it’s nice to have a team by my side. And some times we get some cool combos in from everyone.

I put over 300 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and over 160 in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, I have nothing to fear

Not so sure i agree. It does not feel like one, but the lead up to the demon king's forces is arguably just as challenging as hyrule castle was in BotW, the only difference being how linear it was in comparison to better scale each challenge but make it much easier to run past them. If you show up unprepared, the gauntlet will decimate you. Show up ready to put ganondorf in his place and you can sprint past the entire thing (that you know about) with nothing more than chip damage. BotW's hyrule castle is an amazing experience if you either stick to the exterior road and fight guardians and lynels, or infiltrate the castle itself and stick inside until the very end with abundant enough high tier normal enemies to drain your resources, but it can also be entirely skipped simply by equipping the zora chest piece and finding the series of 3 waterfalls that bring you straight to the sanctum without any interference (except a few turrets just outside). Those 3 waterfalls were the exact reason i yolo'd ganon after 2 DBs when i was only there to attempt a raid for weapons, and it left me with a sense of "what now?" after succeeding. The DBs were the only reason i returned, thanks in part to my ignorance of how bad they were as dungeons without the aid of hindsight.

I agree. The sequence getting into water and wind temple were insane

And the underground portion/ ascent up death mountain with the mini boss, and the whole connecting the lights for the lighting temple

I agree, the lead up’s feel like part of the dungeon to me

I woudl argue that the questline leading to dungeons probably should be counted as part of them in general. Tears of the kingdom just made that fact more noticeable by having sections like the ascent to the wind temple and the construct factory which greatly blurs the line between the dungeon and its questline.

@GoblinPink btw if you have full stamina and 10 hearts (to open the door) the thunder head islands are optional, you can glide straight there from the rabella wetlands skyview tower. this skips the kakariko and dracozu lake quests. (it also enables you to get mineru technically as your first champion in the entourage. (Provided you have done all the geoglyphs (requirement to start spirit temple))) I did this in my playthrough to skip ever "needing" to do the camera main quest the kakariko main quest and the lake main quest. (i still did all the other champions and dungeons first though) RTGame also did this in his playthrough to obtain mineru before sidon

how about the Rito threatening to go extinct by freezing to death? thats how i felt when i went to rito villiage before i beat the boss.

personally im gald the water temple isnt underwater, my thalassophobic ass wouldnt have able to even play.....

@@Da_Sire I can imagine the lake bed temple in TP really caused you issues

Only thing that breaks lightning temple for me is the boss fight, laser does way too much damage compared to its uptime and the fact that the tornadoes can be spawned on top of you before you have time to react and one shot at 12 hearts is pretty insane

Ambatublou

I disagree tbh. not being able to see a thing is what makes the dephs fun and while gloom is annoying it never really became a problem(vehicles save ur life) as for the sprit temple it wasn't bad but not my fac

As long as you either use an elixir or have the outfits that either cause you to glow or resist gloom, the depths become pretty much a non-issue tbh.

I feel the quests got more and more complex in the intended order you do them. Rito one is basically just one cave and then the rising island chain. Goron has you do a few mid bosses and some exploration. Zora had lots of quests, puzzles, an underground section, and THEN a full island chain. And gerudo of course has you do the puzzle to enter gerudo town, whole desert defense sections and then the puzzle to open the dungeon. Then the lower section before you even get to the main area of the dungeon

It was amazing, though. The Gibdo Invasion was probably one of the most fun moments in the game for me

i found the gerudo one the most boring cause of how long it takes not to mention the side quests that involves more sidestuff

The boss fight goes by faster with arrows.

There's no real indication that you can dive through the weak points, whereas "Shoot the glowing weak point with a projectile" is kind of a staple of gaming.

​@@tortoiseoflegends4466they teach you on the climb up that you break ice platforms by landing on them

@@HamsterMaster8Yeah but also myself and a lot of people didn’t even attempt diving into it cuz we thought Link would just eat shit, so instead I always threw fire at the ice to melt it. I love Colgera’s presentation and the fun way to beat him is really fun, but the fact that you can beat him so easily with the arrows puts a huge damper on the experience for me

@@SailorCheryl yeah construct factory and gloom’s approach deserve to have maps. As they ARE dungeons.

For me, the water temple was one of my favorites because it was open and easy to traverse. I hate the dungeons, full stop, so keeping it straightforward was greatly appreciated. The boss was annoying though. Not hard, just annoying.

​​​@@stevenn1940 ... It's... It's a Zelda game... If you want a generic open world game that doesn't ask you to engage with puzzle solving or put any roadblocks in your way, there are a bajillion options out there...

@@parrot998 Yeah, and I love all the parts of zelda games *except* the dungeons. Which, one, doesn't include the bosses usually, and two, is actually less than half the game when you really actually think about it. The puzzles in zelda dungeons are a very specific kind of puzzle, and I hate them 90% of the time. I say that having played... most nintendo-made zelda games

@@stevenn1940 It is still an integral part of Zelda's identity.

that was funny, weak atmosphere while the dungeon is a 0gravity zone

I feel the same way as you dude. To me, the Lightning Temple felt the most dungeon like and gave me hope for the new formula. Along with variety, I hope the dungeons are more dense with enemies and puzzles leading up to the objectives opposed to just having a straight line towards them. If they can pull something like that off, then I’m all for this new format.

Yeah the dungeons were a let down for me

You can't have variety in a game where each dungeon is designed to be done in any order. This keeps things at a difficulty level close to the great deku tree. But for the whole game. These dungeons fail because they're non-linear, amd focus on making smaller puzzle boxes with open ended solutions, rather than a tightly woven thread of puzzles that have 1 or 2 solutions, that test the player gradually until the end. Therefore, these dungeons cannot possibly make players connect ideas between rooms and throughout the labyrinths - the only way to do it, with all the tools given at the beginning, is to make each dungeon easy and have isolated puzzles connecting back to the main hub just to access the boss and nothing more. It really is a sad tale. The rest of the game is fantastic, though.

To be fair, most Zelda dungeons have ALWAYS had the same structures. Find the room with the key, do it again and maybe again. Fight the mini boss to get the item. Now use the item to reach new rooms with keys to progress. Find the key to the boss room. Fight the boss the end. Zelda dungeons have always used this structure so having all dungeons in botw/totk to have same structure (the 4/5 terminal thing) is not surprising. I just think that lots of the puzzles this time is based upon the abilities you get at the start and things start to become muscle memory so there is very little variety in challanges.

@@shigerumiyamoto9612 that too but there were dungeons that attempted to change things up like the SnowHead Manor which had you collect ingredients for soup and Temple of time that made you complete the dungeon in reverse all under the framework of get dungeon map-get compass-get item- get boss key- fight boss. Innovation should always be encouraged

I think it would be so much better is yunobo didn’t teleport during the dungeon so you’d actually have to do the puzzles. Riju doesn’t teleport, why can’t yunobo?

Yeah, I found that to be more of a hassle than a help, in my case.......I tried beating him that way, only for him to shift positions at the last second and punt me aside, sending me into an inescapable spin (Believe me! I spammed the glider button, and nothing happened!) that sent me plummeting over the side of the Wind Temple. One time, and four hearts of damage was enough to tell me "Screw that method!"

That’s what I did, I discovered it on my own as I beat the wind temple the day TotK came out. (I was sick and nothing else to do)

Yeah, I think Royal hidden passage could be developed to become a real dungeon, or could be served as the only way to access Hyrule castle

Yes. This should be dungeon 8. He left out dungeon 7, Hyrule Castle Chasm.

Instead of just an enemy gauntlet to find Zelda, I believe Floating Hyrule Castle could’ve had a few puzzles that are mix of traversal and navigating traps. Hyrule Castle Chasm could’ve done the same thing.

Wasn't a dungeon at all, if I'm honest. It's nothing but a trudge through a linear cave to reach a wave of monsters then the final boss.

it definitely didn't feel like a dungeon

Eh. The whole thing took me 5 or so minutes, not including bosses, and I just ran past every enemy down there, up to and including the Lynel.

There weren't any puzzles, there weren't any secrets, just a (largely skippable) gauntlet of monsters on the way to Ganondorf.

Yeah it’s considered a dungeon. Some people might not realize it as there isn’t a map. I kinda wish it had a map too.

I never used arrows but yeah it's not too bad. I think Fire temple boss is defiantly the easiest though. That thing is a joke

Definitely had some OOT vibes

@@TraceguyRune yea especially with the light puzzles

Cant say i agree tbh. Its still really short, and the puzzles are kind of obvious. But they nailed the atmosphere

Exactly how I’d rank them👍

I would swap the water and wind temple because I think the puzzles in the water temple were cooler and yes the boss was kinda annoying but at least it was you know a boss FIGHT

@jacobkirk1846 yeah one of my fav moments in the game so far was easily finding the owl helm and doing that whole thing. dunno why ppl are hatin on mineru, i loved every part of that one but the lead up is def the best part

That just looks like the order you did them in lmao

It's like the dungeons progress in stages

I love all the zora stuff. Actual temple part is kinda wierd but it's great. Fire temple was defiantly my least fav and that boss is super easy.

My god, I was just at that point of the fire dungeon, and I gave up, and I’m not coming back to this awful temple. Yunobo’s gimmick is terrible. If I’m honest it makes me want to stop playing this game, I find it more frustrating than fun overall.

I only have the water temple out of the 4 main ones left to do, but I agree with this SO much. I HATED the Fire Temple with a passion. It was too confusing to traverse. I liked the boss though, mainly when it clicked for me how to aim at the perfect spots for when he was up on the ceiling. But yeah, otherwise I was complaining the entire time, and if I ever play this game again, it's definitely this section here that'll give me pause.

Haven't done lightning or spirit yet doing water now it's okay The wind was fine nice atmosphere but the fire temple was nearly old zelda water temple annoying ! I liked ghoma thats about it there

I did feel like it had those similar mechanics too, but also mixed a bit with the feel of the old classical dungeons to an extent.

From "killed in 45 seconds" to "one of the only challenging boss fights" yeah, that's a bit of a spike

Same here I actually kind of struggled with queen gibdo honestly

went from "yes haha what a fun and funky time i love flying around without a care in the world" to "no arrows left no food left i have broken all my weapons by throwing them and i am just chucking bomb flowers wildly" but that was probably my fault i didn't want the queen gibdo to be the first boss i had to retry

the problem is they are all pretty same-y, and BotW meant they couldnt spend much time with the surface layer versions (to the point that the game spells out the correct path if you find the journal telling you about it.) The surface layer is almost entirely skipped (though i havent gone back to see if they are still as chest-filled as BotW), the sky layer has no enemies and a fully skydive set acts as speed up lvl5 (to the point it can be a bit hard to keep your bearings) whilst also telling you exactly where the nodes are if you set the associated quest, whilst the depths layer is just a single common overworld boss with very little to stand out other than the guaranteed reward after (the darkness does very little, and can be completely avoided by ascending to the nearby lightroot before taking the dive again from the surface). Just for the sake of humoring the idea, i would rank them together in the same spot and put them above the mindless hyrule castle gauntlet that doesnt hold a candle to BotW's take on the same place (to the point of being the only good dungeon in that game).

If they’re dungeons then they’re definitely the weakest ones in the game

but dont u need tulin?

@@aaryaaswadhati5525 There are people who have done play throughs that show how to do it. First, you need to have full stamina and 10 hearts (to open the door). Secondly, you must have visited all the geoglyphs and collected their memories. Then, you can glide straight to the Thunderhead islands from the Rabella Wetlands Skyview Tower. From there, it's a "simple" matter of completing the quest to gather the construct's parts, assemble it and go down to the Spirit Temple to fight the Seized Construct so that you can unlock Mineru as a companion character.

really? I mean it was easy sure but it was by far the biggest spectacle in the whole game

The wind boss was probably the best in the game. The music alone is all-time great territory and the fight is an awesome spectacle. Definitely on the easy side though.

I did the exact same with the fire temple. I don’t really feel like I solved any puzzles because I was just that confused with it.

Yeah, the fire temple was too confusing for me as well. Just kinda cheesed it by only taking a couple minecarts and abusing ascend and climbing.

And they actually show you respect for your efforts!

Definitely love that the Gerudo have been given their own unique culture including their own language.

This! I ended up hating the "every dungeon is just finding the 3-5 spots to use your partner's power" gimmick that they all followed.

​@wonkybones Everyone is so obsessed by the littlest spoilers it's not even funny.

💓

Exactly how I feel. The fire temple was sooooo frustrating. I promised myself I wouldn't look ANYTHING up for the temples and fire was a PAIN. I was yelling at my TV for hours.

Colgera is built around the gimmick some players never discover. The best experience comes from doing the fight without wasting a single resource, so even its rematches are fun. If resources were required for the fight, it very likely would have become the single worst boss in the game, and yet you are proposing making the resource drain even worse? If anything, it is the fire weakness left unexplored. If bombs/fire arrows could take out each segment in 1, maybe i would agree with the risk/reward flow, but requiring it feels like a step too far. Ever try fighting queen gibdo without arrows? The fight is fun enough as the end of a dungeon, but the resource drain is not worth doing the re-fights unless you really want to know the contents of the guarded chest (or desperately need a "good" guster weapon, but even then, does a guster weapon really need attack power?). Suggesting fuse as a requirement for colgera would make the fight almost as unbearable as arrow-less queen gibdo, and that is before talking about how every dungeon boss in TotK has multiple ways to fight that requiring fuse would ruin for colgera. A boss doesnt have to be hard to be fun, and colgera embodies that philosophy. Remember that, when ignoring dungeons, every boss has to be fought before ganondorf, and during that rush there is no guarantee you have the associated sage to trivialize it. It might not matter much for colgera, but changing one starts walking a fine line, and the resource drain can make a huge difference when queen gibdo is still waiting in the wings for its turn.

@@cullenlatham2366 Dude I was just making a suggestion, no need to get worked up over it. What I was suggesting is that they make the fight a bit more difficult by adding in something to make it last longer. That’s it. No need to write a college essay on how I’m wrong when I didn’t even intend for this comment to be seen by most people. Just lay off it.

@@AwesomeGuy123 And you probably misread my tone, or at least it came off more harsh than intended. I was speculating on how the change could affect the game, and decided i was hesitant at best. It was not meant to be an essay completely debunking your idea, just showing my contrary opinion. I am a bit of an over-thinker, so essay-rants come a bit too naturally to me.

@@cullenlatham2366 Oh ok, it just came off as a bit antagonistic.

Right with the lucky clover Gazette and impa being on your path there really cements the idea that you should do the trick first also Tulin has the best sage ability hands down

Hated the run up, hated the dungeon, and the boss took less than a minute. Second worst imo.

Definitely the hardest of the main temple bosses on first try. Once you get used to rotating champion abilities while kiting adds around in phase 2, though, it gets substantially easier. Also, arrows with fire peppers or spritzberries can really, really help out with boss and adds.

I mostly climbed everywhere in the fire temple lol.