How Long Does It Take To Get To The First Dungeon in EVERY Zelda Game? 

Cool intro for the first time. But it's painful when you replay the game.

Absolutely, I love TP, aside from BOTW it's my favorite zelda game, the intro is long but it doesn't feel like filler (aside from goat hoarding) You do so much in that intro, imma end this comment now before I gush over TP to much

My problem is that its all mandatory tbh I understand your point of view on a conceptual level, and I remember enjoying the intro in my first playthrough where I went in effectively blind, but in subsequent playthroughs it just feels like unnecessary hand holding.

@@princeapoopoo5787 I get that. I’ve enjoyed it on every playthrough myself because I just kinda like to see link chilling and living a normal life. The game doesn’t tell you “link is just a normal kid who goes on an epic adventure”, it lets you live that out. Show don’t tell

I was about to say… even the goat herding 💀 but yeah it is really good

u explained it perfectly lmao

Watching this at 3am rn I gotta be up at 7😭

yep watching at 2 am, I got work at 6:30 in the morning lmaoooo

Why is this so accurate, it's 2:02 am for me rn

I feel like the issue is more on subsequent playthroughs, where you know all this already and just wanna get to the main stuff already.

... And then the yeti rears her ugly head.

That's the same reason I love Wind Waker

Also, I'd like to defend Twilight Princess's length. Even though it takes 1:30 Hours to get to the Forest Temple, there are many other locations before that which act like dungeons. Namely, the mission to save Talo and the Wolf Link Sewer section. Both are small, but have elements of dungeon exploration (ex. keys, monsters, mazes.)

Yeah back when you couldn't tell a story in game, you just booted it up and tried to figure it out.

I've just played Zelda 1 and it took me like an hour to find the first dungeon. It's easy once you know where it is but for a new player you're told nothing and you will likely get lost or explore the world. I pretty much explored all the map going east, north, south, at the center...there was this old man at the top right corner... and an old woman at the bottom left... many bearded dealers in between... a gambling addict... Finally, after having run out places, I went west and there it was beyond a small bridge lol. It's more hard to calculate times in open world games like this one or BOTW.

@@marcospina162to be fair the players were expected to read the manual that came with it at the time.

@@Jester_Jingles True, but nobody read it before playing the game xD. I read the manual online because I found every dungeon but the 2nd lol (and 7th but I'm not there yet).

I thought I was the only one who thought that lmao

I like Phantom Hourglass, I do not like Spirit tracks as much but it does have a wonderful ost.

I haven't seen anyone else mention this, but you can count the Temple of the Ocean King as the first dungeon for Phantom Hourglass. Granted the first trip is really short, and it doesn't properly open up till later. Still, I imagine you could cut off 5-10 minutes. Similarly, I would count the Tower of Spirits to be the first dungeon for Spirit Tracks. Even the first visit feels a lot more like a dungeon, and I imagine that would cut off 20-30 minutes.

I love Spirit Tracks for some reason, I think I just enjoyed the world. PH i liek less but it was still enjoyable.

Spirit Tracks Zelda is legit the best Zelda we've had(BOTW/TOTK is really good too tho, and I would count Tetra but sadly she gets pushed to the side in the middle of the story)

Controls add to it but my main things are in phantom hourglass the dungeon theme is not only repeated for every single dungeon but it's like literally just 2 f*cking notes and spirit tracks is super slow to get anywhere or do anything 100% wise the hardest in the series the control scheme just amplifies how annoying it is then both have beautiful parts and can be fun but are easily the least enjoyable and least repayable in the series. I had an argument with my brother about whether spirit tracks or zelda ii was harder and he claimed zelda ii until he played them both back to back.. lol

I think because most people do way more content before the first dungeon, it feels like it should be longer.

@Game Essays yeah you're probably right. In MM I never felt the need to get to the first dungeon asap because there's so much freedom in what you can do, while in TP you're pretty much forced to get the intro over with

I thought the same but with Wind Waker. I guess all of the stuff before Dragon Roost feels longer than it is.

Good point! But yeah in MM you can do 100 other things before the first dungeon. In TP there isn’t much freedom

​@@Beefnhammer wind waker is so boring for the first 2 or 3 hours.

I think it has a nice balance or story and fun gameplay even if it takes long to get to the actual dungeon.

@@GameEssays agreed 100%

People complain about the slow starts of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, but I think The Wind Waker has the worst pacing of any 3D Zelda game. The game takes a really long time just to get to the sailing. And even then, the amount of exploring you can do while sailing is heavily limited for a good deal longer. I like the Forsaken Fortress, but stripping Link of his sword for a lengthy stealth section after only fighting like three enemies is just strange. It’s not until the back half of the game that it really starts to deliver on its promises. Slow as they can be, at least TP and SS are getting you into the basics of the adventure much earlier.

wind waker is just a blast to play

Yes. The annoyingly long stealth dungeon is SO much more fun...

Nah I thought it was gonna be Skyward Sword. I stayed up so long playing that intro on Wii.

@@neonmenace1592 Nah. It was obviously going to be TP. The only thing slowing SS down is the slower text speed; TP has you do so much more before Forest Temple. TP: Get Epona, herd goats, find cradle, fish, fish, slingshot, slingshot and sword tutorial, find kids, herd goats again, escape from Hyrule Castle, get sword and shield, collect tears of light, follow slow monkey, go to Forest Temple. SS: Go to Zelda, go to Knight Academy, find loftwing, loftwing tutorial, Wing Ceremony, follow Fi, go to Faron, hit stake, go to temple, find kikwi, go to Skyview Temple. I stayed in line for 8 hours to get a Wii and play Twilight Princess and after racing back home and completing that slog of an intro I slept for like half a day, lol.

@@Argorox There’s also the fact that the intro of SS just flows so much better than the intro of TP. So while TP may take around an hour and a half and in actuality isn’t much slower than SS, it feels like it takes an eternity compared to SS because of how much random inconsequential shit it forces you to do before the first dungeon. Seriously, herding goats twice???

@@Argorox I've played both games, and while the intros are both very long, there was a lot more that kept me occupied in TP rather than in SS. It should however be said that the first dungeon in SS was a lot better than the first one in TP.

This is the deal... Twilight Princess is a Masterpiece... I'm glad I waited for Skyward Sword HD and we needed it during that Zelda drought. Lanayru is amazing, and so are the silent realms... Skyloft... Awesome!!! Wait a second I love all the Zelda games... even romhacks... you guys should watch some Zelda romhacks on my channel.

I had to mentally prepare myself for that one

@@GameEssaysdo yall find tp that bad? It’s in my top 3 with Majoras mask and botw

@@Luca.Bianconeri Its not that its bad, just that the intro before the first dungeon is long

​@@Luca.Bianconeri It's less about the game being bad, and more about the fact that the intro takes a long time in comparison to other LoZs

​@@Luca.Bianconeri it's easily the most pretentious Zelda title. It has a whole ass Guillermo Del Toro introduction like it's the fucking hateful 8 six hours in and nothing happens

I definitely went over TP in more detail than most to emphasize how much you have to do lol

@@GameEssays I thought SS was gonna be longer.

@@Stinkyremy there's only about 10 things you have to do before the first dungeon, and half that is just the tutorial.

Breath of the Wild doesn’t have dungeons. “Divine Beasts” and shrines aren’t dungeons. Just one of many reasons why it’s the worst 3d “Zelda” game of all time.

@@holleringsmith3837 that's not what the sales said. Also they're technically dungeons. However, they don't compare well to the traditional dungeons.

On a first playthrough, its really neat. If you ever want to play it again its agonizingly slow and repetitive.

I don't truly hate it (though it can certainly be a bit of a drag on replays)...but I do have a hilarious story on how it screwed over my plans. So my friend and I, both huge Zelda fans, were super hyped for Twilight Princess and decided we were gonna have a release party where we both buy a Wii and TP and I bring my TV over to his place to set it up right by his and experience the game together. I knew If likey have to camp out for a Wii, but figured if I just went after I got off of work that evening we'd be good...not so much. Already there were long lines and signs claiming limited supplies of only a few available consoles. Somehow, miraculously, right when we were on the cusp of giving up after checking the GameStop at the mall, we happened upon a sign on the doors to Sears claiming they'd have 2 Wiis tomorrow morning...and no line. Perfect! We camp out, get our Wiis, and prepare for epic Zelda adventure!!! Yeah yeah, the intro is a bit slow, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was the new motion controls and mandatory fishing part. Which is to say...we legit couldn't figure it out. We both got stuck trying to catch a fish for hours with no progress, and as the game was brand new the internet didn't have much help. So after all that our planned epic party ended up as a disappointing "play half the tutorial and then get stuck for an hour and give up" party lol. I'll always have a bit of a personal grudge against it for that. (And of boy how frustrating it was to discover you just had to hold the Wiimote straight up for a few seconds. We kept trying to flick it quickly, or even try a reeling motion.)

​@@Sdogofdoompersonally I really don't find that, I really like playing Zelda games for the story as well as the gameplay and the intro to Tp really helps get you invested in what link needs to protect and to show that this boy wasn't raised special at all

@@Gamemaster6400 That is definitely understandable, I tend to play games for the story the first time and the game itself for subsequent playthroughs, especially if i fully remember the story. I played TP the first time as a kid, and so when i picked it up again a decade later, I had fun with that first segment, but on a third playthough i couldn't stand the like 4 hours it takes to properly start the first dungeon.

I have great memories of it but in my 4th playthrough i really wished we could speed things up... Like a lot

Thing is, the boss (Agahnim) is fourth after you get the Master Sword, and you only explore the first half, so it's actually the 4th dungeon. Same with Forsaken Fortress

Not to necro, but I would have to disagree. It's missing one critical component, a story progression item (pendant or crystal). In pretty much all Zelda games there is some passive item unlocked after you complete the dungeon. Aside from this you can tell that in spirit the palace is the first dungeon.

@@mrlizard6529 Considering the 7 Dark World dungeons have you collect the maidens, you could consider Zelda to be that item

@@mrlizard6529 the boomerang and zelda could be considered those items.

@@skc4188 @mrlizard6529 boulder guy is the boss that protect the passive item, Zelda., Agahnim tower is yet another dungeon, as is Ganon Tower, making 13 dungeons in total.

It's amazing how optimized speedrunners have made it. My experiment was more in the spirit of a casual player seeing which generally take longer to get going when they want to casually replay a Zelda game. Thank you for sharing!

"If you can skip cutscenes, they're suddenly not as bad." It's not because it's long it's necessarily bad...

@@OnACloud They're bad in a speedrunning sense, a speedrun wouldn't want the cutscenes to be too long because, well, you would have to watch them every attempt. The cutscenes are great the first few times but the 100th time you would rather get to the meat of the run lol. I never meant it in another way, I love these games and some cutscenes are quite memorable.

@@azer67 Oh okay, sorry, you're totally right then! I'm just sick of people hating on long introductions. They can be great if done well, which is globally the case for these games

@Adriyin Both Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess have very effective introductions on a first playthrough, but it's undeniable that they suck hard for replays. Even beyond the cutscenes, adding a lot of time, there's a pretty good amount of fluff you need to wade through that ultimately doesn't even matter to the overall story (especially in Twilight Princess.)

Didn't know that! That would've helped the pacing to have that removed

@@GameEssays even tho it hurt the pacing a bit i feel like saving the kids and Ilia wouldnt really matter if we didnt experience their relationship before everything goes bad so I like this intro a lot anyway

There's actually several other things that were removed from TP. The most well-known one was that you were supposed to sumo each of the Goron elders for their key piece.

@Urayi I mean honestly aside from maybe Illia the kids genuinely are all uninteresting as fuck anyway. I love Twilight Princess to death, but you could easily have removed every one of them from the story aside from Illia and nothing really significant would have been lost (they have basically no screentime passed the prologue anyway.) Literally, the most memorable one is Malo and that's not because he's an interesting character, but because he's the most mature one despite looking like a literal infant (which looks extra creepy in TP's psuedo realistic artstyle.)

Omg same, that was the most educational thing in this video for me lmao

In ALttP you also rescue Zelda from a literal dungeon in the beggining

The 2 DS games and the Oracles would really deserve a remake

​@@stratonikisporcia8630if they remake the ds games, I NEED the temple of the ocean king to have warp points to skip past the parts you've already done. Literally the one thing that prevents me from playing phantom hourglass 😭

Well said!

Pretty much. I love both skyward sword and TP, but I never play them from the beginning and have a save file I copy over from that skips all the tutorial shit.

@@youtube-kit9450 I did that with Skyward Sword. Never replayed the game enough to use the short save file though.

I think that's deliberate. I didn't realize it until finishing the game, but in both it AND tears of the kingdom, they herd you a lot. Invisible herding, but powerful herding. Medoh is the easiest, but not the most straightforward to get to, so it rewards people who saw a big floating thing in the sky and went "yes. that. that first." while Ruta is the most logical progression of events for people who follow direction and don't mind going with the flow, since you go to Kakariko, see the wetlands, and naturally want to go explore. It's amazing how the designers pull you from place to place without you realizing how you've been pulled, how it fits in with your playstyle based on what pulled you, and how hard it makes it to put the game down since it keeps tugging you along to the next thing on the horizon XD.

@@KairuHakubi and then there's me... Where the first thing I did was get the fierce deity set because I happened across it and felt like searching for it xd

@@SnowFaceChamcham I do like when some of them make sense for where you find them. I want to say that set is in the depths versions of coliseums?

@@KairuHakubi lol I went to gerudo

@@drieshuybens4594 people like you get my respect. though the game does leave that available by gently giving you a peek of the baobab valley, beckoning only the most stout-hearted to give that place a shot.. but it's also deliberately discouraging to anyone who'd rather do easier parts first, seeing as you come across the giant horse (whom you cannot have enough stamina to ride right away AND who is hard to get safely to the nearby stable even IF you knew it was there), and a freaking Lynel, the first one you've come across if you go to Gerudo first.. and then you're hit with two different temperature issues, requiring a LOT of prep to get around..

Pretty sure it's just oot's water dungeon. both being underneath lake hylia and all. unless we look into the idea of hyrule kingdom expanding north and moving their capital in 100 years.

​@@voltrainer wouldn't that have to be the case? The Temple of Time in both games is in a completely different location, one near the castle and one all the way in the forest to the south. Unless I'm forgetting some dialogue explaining the temple moved for no reason.

@@midnightbloomofeorzea7182 well in the forest grove lies the old ruins of OoT’s castle town so the temple of time itself didn’t move it was castle town, so something did happen (there are many theories) but the castle did indeed move north

@VoltaireSurge maybe I'm thinking of the wrong name, but it's the one you enter by swimming from Lake Hylia's shortcut tunnel in the stone platform, right at the beach on Hyrule Field's side. In Ocarina of Time, it's a shortcut from Zora's Domain to Lake Hylia/vice versa. In Twilight Princess, it's the entry from Lake Hylia to the water temple. And you get to actually swim through the tunnel in TP, which was cool cuz in OoT, it fades to black, so it was real surreal to swim through there knowing you're seeing the same thing the other Link saw a dozen times and about to enter Zora' Domain. Then you emerge and it's so vastly different you have to question if it's the same one, how much time has passed, how good of Masons the Zora are, was it abandoned or was it repurposed, and etc. But if you swim back outside and look around, you pop on OoT and take a look. You compare map geography. And there's no doubt about it that it was once Zora's Domain but its now the Water Temple

i wish a video about that existed

Great point! Some artistic things like that get lost when newer generations just want faster text. Same with things like auto-save etc

Same it was very clean. I miss the GC version

Isn’t TP also like that ? Probably the best text box I ever saw.

What this video made me realize is there's a huge difference between intro sequences that feel like "events in your life," intros that feel like "early pieces of an adventure," and intros that feel like "the game doesn't want me to go ahead yet, and it's drilling all this into me because there's going to be a test tomorrow"

they were my fav, oracle of seasons was so good

Here's hoping for some temples in Tears of the Kingdom.

@@Sir_Adam great news!

​@Tired Potato eh. Kinda

@@johnnyguitar8067 What about them makes it only kinda? They're dungeons designed with BotW/TotK's freeform exploration gameplay foremost in mind.

@@devonm042690 they're very short (15 mins tops) and extremely easy. Just a big room connected to 5 small rooms where you solve the same puzzle 5 times in a row to unlock the boss fight. They're okay. But not really what I was expecting after 6 years.

Yeah. I really like it. It makes you WANT to save the world versus feeling like you HAVE to save the world.

I definitely would consider it! I would have to really think about the best route for those two since it gets a bit more complicated.

@@GameEssays especially when you consider the environment issues... you learn about managing cold on the great plateau, so it's different with tabantha and hebra, but eldin's fire gear can be really expensive, and the elixers you get at the foothill stable aren't enough for death mountain's peak (i think). and then of course gerudo requires a base minimum of 600 rupees to buy link's gerudo vai set. all in all, i think that it sounds like a really interesting idea! i went straight to gerudo on one of my first playthroughs, but i noticed that things like yiga clan hideout and attacking vah naboris could be difficult for people who hadn't mastered the mechanics of the game yet.

@@karoo_hoo2811 Going up to death mountain first would probably see you camping out at the bottom of the mountain hunting lizards to make elixirs, and even then you're only looking to make enough to reach Goron village to buy the gear which would still need rupees. This is ignoring the multiple guardians you'd find on the path toward the village, and even after you reach the village you still have to free Yunobo and escort him up the mountain. There is literally nothing about this divine beast that is remotely fast. Even doing the Yiga clan hideout for Gerudo would be faster.

Thank you!

And why did he get 10 more goats? Where did he get then from? How did he get them there in literally a day when you have to pass Link's house to enter Ordon?

A cycle is 54 minutes (with the first cycle actually running faster, though I can't find anything to back that up I heard it from speedrun commentary) so I believe they used all the time skip shenanigans (btw using the flower next to the inn to get in the 2nd floor door and talking to grandma, you can skip the first 2 days of the cycle before ever entering the observatory)

@@Chizypuff oooooo yeah I forgot you could talk to the grandma and skip that way, good point!

I'm actually working on a Minish Cap review as part of my ranking every Zelda series. Should hopefully be done before TOTK

I loved it, only hand held zelda I've played so far

If you open up the lost woods shortcut in Goron city by using deku stick torch on the bomb flowers, you can cut the time down a lot.

@@GameEssays Yeah! This is something I really appreciate about Oot in general. A first playthrough doesn't feel too short with it usually lasting 25+ hours (according to google at least), but on subsequent playthroughs you can speed through the game fairly quickly. For me as an example, I can beat the game in roughly 8-10 hours if I rush objective to objective using no glitches. For other 3D Zelda games this doesn't seem to be the case. There always seems to be 3-5 things you need to do before entering a dungeon with no skips or shortcuts. Maybe I don't know how to optimize those games as well, but it feels that Oot is the only 3D Zelda game that excels at this (except for BotW)

THat's the reason I like Ages LESS lol. It's fine at first but some of the later dungeons have some weird and difficult bosses.

That's because Seasons is a remake of the original game with dungeon locations and treasures, just with an actual story. Ages is an original game thus making it the better of the 2.

​@@Logicalleapingthis is completely false. Seasons has quite a few references to tloz1, mainly in the dungeons, but the actual map and items and how you get around are not at all similar. Even if you go by the absolute loosest possible definition of a remake, seasons doesn't come close to qualifying. And even those similar elements aren't that similar. The bosses are almost all fought in very different ways to the tloz1 bosses, and the dungeons are only vaguely similar.

Because it puts into perspective the actual intentions and design routes taken with the game

There's chests that contain shock arrows on the way too. So there's no need to go visit the lynel

I think I'll eventually time each one. I feel like Goron will be the shortest.

@@GameEssays Fair enough, with some good Zonai machines you could probably get around much faster

I was really surprised by that, yeah. They seemed to learn a lot and deliberately made things different from the last time we were in this familiar map. An area that was formerly raining and thus restricts you to the path, is now.. not raining, and the path is strewn with goo, so you kinda HAVE to take a shortcut. the tower is easy to get to, and once you do, the entire area is at your disposal because it shoots you up so high.

I think that in totk getting TO the dungeon is faster for the rito simply by the fact that tullin helps your speed more than Sidon will and the Zora domain's unlocking quest's verticality is harder to deal with since you need to go out of your way for zonai devices or have AMAZING timing to get to fish island with just the starting stamina.

I think in general it takes longer because most people are not just barreling through doing exactly what's required. It usually takes me about two hours when I'm casually playing

@@GameEssays fair point! Probably closer to 2, 2 and a half hours for a normal playthrough if you're talking to everyone, exploring, getting lost, etc.

I think without getting to know the people in the village the story later on wouldn't work that well, especially for the first time.

In that case I would count the entire Oracle of Ages playthrough as preparation for the first Oracle of Seasons dungeon 😅

@@AbeM. not really as there is a functional password generator that can cut out Ages or Seasons entirely if you'd want to.

@@TheBitishDragon then I’d count the time it takes to generate and input the code.

@@AbeM. sure you can if you want, but in the video he stated that time starts when he leaves the file select screen and thats what I was going off.

Its the forsaken fortress conundrum all over. In my eyes a dungeon is a dungeon if it has a map separate to overworld so Forsaken Fortress, The Temple of the Ocean King and the Tower of Spirits are all dungeons.

Also a map

True lol

C'mon now. Ocean King Temple is a dungeon.

I used the scarecrow, I might just be slow lol