The Legend of Zeldaseries has a vast amount of enemies, and a few of these foes are brutally punishing, with hard-to-avoid attacks, unfair arenas, massive damage, and intelligent counterplay. Defeating these fierce enemies often rewards the player with strong equipment, a new item, or a new ability, making them worth seeking out.RELATED:The Legend Of Zelda: Best Songs In The Series, Ranked
Below you will find some of the most difficult enemies to deal with across the series. A few are required to beat their respective games, while others are optional trials for players looking to prove their combat mastery.
10Cucco (Hyrule Warriors)
In most Zelda games, hitting a Cucco is a bad idea. Angry Cuccos will call for backup and swarm Link with a barrage of pecks, but they won’t attack you unless provoked. Most of the time, it’s easy to get away by entering a new loading screen, but Hyrule Warriors is an exception.
Making even one Cucco angry will cause a massive army of feathery fiends to swarm the battlefield, potentially doubling the number of enemies you have to deal with.
9Darknut (Twilight Princess)
Darknuts are a reoccurring enemy type that varies in design and difficulty depending on the game. The hardest among these variations is from Twilight Princess. The first time you fight one in this game is as a mini-boss in the Temple of Time, but it reappears multiple times thereafter.
Darknuts start as armor-clad soldiers with slow yet immensely powerful sword swings. The player must be patient while hacking off their armor. Once its armor is shattered, the Darknut will enter a second phase where it’ll become much faster. Just one is a challenging opponent, but what makes this enemy even more problematic is they will eventually start showing up in groups. Ganondorf certainly knew what he was doing when he made these warriors his personal guards.
8Golden Lynel (Breath of the Wild)
Lynel’s are very intelligent beasts and hunters by nature. They can detect your presence faster than most common enemies and know how to use a wide variety of weapons. With access to bows, clubs, spears, and the ability to charge at you, Lynel’s will make escape very difficult.
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The gold variations have a lot more health, hit harder, and due to being master mode exclusive, recover health constantly. Defeating one isn’t required to beat the game, but you will be rewarded with very powerful weapons.
7Gyorg (Majora’s Mask 3D)
While the original version of this boss isn’t too hard, the difficulty was increased immensely in the remake. Gyorg became capable of sinking the ground you stand on after taking a set amount of damage. This forces you to use the Zora Mask, which now requires magic to swim at full speed.
It will continuously attempt to swallow you, but if you quickly cut free mines, it will hurt itself by consuming them instead. This boss becomes exceedingly more difficult if your Magic Meter is low, as you won’t be able to swim away from the boss’s attack fast enough.
6Gleeok (Original The Legend Of Zelda)
Gleeok is a fire-breathing hydra we fought three times in the original NES Zelda. The goal in each fight is to slash all of its heads off, but once a head is separate from the body, it will fly around and shoot additional fireballs at you.
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This isn’t too hard in the first fight, as there are only two heads, but in the final fight, where it has four heads, it quickly becomes overwhelmingly difficult to avoid the onslaught of projectiles flying at you from various directions.
5Maz Koshia (Breath of the Wild)
Maz Koshia is the final trial in the Champion’s Ballad DLC expansion. He has various phases where he’ll use attacks that parallel fast Yiga strikes, summon clones, and grow to the size of a Hinox. He will also regenerate health over time in master mode.
Players will have to take full advantage of many abilities and combat mechanics to overcome this ancient monk. Learning how to dodge attacks perfectly and use Sheikah Runes are necessities. Most players will also need to collect many strongest weapons, obtain a very durable shield such as the Hylian Shield, upgraded armor, and cook many restorative meals to have a chance at this fight.
4Moldorm (A Link To The Past)
In concept, Moldorm is a basic boss. All you have to do is hit the end of its tail with your sword as it wiggles around an arena. However, what makes this boss hard is the platform you fight it on. It is very small, and getting hit even one time can send Link flying off the ledge. Falling down into the lower floor of the dungeon will reset the boss’s health, meaning you will need to restart from the beginning every time this occurs.
The combination of a tiny arena and the boss’s unpredictable movements results in players needing to be careful where they stand, have fast reaction times, and be a little lucky to win. To make things worse, Moldorm must be defeated twice to complete the game.
3Dark Link (The Adventure Of Link)
Like many iconic video game protagonists, Link has an evil counterpart. Link’s own shadow is a common rival throughout the Zelda series. He’s a tough opponent who uses many of Link’s tools against him. His original appearance in Zelda II remains one of his most difficult occurrences because, unlike most Zelda installments, it is a2D side-scroller.
It is one of the toughest games in the series due to the very limited movement options. This incarnation of Dark Link will relentlessly attack you, giving you almost no time to think. Players need to play carefully to outsmart an opponent that mirrors their attacks.
2Gramps (A Link Between Worlds)
Gramps can only be fought if the player completes all 50 Street Pass challenges, making him a secret super boss that many have missed. Similarly to Dark Link, Gramps fights using Link’s own tool kit.
He will use a fully upgraded Master Sword, a spin attack that can take up roughly a fourth of the arena, 20 hearts, the highest tier tunic, and two randomly selected items. If he chooses a purple potion in hero mode as one of his items, he can defeat a maximum-health player in a single hit. Unless the player has completed most of the optional content within the game, Gramps will likely have an advantage over the player.
1Dark Links (Triforce Heroes)
Triforce Heroes contains a dungeon called the Den of Trials, where the final trial requires players to defeat three Dark Links at once. The game was designed around being multiplayer, so this fight intended that three very skillful players would have to work together to tackle a foe that has the same abilities players do, but there is also a single-player option.
This presents the challenge of either finding two other very skilled players that can communicate well or fighting all three by yourself. Due to neither alternative in this optional challenge being easy, these enemies have gone undefeated by a majority of players.
