Iron Knuckles

[Jmonkey71]

What make them so hard? Is it because they have a metric ton of health? Is it because you usually fight them in enclosed spaces? Is it because of their intelligence? I'd like to hear (or, rather see) your opinions.

 

[bbevington90]

I'm assuming you're talking about the enemies in LoZ where you can only hit them from the side or back, or AoL where you had to hit them where their shield wasn't.
I think they're hard because of a couple things. For one, you can't just hit them wherever, which alone is difficult. When you put that into a game where there are only a few directions to move, it makes them completely unpredictable as to where they're gonna go next, forcing you to run into them because you gotta get close to hit them. Those single-handedly made my LoZ and AoL experience way more difficult.

 

[DayDreamer]

Those things ere a pain in the butt toward the end of ocarina of time. I remember running up the tower in the room b4 gannondorf where you had to fight 2 of them. They beat me up pretty good at first but then i just threw bombchu's at them till they died

 

[43ForceGems]

We're talking about "Classic Zelda" here DayDreamer.
I think they were hard in LoZ because they moved just like you did, so there it would be a fair fight. Except for the fact that you can't hit them from the front. That's not a fair fight at all. In AoL they were easier, jump slash, jump slash.....

 

[DayDreamer]

Oh well they didnt specify so i assumed they ment all iron knuckles.
The ones in AOL are a pain as well. I find it easier not to jump slash them and just attack where thr sheild isnt.

 

[dur.i.am]

The first point that I personally believe makes the Iron Knuckles (in LoZ anyway, never played the other classic Zeldas) an extremely tough enemy to face, especially when compared to that of the Iron Knuckle in OoT and MM or the Dark Nut in TP, is that you can only attack them from one of four directions, you don't have the ability to face in any direction in a 360 degree manner. This reduces the oppertunities for which you can hit the Iron Knuckle to much lower than that of the Iron Knuckle's in the newer games.

The second point that I believe contributes to the toughness of the Iron Knuckle's in LoZ is that they do not have an easily predicted path, infact, as far as I'm aware any for of prediction on which direction they turn and when is just pure luck. This makes it harder to attack the Iron Knuckle's as they can turn in your direction at any second to land a massive blow to you to greatly reduce your health. This combined with the fact that you can only turn and attack an Iron Knuckle from 3 directions along with their lack of ability to turn in any more than 4 directions, greatly increases the chances that the Iron Knuckle will turn towards you to land that blow.

The third and final point which I believe makes the Iron Knuckle one of the hardest enemies to beat in the entire game is that unlike newer games, they aren't exactly slow and thus move quickly (once again, unlike newer games). This further combined with the fact that the Iron Knuckle isn't predictable and that both Link and the Iron Knuckle can only turn in 3 directions makes the challenge of hitting the Iron Knuckle a rather tough one. You need to get close to hit but when you do there is always the chance that the Iron Knuckle will turn very swiftly and hit you hard, making your job much tougher.

As i've explained above, these 3 reasons are what I believe makes the Iron Knuckle such a tough enemy on LoZ, and this toughness is sadly what the newer Zelda games are desperately in need of.

 

[Master Kokiri 9]

Well, a few things make them difficult. One is that the pattern in which they move is random, so you're just taking a gamble in getting close to one to hit it, which is the only way to damage them.

Secondly, they can only be hit from the side or the back which, coupled with the random movement pattern, makes them even harder.

And another thing is that you can only attack them from one of three directions, which makes it even harder.

 

[Jmonkey71]

Just to clarify, the enemies your thinking of in LoZ are actually Darknuts, not Iron Knuckles, but I can understand if people got them mixed up. I'm talking about the Iron Knuckles in AoL.

 

[The Castellan]

Just to clarify, the enemies your thinking of in LoZ are actually Darknuts, not Iron Knuckles, but I can understand if people got them mixed up. I'm talking about the Iron Knuckles in AoL.

Beat me to it. They are Darknuts. The blue ones are the really hardcore ones, especially with bubbles in the room. :well:
Bombs are your friends, then.