I think Ganondorf can seem like a hero in that initially he climbs from sandy shoals as a Gerudo and obtains the Triforce of Power. Perhaps at one point his intent was to help his people.. but instead he forgot about them.
Reminds me of Anakin, he tells Master Jinn,
“I had a dream I was a Jedi and came and set the slaves free.” He became a Jedi and did not do that, instead he craved more power, “I want more and I know I shouldn’t” till he became a tyrant.
Ganon seems to operate on the same principles of Lord Acfon’s, “power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Heroes arn’t corrupted because they retain one significant thing Ganon does not possess, a conscious. As Ben Parker tells Peter, “with great power comes great responsibility.” A hero treats their power as something that must be tempered and carefully wielded, while in contrast villans crave more power without conscious, and so become like a power addict, and then possessive of it; fearing losing their power.
A hero uses their power to serve others, this other centeredness keeps the power pure. A villain uses power to serve themselves. Ganon may have intially made himself believe he was going to serve The Gerudo, but that is only in a few games, in the wider net of the story He is a Demon King and Sorceror with only the “will to dominate all life” (Sauron).
So no, Ganon is not a hero. In certain iterations like OoT he may have had some heroic sensibilities, but I am inclined to believe those were a smoke screen to deceive and use The Gerudo as Nabooru catches on to earlier than others.
