General Zelda Your Top 10 Hardest Dungeons?

[Force of Power]

By ranking, how would you rank your top 10 hardest Zelda dungeons, 1 being hardest?
Here's my list (although I haven't played any 2D Zeldas besides FS, and haven't played MM):

1. Sky Keep, SS - You have to change the rooms around so you can even get to them. Then, a good chunk of the rooms are hard as nails.
2. Water Temple, OoT - Curse that room with the rising water, curse having to switch boots every five seconds, and curse that one key that I keep missing!
3. Lakebed Temple, TP - Complete opposite of straightforward. And that boss, though.
4. Wind Temple, WW - An OK temple until you meet the Floormasters, and it's got one HUGE, three or four story room.
5. Shadow Temple, OoT - Besides it being just... creepy, we've also got the hover boots, Dead Hand, and Bongo Bongo.
6. Lanayru Mining Facility, SS - Timeshift stones and laser enemies do not mix.
7. City in the Sky, TP - Giant, frustrating, and Argorok.
8. Spirit Temple, OoT - Hard as nails enemies.
9. Forest Temple, OoT - Easy to lose your way, plus block puzzles.
10. Forest Temple, TP - Not completely hard, but finding those monkeys is pretty cataclysmic the first time.

So, what's yours?

 

[Farore's Chosen]

in no particular order and only what I've played and how far I've gotten to this point
1 Death-even now I find Ganon faster then I find those damn light arrows and I still get hopelessly lost!
2 Great Palace-confusing layout, and stupid rotten no good ******* blue bird knights! They should not be placed in rooms where you gotta bash blocks! @#^$&$%**&^!!!
3 Turtle Rock (ALTTP)-cannot to this day get past the ************ puzzle where you hafta ride around on the block and open a timed door! ********* it should NOT be a timed door!
4 Temple of Droplets-if any temple could turn a person rabid by sheer *&$%@# horrible annoying bull its this one! this dungeon was the big-@#$ fly in my Minish Cap soup!!! No screw that! it was a cockroach!
5 Lanayru Mining Facility-I went through it twice, once for myself and once for my kid and my hatred for this dungeon has only grown
6 Poison Moth Lair-guh I hate those rotate thingies, but its not the worst on this list
7 Lakebed Temple-I still got lost now and then
8 Water Temple-well the first time I was stuck for over a week, the second time I went through it without a walkthrough again, recently I was only in there for a few hours.
9 Dancing Dragon Dungeon-this place is huge I went in without a walkthrough and got lost and frustrated for a month and finally grabbed a walkthrough and took myself through it from the beginning
10 Dragon-its got wizzrobes and darknuts and ******* like-likes!

 

[Shankapotomus]

I couldn't give you ten different ones, but I remember having trouble with the Forest Temple in OoT, Lakebed Temple in TP, Sky Keep in SS, and Water Temple in OoT.

 

[Mask-Salesman]

1. Water Temple - OoT (because of nostalgic reasons. I have it memorized these days, but it was really hard)
2. Stone Tower Temple - MM (took me quite some time as a kid)
3. Lakebed Temple - TP (another water temple that adds to the tradition )
4. Ice Palace - ALttP (remember this took me days when I played it on the Gameboy)
5. City in the Sky - TP (this was a huge and complex dungeon. One of my favorites)
6. Sky Keep - SS (hardest one in SS to my opinion)
7. Great Bay Temple - MM (second hardest dungeon in the game)
8. Forest Temple - OoT (hard and very creepy dungeon)
9. Hyrule Castle - TP (it was not that hard per se, but it had one part with the chandeliers that took me hours )
10. Wind Temple - WW (WW was one of the easiest Zelda's, but this was the hardest dungeon IMO)

Can't really recall the dungeons from PH and ST because I've only played both games once, and that was a long time ago. ALbW is still on the last. Haven't played the games before ALttP.

 

[Dio]

1 Great Bay Temple-MM
2 Sky Keep-SS
3 Water Temple-OOT
4 Forest Temple-OOT
5 City In the Sky- TP
6 Shadow Temple-OOT
7 Lakebed Temple-TP
8 Snowhead Temple-MM
9 Stone Tower Temple-MM
10 Earth Temple- WW

 

[Justac00lguy]

1. Water Temple

Kind of a cliché choice I guess, but if we're going off first time play throughs then this dungeon takes the top spot. The design is very intimidating with multiple directions and floors to explore. Then you have the fact that water is a different element to navigate thought plus you to actually manipulate the water multiple turns to access certain sections of the temple. Finally you have the dreaded amount of Small Keys. Seriously this is the part that got me, It wasn't just one key that I was missing, not two, but three. Not to mention the actual puzzles, enemies, boss.

2. Stone Tower Temple

This is that one dungeon that is hard despite how many times you play it. It's literally one of the biggest dungeons in the series, and each room is a challenge in itself, honestly, I don't think any one room can be considered easy. Not only do you have to solve the main puzzles and find the hidden Stray Fairies, but you have to flip the dungeon upside down and navigate through the now flipped rooms with even harder puzzles. This is the epitome of what a dungeon should be in my opinion - a true stimulating challenge.

4. Jabu Jabu's Belly OoA

I don't know what it was about this dungeon, but I actually found it really challenging. I think it was having to navigate through water in a top down game that made it hard. Navigating through water is hard enough, but it just seemed like a chore within this perspective. Plus the enemies were OP as hell; I found myself a lot of times exciting the dungeon just to fill up on hearts. Definitely the most challenging 2D dungeon in the series in my eyes.

5. The Wind Temple

I really enjoyed this dungeon just because of its huge mind boggling structure. This is another example of how dungeon designs should be executed - make the actual structure itself confusing and hard to navigate. Anyway, this dungeon had its fair share of difficult puzzles, it had some neat double team action with Makar, and the sheer scale made it one of the toughest 3D dungeons.

6. Forest Temple

Probably my favourite dungeon in the series and one of the reasons is because of it's challenge. I loved how they focused on making it a claustrophobic atmosphere, so instead of having large open rooms, this dungeon instead focused on having a multitude of small compact rooms. Then, like the the Water Temple, you have the Small Keys which required a lot of exploring and backtracking.

7. Lakebed Temple

This is basically the dungeon that I'm just really bad it. No matter how many times I play it, no matter how many times I think I know it, I still get stuck every single time. I think this is mainly because it's structure, in some ways, is even more confusing than the Water Temple. You have the large central staircase which you have to turn to enter new areas, but the thing is, it's not as simple as that as you have to redirect to water from other rooms to actually get to the staircase. I can't keep up with the amount of times I've got naively lost here.

8. Tower of Hera

This is one of the only ones that actually gave me trouble in A Link to the Past. It's funny because the dungeon is rather easy and simplified in design; however getting knocked down by Moldorm and having to basically restart a section of the dungeon only to get knocked down again and again and ag-- well you get my point.

9. City in the Sky

Quite a popular choice among some top tens, but the main reason I see is mostly because of frustration/annoyance than actually being a well designed tough temple; although I think the dungeon actually has some decent elements of challenge. The main challenge is obviously navigation, as in its quite perilous and tricky at times. You're basically navigating a run down giant temple situated in the sky, one wrong move and you'll fall to your death.

10. Great Bay Temple

I wasn't going to originally put this on here just because I think it's quite overrated when it comes to how difficult it is but I have to give credit where credit's due. This dungeon is, technically, very challenging, I guess I just found it easier than I expected. However, I've got to give props to some of puzzles and putting a big emphasis on properly navigating through water though I'll admit that most of the challenge came from the annoying controls for Zora Link.

 

[Mask-Salesman]

However, I've got to give props to some of puzzles and putting a big emphasis on properly navigating through water though I'll admit that most of the challenge came from the annoying controls for Zora Link.

I enjoyed your writing on the temples and agree with you on a lot of them. But seriously? How was it hard to swim with Zora Link? It felt so extremely natural to me that I would spend hours just swimming around in Great Bay and exploring. I loved Zora Link, not in the last place because of the controls. Weird

 

[PhantomTriforce]

I can't really think of an order for these, but:
Ganon's Tower (ALttP)
Great Bay Temple (MM)
Either the Ancient Ruins or Explorer's Crypt (OoS) or both, can't really remember
Ancient Tomb (OoA)
Palace of Winds (MC)
City in the Sky (TP)
Sky Keep (SS)
Ice Palace (ALttP)

But one choice for me is clear for the hardest dungeon ever:
Jabu-Jabu's Belly (OoA)
This dungeon is hard no matter how many times you replay it.

 

[kingofhyrule]

1. Lakebed Temple-TP
2. Fortress of Winds-TMC
3. Arbiter's Ground-TP
4. Forest Temple-OoT
5. Sky Keep-SS
6. Snowhead Temple-MM
7. Palace of Winds-TMC
8. Hyrule Castle- TP
9. Sandship-SS
10. Dodongo's Cavern-OoT

For some reason, I found the Great bay Temple to be really easy.

 

[Iridescence]

ALTTP - Tower of Ganon (final dungeon)
Link's Awakening - Eagle's Tower (#7)
Ocarina of Time - Forest Temple was tough for a first temple. Water Temple took me forever but it was more confusing than hard.
Majora's Mask - Stone Tower Temple wasn't hard but I needed to reset for more time.
(Have to replay Oracles and Minish to remember them better)
Wind Waker - all were easy
Twilight Princess - first three temples were insanely hard but thats also because it was my first Zelda game. overall, Lakebed temple though.
PH/ST - none really
Skyward Sword - varied in difficulty. none were super tough. sand ship and mining facility were a little taxing in some areas but not in a good way.

 

[Therapist Bill]

What the? Sorry, but I was convinced that I clicked "Post" over an hour ago, saw my post in this thread, and now it's gone??
Oh well, my original post simply said that I consider myself somewhat of a hardcore gamer. I didn't really find any dungeons that hard, making a list of ten would be impossible for me! (no bragging intended )

The only dungeon, I've ever had trouble with, would be the Master Quest version of the adult Spirit Temple section from Ocarina of Time. My gosh, I was running around like a chicken being chased on a farm, having no clue what I was supposed to do for surely an hour. I am a tiny bit embarrassed to say this, but I had to resort to this site's MQ walkthrough to get myself through. Oh, and that's how I got here in the first place. Two stories fell out from one, hehe.

 

[43ForceGems]

10. Dark Hyrule Castle - MC
I just always seem to lose a lot of hearts on this one, of course not die, because no Zelda game after the Oracle games was hard to the point of death ever at all. But it is a really big dungeon, easy to lose track of where you've been and stuff

9. Sky Keep - SS
This place can just get really confusing with the way you have to move around the rooms, trying to figure out where you can move which room to be able to get to the next one and stuff

8. Great Palace - AoL
This dungeon is just huge, and there's so many different ways to go, but if you can remember the right way to go, which somehow I have it memorized, it's not TOO bad

7. Swamp Palace - ALttP
I don't know why, I just always die in this dungeon. Over and over and over, maybe it's those green things that appear and then bounce off the walls, I just loose like 10 lives on this place and it sucks

6. Crown Dungeon - OoA
I always seem to get lost in this dungeon, and can't keep the red and blue switches straight and screw myself over and then I just get confused

5. Eagle's Tower - LA
I don't even know if I need to say anything... This dungeon is ridiculous, I always get so confused and can't figure out how to get that giant ball you need to break the pillars and I get so lost and want to rip my hair out

4. The Lizard - LoZ
This is probably the hardest dungeon in terms of how many times I die, and how hard it is to survive. Those rooms with the blue darknuts... oh my gosh I just can't even. I take two potions with me and still can never do it

3. Ancient Tomb - OoA
Again, like Eagle's Tower, and can just never keep things straight, and get so confused about which way goes where and how to go and all those slates and AUGH just make it stop!

2. Jabu Jabu's Belly - OoA
Every single time I do this dungeon, I have a raging headache afterwards. The first time I ever played this game and did it, I literally couldn't think straight afterwards. I was disorientated and stuff, this place just kills me. It is so absolutely hard and confusing, oh my gosh I hate thinking about it

1. Death Mountain - LoZ
Nuff said

 

[Iridescence]

Hardest dungeon of each game, IMO:

LOZ - Level 9
ALTTP - Tower of Ganon
LA - Eagle's Tower
OOT - Water Temple
MM - Stone Tower Temple
OOA - Jabu-Jabu's Belly
OOS - Shield and Sword Maze
TWW - Wind Temple
TP - Lakebed Temple
PH - Temple of the Ocean King
ST - Tower of Spirits
SS - Sky Keep
ALBW - Dark Palace?

 

[dangtheslang]

#1 Water Temple Oot
#2 Great Bay Temple MM
#3 Lakebed Temple TP
#4 Wind Temple WW
#5 Ice Palace AlttP
#6 City In The Sky TP
#7 Jabu Jabus Belly LA
#8 Temple Of Droplets MC
#9 Spirit Temple Oot
#10 Stone Tower Temple MM

 

[AncientPoe]

1. Spectacle Rock, The Legend of Zelda
2. Great Palace, Adventure of Link
3. Turtle Rock, Link's Awakening
4. Eagle's Tower, Link's Awakening
5. Hidden Temple, Adventure of Link
6. Water Temple, Ocarina of Time
7. Stone Tower Temple, Majora's Mask
8. Great Bay Temple, Majora's Mask
9. Forest Temple, Ocarina of Time
10. And just for fun... Hyrule Castle, Breath of the Wild. What? Almost every single enemy is Silver? Oh it's like heaven. Surely this will lead up to a devastatingly difficult and memorable final boss fight...