Zelda Challenges: Three Heart Challenge

It seems to be the general consensus among Zelda fans that the majority of the games in the series are not the most challenging. There is almost always a fairly generous learning curve, and after the first couple of hours, players can usually get into a groove and can progress rather smoothly throughout their adventures. However, some choose to increase the difficulty by introducing their own elements that make the experience more enjoyable. One such challenge is the Three Heart Challenge, and if you want to read about it and my experience accepting the challenge in Ocarina of Time, hit the jump!

For those of you who do not know, the Three Heart Challenge is when a player completes a Zelda game without picking up ANY heart containers or pieces. Although there are some exceptions such as Skyward Sword, in which you start with six hearts, and The Adventure of Link, which has a life bar not measured in hearts, the principle remains the same: no increase in life energy. Period. It is one of the most well known Zelda challenges, and it made my most recent play through of Ocarina of Time much more difficult and actually more enjoyable. It is relatively easy to administer, as none of the containers or pieces are required to complete the game start to finish, and it adds a great bit of difficulty to the game, especially considering how many times I had completed it in its intended fashion for the past 15 years.

Whenever I play Ocarina of Time nowadays, it is usually in order to play a genuinely good game and to also achieve nostalgia high. At this point, it is no longer a difficult game to me. Now, completing the game without dying is a simple task, and even Dark Link, a foe who I looked forward to battling every time I played, is laughably easy. Ocarina of Time, due to my overplaying, was becoming less fun, and I couldn’t let that happen to a game that harbors such sentimental value for me. So, I decided to take on the Three Heart Challenge and see if it truly lived up to its fame.

During the first portion of Ocarina of Time, where Link is exclusively a child, I began to question how much harder the Three Heart Challenge truly made the game. I had bottles with fairies, and hearts appeared rather regularly, so dying was never a worry as I traversed through the Great Deku Tree, Dodongo’s Cavern, and Jabu-Jabu’s Belly. I was slaying monsters left and right, hardly feeling as if my having only three hearts was even making any bit of difference in the difficulty. At this point, it wasn’t. However, upon beginning the adult portion of Ocarina of Time, I began to see why this challenge was so renowned.

Upon awakening from a seven-year slumber, Hyrule has been taken over by monsters, and the adult world is vastly different from the world of Link’s childhood. While taking on the Three Heart Challenge obviously does not change anything story-wise, it makes the combat vastly more difficult. Whenever I ventured to the Forest Temple, I remembered that by this point, I usually had seven or eight hearts in my defense, more than twice what I was handling this time around. I was not prepared for the obstacles that were going to obstruct my path due to only having three hearts.

For starters, enemies in the future Hyrule are much stronger than those met in the past, and while normally an enemy dealing a heart of damage at this point in the game wouldn’t be an issue, only having three hearts means that approximately 33% of your health is lost with each heart. If you compare that to having a completely full health gauge of 20 hearts, losing one heart in that case is only a 5% decrease, which is not anything that should cause any alarm or stress. Another hurdle that is caused by a lack of hearts is the environment timer, namely in Death Mountain and the Fire Temple, and the Water Temple. Of course, the timers can be negated by the Goron and Zora Tunics, respectively, but if you are like me and struggled with Like-Likes and neglected to obtain Farore’s Wind, the heat of the Fire Temple and being underwater in the Water Temple proved bothersome, as the Like-Likes took my tunics, I couldn’t defeat them fast enough, and the timers for both while wearing the Kokiri Tunic are less than 30 seconds each. The lack of Farore’s Wind forbade me from making a quick escape, and having to trek back to the entrance of each dungeon caused more stress than any Zelda game ever should. While fairies and Nayru’s Love remedied both death and injury, I found myself relying on them like I did when I played Ocarina of Time in 1998. It was a wonderful feeling to struggle like that again in this game.

As I passed through each temple, slaying each boss, I was thankful that I once again had to be diligent in my battles. Although fairies saved me more than a few times, many of my foes bested me, and I truly toiled to keep the death counter to “000”. Ganon, of course, was more difficult than ever, as each one of his strikes had enough power to almost kill Link with each blow. I was actually fearful of the King of Evil as if I were five years old once again. Sweaty palms, strained eyes, and diligent thumbs made this final showdown all the more satisfying when Link thrust the Master Sword between the eyes of that grotesque pig-man. Needless to say, I completed the Three Heart Challenge with a final death counter reading triple-zeroes, but I took the easy way out with fairies and Nayru’s Love. My helpers may have made this particular attempt at the Three Heart Challenge less impressive or less note-worthy, but, man, did I have a good time. It had been a long while since I felt genuine adversity by Ocarina of Time, but this challenge sure did give me a handful, and I loved every bit of it. Have you ever completed the Three Heart Challenge? What other challenges have you taken on that have made your Zelda experiences far more difficult? Let us know in the comments below!