Daily Debate: Which Zelda Game Can You Beat Without Any Walkthrough Tips?
Posted on June 08 2025 by Jared Eubanks
I originally found Zelda Dungeon while playing Breath of the Wild and looking for walkthrough guides. As I have played through the full collection of mainline Zelda games and popular spinoffs, I have turned to Zelda Dungeon’s guides many times over and have found them extremely helpful with their written details and informative screenshots.
Zelda games have a reputation for challenging puzzles and not so obvious strategies in boss battles. If a key piece of information – or sometimes a literal key – is missing, it can bring your playthrough to a standstill. I prefer to get as far as I can by myself and truly feel stumped before searching for answers online. For my first and second playthroughs of games, I have always needed a helpful tip or explanation in order to keep the adventure moving forward.
Recently, I picked up an original copy of Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. I had beaten it twice before, once on the Wii U Virtual Console, and another on the 3DS. However, I could not boast of having completed it without the aid of save states in its nascent form on original hardware in all of its jagged polygonal glory. For this run, I wanted to push myself to get as far as I could without stopping to look at a walkthrough guide, map, or any item checklists.
Although there were certainly moments of confused and aimless wandering, I’m proud to say I made it, even through the dreaded Water Temple, all the way to the end without having to resort to outside help.
One of the closest moments to breaking down to look at a guide was in the Fire Temple where, due to low lighting in game and limited color contrast between a chest and the cave wall (and the low texture resolution of original Nintendo 64 hardware), I had just overlooked an obvious key. It also took several falls through invisible pits down to the lowest floor of the Bottom of the Well, before finally remembering that the water needed to be drained from the canals by playing Zelda’s lullaby in order to access a specific crawl space and obtain the Lens of Truth. In the penultimate battle with Ganondorf, I was afraid there was an additional trick beyond returning the volley of his energy orb and shooting him with a light arrow as surely I should have defeated him by now! Thankfully, there was just enough left in my magic meter to bring him down.
There were also optional items that I had forgotten where or how to obtain, such as the Great Fairy Fountain location where Link receives Farore’s Wind, the empty bottle reward from hunting the ten Big Poes in Hyrule Field, or the trading sequence for securing the powerful Biggoron Sword. However, the lack of these rewards was thankfully not critical to making it through to the credits.
I hope to revisit many other games in the series with the aim of beating it without any walkthrough tips. Next up for me is A Link to the Past!
Which Zelda games do you know like the back of your hand? Do you replay them regularly? Do you enjoy the challenge to make it all the way through without searching for outside help? Let us know in the comments below.
Jared Eubanks is a staff writer at Zelda Dungeon, and he is also a husband, father, and engineer. He is originally from the Atlanta, GA area and still lives there. He graduated from Georgia Tech and is a proud Yellow Jacket. He loves to play boardgames, build Lego, and read books with his family. He’s been gaming since childhood with the original NES and GameBoy, and he enjoys retro gaming, collecting, and modding consoles and handhelds. His favorite Zelda game is Breath of the Wild but is also fond of the older classic titles.
