#ganon battle

[moonset-music]

New chiptune this week from A Link to the Past. I hope you enjoy, and consider giving feedback -- it helps the channel grow :)

#chiptune #8-bit music #LoZ #A Link to the Past #Ganon #Ganon battle #Youtube

[zaebucca]

Sidescrolling Calamity Ganon, animated by my friend PixelSword94!

#tloz #breath of the wild #tears of the kingdom #pixelart #pixel animation #calamity ganon #the legend of zelda #boss battle #side scroller #age of calamity #nintendoswitch

[good-advice-ganondorf]

#so according to my criteria master kohga is a miniboss. he's not part of the final battle and he doesn't drop a heart container #in botw's case he doesn't grant a champion ability #i also don't include dlc in these so this is very much um #which ganon sucks the least #loz #tloz #the legend of zelda #breath of the wild

[n64retro]

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Nintendo EAD Nintendo 64 1998

#the legend of zelda: ocarina of time #nintendo #nintendo 64 #legend of zelda #ocarina of time #ganon #boss battle #final boss #loz oot #link #zelda #master sword #N64

[eerna]

I beat TOTK

#i realized i'm leaving home in a week and i wont be able to play on a big screen until september and forced myself to get to the end #what can i say except. HEYAHEAYHAHEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #totk spoilers #totk liveblog #loz liveblog #bro the final battle was SO COOL. i mean i did BADLY and ganon stage 2 MADE ME ALMOST DIE #but the health bar reveal.... the friends arriving to help.......... what a good stage #AND THEN. AND T H E N #SHE APPEARED. SHE ARRIVED TO SAVE ME. AND WE BEAT GANONDORF TOGETHER. #AN D TH EN ......... CATCHING HER..... LOVING ARMS...... OKAYYYYY #all in all. bro

[blueskittlesart]

any thoughts on how once again zelda was robbed of her agency because her "father figure" didn't listen to her? even if rauru was kinder to her than her father. and that she had sonia who was patient and loving for a little while before she died (just like her mother). i know rauru apologizes for his hubris but still, i wish we saw zelda be upset about it. and even if zelda was such a big part of the quest she still literally sacrificed her humanity once again because of someone else's mistake- because rauru literally didn't listen to the girl from the future that warned you that shit was going to go down. o know nintendo just loves putting zelda inside crystals and stones but i wish we got something better. even if it was her decision to become a dragon... did she have any other choice? it really just feels like they robbed her of agency again just like botw and the games before

i've been trying to figure out how to answer this one. because there are two ways i could analyze this plot point, either from a writer's perspective or an in-story perspective, but neither of those lead to me fully agreeing with your interpretation? I think there's definitely something to be said about zelda consistently being pushed aside in these games, but. well. ok let's get into it ig

from a writer's perspective, I do honestly have quite a bit of sympathy for the zelda devs as they attempt to navigate the modern political landscape with these games. The cyclical lore, though canonized relatively recently, holds them to a standard of consistency in their games in terms of certain key elements. one of those key elements is that there has to be a princess, and that princess must somehow be the main macguffin of the game. The player must chase her, and the end goal of the game must be to reunite the player and the princess. In 1986 this was an incredibly easy sell. women didn't need to be characters. players were content with saving a 2-dimensional princess whose only purpose was to tell them "good job!" at the end. but as society advances, that princess becomes a much more difficult character to write while adhering to the established overarching canon. (as a side note: i don't necessarily believe that the writers SHOULD be held to the standards of that canon. I think deviating from it in certain areas would be a good change of pace. but i also recognize that deviations from the formula are widely hated by the loz playerbase and that they're trying to make money off these games, so we're working under the established rule that the formula must be at least loosely adhered to.) Modern fans want a princess who is a person, who has agency and makes decisions and struggles in the same way the hero does. but modern fans ALSO want a game that follows the established rules of the canon. so we need a princess who is a real character but who can ALSO serve as a macguffin within the narrative, something that is inherently somewhat objectifying.

the two games that i think do the best job writing a princess with agency are skyward sword and botw (based on your ask, our opinions differ there lol. hear me out) in both games, we have a framing event which seperates zelda and link, but in both games, that separation was ZELDA'S CHOICE. skyward sword zelda runs away from link out of fear of hurting him. botw zelda chooses to return to the castle alone to allow link the time he needs to heal. sksw kinda fumbled later on by having ghirahim kidnap her anyway, but. i said BEST not PERFECT. botw zelda I think is the better example because, with the context of the memories, she's arguably MORE of a character than link is. we see her struggles, her breakdowns, her imperfection, specifically we see her struggle with her lack of agency within the context of the game itself. when she steps in front of link in the final memory, and when she chooses to return to the castle, those are some of the first choices we see her make almost completely free of outside influence; a RECLAMATION of her agency (within the narrative) after years of having it stripped from her. from an objective viewer's standpoint, this writing decision still means she is absent from 90% of the game and that she has little control over her actions for the duration of the player's journey. however I think this is just about the best they could have done to create a princess with agency and a real character arc while still keeping the macguffin formula intact--you're not really SAVING zelda in botw. SHE is the one that is saving YOU; when you wake up on the plateau with no memories, too weak to fight bokoblins, let alone calamity ganon. the reason you are allowed to train and heal in early-game botw is because SHE is in the castle holding ganon back, protecting YOU. When you enter the final fight, you're not rescuing zelda, you're relieving her of her duty. taking over the work she's been doing for the past hundred years. in the final hour, you both work in tandem to defeat ganon. while this isn't a PERFECT example of a female character with agency and narrative weight, i think it's a pretty good one, especially in the context of save-the-princess games like loz.

as for totk, you put a lot of emphasis on rauru not believing zelda and taking action immediately, which, again, from an objective standpoint, i understand. but even when we're writing characters with social implications in mind, those character's actions still need to... make sense. Rauru was a king ruling over what he believed to be a perfectly peaceful kingdom. zelda literally fell out of the sky, landed in front of him, claimed to be his long-lost granddaughter, and then told him that some random ruler of a fringe faction in the desert was going to murder him and he had to get the jump on it by killing him first. the ruler which this girl is trying to convince rauru to wage an unprompted war on has the power to disguise himself as other people. no one in their right mind would immediately take the girl at her word. war is not something any leader should jump into without proper research and consideration, and to rauru's credit, he DIDN'T ever outright dismiss zelda. he believed her when she said she was from the future, he allowed her to work with him and he took her warnings as seriously as he could without any further proof. but he could not wage an unprompted war on ganondorf. that's just genuinely not practical, especially for a king who values peace among his people as much as rauru seems to. as soon as ganondorf DID attack, giving rauru confirmation that zelda's accounts of the future were real, he began making preparations to confront him. remember that zelda didn't KNOW that rauru and sonia were going to be casualties of the war--she didn't make the connection between rauru's arm in the future and rauru the king until AFTER sonia's death, when rauru made the decision to attack ganondorf directly. I think the imprisoning war and the casualties of it were less an issue of zelda being denied agency and more an issue of no one, including zelda, having full context for the events as they were unfolding. if zelda had KNOWN that sonia and rauru were going to die from the beginning and was still unable to prevent it that would be a different issue, but she didn't. none of them did.

I think another thing worth pointing out with rauru and his death irt zelda is that rauru is clearly written specifically as a foil to rhoam. this is evident in how he treats both zelda and link, with a constant kindness and understanding which is clearly opposite to rhoam's dismissiveness and disappointment. consider rhoam's death and the circumstances surrounding it. He died because, in zelda's eyes, she was unable to do her duty; the one thing he constantly berated her for. Rhoam's death solidified zelda's belief that she was a failure, a belief which she KNEW rhoam held as well. his death was doubly traumatic to her because she knew he died believing it was her fault. Now contrast that to the circumstances surrounding rauru's death. Rauru CHOSE to die despite zelda's warnings, because he wanted zelda and his kingdom to live. rauru's death was not agency-stripping for zelda; in fact, it functioned almost as an admission that he believed her capable of continuing to live in his place. With him gone, the fate of the kingdom fell to her and the sages. he KNEW that he would die and still went into that battle confidently, trusting zelda to make the right decisions once he was gone. where rhoam believed zelda incapable of doing ANYTHING without link, rauru trusted zelda COMPLETELY with the fate of his kingdom. several details in totk confirm that when rauru died there was no plan for zelda to draconify, that all happened after rauru was gone. it was HER plan, the plan which rauru trusted her to come up with once he was gone. and I think it's also worth noting that zelda's sacrifice with the draconification parallels rauru's!! Rauru gives up his life trusting the sages and his people to be able to continue his work in his place. Zelda gives up her physical form trusting link and the sages in the future to be able to figure out what to do and find her. these games in general have this recurring theme but totk specifically is all about love and trust and reliance on others. zelda relies on link, link relies on zelda, they both rely on the champions and the sages and rauru and sonia and they all rely each other. reliance on others isn't lack of agency, it's a constant choice they make, and that choice is the thing which allows them to triumph.

The draconification itself is something i view similarly to zelda's sacrifice in botw--a choice she makes which, symbolically & within the confines of the narrative, is a demonstration of her reclaimed agency and places her at the center of the narrative, but which ALSO removes her from much of the player's experience and robs her of any overt presence or decisionmaking within the gameplay. again, I think this is a solution to the macguffin-with-agency dilemma, and it's probably one of the better solutions they could have come up with. Would I have liked to see a game where zelda is more present within the actual gameplay? yes, but I also understand that at this point the writers aren't quite willing to deviate that much from their formula. the alternative within the confines of this story would be to let zelda DIE in the past, removing her from gameplay ENTIRELY, which is an infinitely worse option in my opinion. draconification allowed her to be present, centered the narrative around her, and allowed the writers to reiterate the game's theme of trust and teamwork when she assists the player in the final battle, which i think was a REALLY great choice, narratively speaking.

In any case, I don't think it's right to say that zelda was completely robbed of her agency in botw and totk. Agency doesn't always mean that she's unburdened and constantly present, it means she's given the freedom to make her own choices and that her choices are realistically written with HER in mind, not just the male characters around her, and I think botw/totk do a pretty good job of writing her and her choices realistically and with nuance.

#as a note i do think that loz still has a LONG way to go in terms of defining female characters by their relationships with men #and i acknowledge that a lot of zelda's choices within these games are STILL made irt male characters like her father link rauru etc #BUT i still don't think it's fair to act like shes been completely stripped and reduced to a damsel because.. she hasn't. #she's a very nuanced depiction of a girl who is used to being dismissed and ignored and powerless #her initial response to that powerlessness in botw was to reject everyone. she got loud and mean and she tried to do everything alone #and she discovered that that wasn't the right way to get what she wanted. it didnt make her happy and it didn't win her anyones approval #what DID work for her was learning to rely on the people around her and work with them. she found solace in teamwork and family #which is why in the final battle she and link fight TOGETHER against ganon. neither of them can do it alone but they can together #the same thing applies to totk. she continues her own journey by finding others like her who understand her powers and can teach her #so by the time she DOES end up alone she has been given the confidence and skillset to figure out what she has to do #you get it. you understand what im saying #asks #totk spoilers #zelda analysis

[gay-jesus-probably]

I just realized the opening cutscene of TOTK is absolutely hilarious once you know the whole story of the Imprisoning War. Like, they had this big, epic battle, ending with Rauru sacrificing his life to seal Ganondorf away, locking him in place for ten thousand years, all based on the hope that Link would be able to strike him down with the Master Sword in the future. Ganondorf waited there for ten thousand years, expecting an absolutely epic final battle against an incredibly skilled warrior wielding a blade more powerful than Rauru and the other sages combined.

...And when Link shows up, it takes Ganondorf about five seconds to fatally wound him and snap the Master Sword like a fucking toothpick. If Rauru hadn't somehow intervened, that would've been it, Link would have been dead right then and there, battle over, the end.

Can you imagine how fucking disappointed Ganon must've been after that? He was looking forwards to an epic battle, not a five second curbstomp. No wonder his reaction to that whole thing was basically just him going "Wait are you serious, was that it? That was the whole fight? I WAITED TEN THOUSAND YEARS FOR THAT!?"

Ganondorf might've kicked our ass without even trying in the opening, but at least he didn't get to enjoy it.

#tears of the kingdom #tears of the kingdom spoilers #now i'm just picturing ganon being like “NO GET UP WE'RE DOING THIS PROPERLY” #while link's just laying on the floor dying of gloom poisoning #so ganon switches tracks and tries to do a whole 'old enemies battling again' thing with zelda #but shes just like wtf man who even are you. whats this weird glowing rock. why is there a severed arm here #ganon cannot win here. i mean he can easily win this battle. but it sure as hell won't be a satisfying win #ganon had to set off the upheval just to make sure there was still a sufficient level of Drama

[golvio]

…Honestly, TotK made Age of Calamity way funnier in retrospect, because the Yiga Clan plot is now a horror-comedy about Sooga and the other Yiga foundlings trying to survive their first week of sharing the apartment with Dad’s Shitty New Boyfriend.

#but also kohga’s ‘me? really??? 🥺’ when ganon switches with him mid-battle is both funnier and sadder #buddy you really gotta get better taste in men #or at least make sure your bf doesn’t love yummy yummy life juice *before* he moves in with you #if not for yourself then think about the wellbeing of the kids #especially the eight foot tall musclebound guard dog of a man you basically adopted #legend of zelda #loz thoughts #totk #ganondorf #master kohga

[maumoraart]

Battle Atop Ganon's Castle

Another very old fanart but one that I still like. The battle against Ganondorf at the end of Ocarina of Time is one of my favorite fights in the series still!

#my art #art by op #the legend of zelda #ocarina of time #zelda fanart #zelda oot #link #ganondorf #navi #ganon #nintendo #boss battle #master sword

[sally-mun]

OH BOY MY FIRST RAMBLE SINCE MY RETURN, now I'm really getting back in the swing of things

SO!

I noticed something about myself today

I have a history of getting to the very end of a video game and then just inexplicably just not finishing it. Like, literally I've made it to the final boss, this is THE LAST thing left to do, and I just... wander away and never return. I always attributed this to the weird amount of stress/anxiety I get while fighting bosses, as though I'm -actually- in danger in real life.

HOWEVER, it occurred to me today that it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with another side of myself that I've known about for years: I fucking HATE having to do combat in video games. I know a lot of you guys live for it, but for me, it is just the fucking WORST. It's a shitty chore I have to do in order to get back to the things I actually like, such as the storytelling and puzzles and exploration. Low-level fights with average goons or minions don't particularly bother me, but anything that's meant to be a 'challenge' can fuck right off in my book. I'm not here for that, and I've often lamented that I wish boss fights could be skipped the way so many games give you the option to skip the story. Lots of players don't care about story and just see it as a delay to get back to fighting monsters, and I simply want the reverse. I want a button that'll let me bypass the bosses and skip straight to the next cut scene before turning me loose in the world again.

Anyway, I realized today that this... approach? Philosophy? POV? whatever it is, it's probably the real root of why I get to the end of a game and then fuck off. I only tolerate boss fights because I want to get back to the good stuff, but once you get to the end? There is no more good stuff. After the final boss you get one more cut scene and NO MORE GAME TO PLAY. Why would I want to bookend my experience with a game I've otherwise enjoyed with a chore that I hate?? I can just look the final cut scene up on Youtube and be just as satisfied.

The only time I'd really have significant motivation to do it is if the game actually does offer a post-game reward of some kind. For example, in Arkham City, you go back out into the overworld and can finish up any side quests you hadn't completed yet + get a couple extra quests that ONLY unlock after you've finished the main campaign. That's good shit, that's worth putting up with the final fight! Arkham City is also the type of game to offer a second quest/new game + scenario, where you get to replay the main campaign with different challenges and you start out already having all your equipment. That's also very cool, I'll put up with an annoying boss fight for that!

But for games where the game effectively never 'remembers' that you beat it? No thanks, I'm good, 99% is all I need.

#how many Gamers™ am I going to piss off with this post #OH WEEEEEEEELL #this came up because I've been replaying Twilight Princess and actually getting 100% #yet once I made it to Ganon's throne room I felt all my motivation evaporate in real time and I just suddenly turned the game off #this game ends in a FUCKING -FOUR- STAGE FINAL BATTLE ARE YOU SHITTING ME?? #thanks but no thanks couldn't care less #so long and thanks for all the fish

[shinimout]

it’d be really funny if vaati uses “my liege” and “my love” alternatingly when speaking to/of ganon. it’s essentially a 50/50 ratio,, and it DOES NOT ADAPT SITUATIONALLY. so there are times when he uses the wrong one at the WORST MOMENT

#getting ganon’s attention with ‘my love’ mid-battle #or using ‘my liege’ during sex #zelda otlal #vaati #loz vaati #ganon x vaati #the legend of zelda

[raveartts]

So I got this game on the release day,,,,,i just finished it ;_;

#raveartts #legend of zelda #totk spoilers #tears of the kingdom #once again!!!! you finish the game and they just shoot you back to your last save as if you hadn't done shit #i don't want a star on my save file i want to play in post ganon hyrule!!!!! #i understand why they did that here tho #because you wouldn't be able to fuck around with rauru's arm anymore if they did that #but COME ON #it fucking kills me that they just have Link giving this dead fish eye expression as he saves Zelda #please nintendo i just want him to smile ONCE #is that too much to ask???? #that he smiles a little after he does all this shit to defeat ganon and gets zelda back #esp after he KNOWS that she's supposedly doomed to immortal deadass dragonhood #please have an ounce of expression i beg of thee #anyways the final battle was stupid easy (just took forever because i miss every flurry rush -_-) #but COOL DRAGON #TWO COOL DRAGONS EVEN #zelda should've stayed a dragon she was cooler that way smh

[comixandco]

there’s an alternate universe out there where when you reach the sanctum in totk when “zelda” does her little cutscene she ends it by throwing a dagger at you and it whistles just past link’s head as he reacts in shock before readying himself for battle and then you regain control of him as a boss bar appears at the top of the screen that reads “Puppet Zelda, Twisted Memory”

and Link is forced to fight the one he swore he would protect and has been chasing after the entire game, and instead of a sage offering him warnings or encouragement the Zelda belittles him and accuses him of abandoning her and failing her and leaving her to die

and her attacks at the beginning of the fight are those bursts of bright light and the daggers but as you whittle down her health and begin stage two the facade begins to slip and the light bursts are replaced with darkness and she oozes gloom wherever she moves and her movements become more stiff and skeletal and broken

and then once you’ve defeated her she rises into the air all broken and limp but still looking at you and says that it doesn’t matter that she wasn’t zelda because zelda is still gone, trapped in the past with no way to come home she could be burried anywhere in hyrule, and she summons a dark bow of light and draws it back as a red-purple bulging mass begins to form at the arrow tip

and that’s when the sages turn up, sidon unleashing a wave that pushes the bow aside, tulin firing an arrow that riju uses to cast down lightning, and yunobo at link’s side, and they all have their own line of dialogue that boils down to ‘don’t worry link, there’s no way that’s zelda, she would never say those horrible things, and we know she’s still out there because you heard her true voice, so don’t lose hope!’

and then zelda dissolves into gloom with a fit of that uncanny laughter and that’s when that megamind-style ganondorf head appears and makes his whole speech about how they have no idea who he is or was and you get his memory and that he has waited all his imprisonment to battle against link and prove that he is the strongest in hyrule, ‘and then you will fall, link, as rauru and zelda did, knowing that hyrule falls with you. Come to the Depths beneath this wretched castle, and meet your fate, o destined hero.’

and then the zelda-gloom melts away into a heart, and the sages have that post-battle talk about re-grouping at lookout landing, and tell link not to do anything rash because they will find the real zelda together

#totk spoilers #totk #i just. we were robbed of a puppet zelda fight imo #don’t spend all that time building up a creepy ganon-controlled zelda and then get me right where she wants me then give me some phantoms #i can fight phantom ganons whenever i want they’re in set locations with gloom hands!!! Give me a unique boss battle that sets up ganon’s #final plans and properly wraps up the first arc of the game where ganon is leading you as zelda to collect the spiritual stones #so that he can take them from everybody’s corpses when he defeats you and gain even more power #at least. that’s what i want his plan to be bc it makes the most sense i haven’t exactly gone to fight him yet >-< #and like. this doesn’t solve the problem of act two being nothing if you’ve done actions out of order or that the tears spell out the entir #mystery of where zelda is which ruins the main quests of the game because everybody’s like ‘where’s zelda????’ and you’re just like 🙄👆🐉 #but you aren’t given that dialogue option ever BUT it would have been much more forgivable if the obvious not-zelda #had culminated in a super fun angsty puppet fight like in tp or st

[cynical-cy]

i think WW's Ganondorf is probably the best version of him in the entire series

like the more i think about it the more i really understand him and his motivations-- this is the same Ganondorf from OoT; a tyrannical, merciless man who wants to take the Triforce and Hyrule for himself, or at least that's what we thought was the entire picture, when in truth his greed (misguided and out of control as it was) was rooted in a desire to provide for the Gerudo, who lived in the most inhospitable land around

he even had time to reflect while he regained power after the great flood-- he stops senselessly killing, even having his minions imprison trespassers in their fortress rather than kill them, going so far as to reassure Link that he doesn't want to kill him or Tetra, and only then tries to after he snaps once the Triforce is again snatched from him. he even could've killed Link at multiple times through the game, but chose not to.

he learned mercy, but it cost him everything he'd originally wanted

#cyspeaks #zelda #and tbh in his final moments in WW he seems... at peace? #like he. through that final battle of rage and despair was finally able to rest #god i really hope we get a roleswapped zelda game one of these days #i wanna see a good ganon for once

[uncreativebean]

I love how in the Champions Ballad quest you fight all the blights with what the other champions had as their weapons/defense just to see how difficult it was. I just really like that touch and oh my gosh it made me so freaking sad

#i still beat those fucking blights without dying but damn #why didnt they carry more food with them come on daruk you let me down #is it cheating if link has the sheika slate runes to help bc i definitely abused the runes to win those battles #also is no one gonna talk about how we basically beat the blughtd with the weapons the other guys had right in front of them #how fucked up is that yo #like hey bud im gonna fight the thing that KILLED YOU with your own weapons and WIN #the only one that i didnt mind gloating on was Revali #that guy is so mean to me #look at how i beat windblight ganon with your own arrows revali get rekt #botw #breath of the wild #the legend of zelda #the legend of zelda breath of the wild #tloz botw #loz botw #loz #tloz #the legend of zelda: breath of the wild #my posts

[everythingzelda]

I played totk everyday for a solid month since its release date then burned out on it and haven't touched it since.

#didnt even battle ganon #just was like aight im a good for a bit