YMMV / The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

• Adorkable: This game's version of Link is a screeching large ham, who gladly helps any in need while proclaiming himself an ally of justice. Also, let the record show he once impersonates a cat.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Ganondorf: Irredeemable monster or Well-Intentioned Extremist? It's generally agreed that he went mad with power at some point, but his calm Motive Rant before he steals Link's Triforce of Courage offers several different interpretations: he wanted a better life for the Gerudo but forgot this motivation, it is only him selfishly rationalizing the evil acts he committed before, or he admits that it was pure greed that drove him to start, even disregarding his people. Later games add the wrinkle that he is a reincarnation of Demise's hatred, meaning that how much control he ever had over going mad with power is put into question.
  • Tingle: The jolly, naive, fairy-obsessed individual who only wants to help you and become a fairy? Or is it all a hoax to cover his true nature as a greedy Jerkass who terrorizes and takes advantage of his brothers (and one guy who isn't related to him)?
  • Did the Zelda from Ocarina of Time really doom Hyrule by sending the Hero of Time back to his youth, or did she ultimately save this timeline from a worse fate? Hyrule as we know it is destroyed, but the gods make certain that the people of Hyrule actually survive, live in and settle in a new country.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Wooden submarines in a fantasy setting, built out of wooden planks like a barrel? Preposterous! Only, the real-life Turtle was exactly that, just much smaller.
• Americans Hate Tingle: While Tingle had been present in Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker is where most of his international unpopularity was born. He plays an integral part in the least liked section of the game by charging outrageous sums to decode the player's Triforce Charts, and is also shown to be actively unpleasant to the other residents of his island. This contrasts with his appearance in Majora's Mask, where he's quirky but in a way that doesn't stand out as much against the rest of Termina and is much harder to interpret as malevolent (that, and his prices are actually reasonable in that game).
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • The fate of Greatfish Isle is brushed over by most of the cast in favor of focusing on searching for Jabun, whose survival is treated by both Quill and the King of Red Lions as the key takeaway from the catastrophe. For their part, Link and Tetra are both shocked by the island's senseless destruction and worried about what will happen to Outset now that Jabun has relocated himself there, but they're the only two characters who have this response.
  • Following Ganondorf’s defeat, the King of Hyrule (read: Link’s constant companion throughout the game and Tetra’s actual ancestor) chooses to stay and drown with his beloved kingdom, much to the horror of both of them. When the two reach the surface and see Tetra's pirate ship immediately after this traumatic event, they just smile and start waving gleefully, showing no signs of the tragedy they just witnessed. While it's understandable that they'd be happy to see their friends and family after so long, their behavior is so contrary to the preceding scene that it's difficult to believe they happened consecutively.
• Animation Age Ghetto: This is the main reason why the artstyle caused such a Broken Base, especially when the game was first revealed.
  • At the time, many fans feared that the Zelda franchise was going down in a more kid-friendly direction in general, which helped drive hype and anticipation for the more "gritty" and "realistic" Twilight Princess. This was due mainly to:
    • First, it was a radical departure from the graphical art style from the two beloved Nintendo 64 entries, and the tech demo from the SpaceWorld 2000 tread show which heavily suggested Nintendo was going to keep going in that direction. While nowadays people would point out that tech demos heavily deviating from the final product are a common occurrence, this demo was one of the very first to be readily available to the public via broadband internet. Before then, gamers only had very scarce screenshots in magazines to go by, meaning the hype and speculation cycle was much more contained.
    • Second, Nintendo as a whole had been suffering badly from this reputation for the entire second half of the 90s, especially in Western markets, which was one of the main reasons why they lost their dominance in the industry to Sony. This was a source of frustration for teenage and young adult Nintendo fans, who felt somewhat displaced from the broader discourse because of it.
  • Nowadays, Wind Waker's artstyle is more widely appreciated due to people becoming aware of this phenomenon, helped by the Zelda franchise starting to use a different art style for every new game after this entry (or at least, up until The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel). Despite this, this reaction is one reason why there are fans who prefer other games in the series by preferring more "realistic" and "mature" artstyles in the first place.
• Arc Fatigue: The infamous Triforce Pieces quest in the original GameCube version grinds the story to a halt. To complete the quest you need to find and decode 8 Triforce Charts (paying 398 Rupees per chart to Tingle each time) and then go find each salvage spot (or just look them up). The Wii U version fixed this by replacing five of the charts with the pieces themselves, vastly cutting down on the time and money spent.
• Ass Pull: The curse of the endless night that Ganondorf casts is conveniently undone once Link receives Nauru’s Pearl from Jabun. The King of Red Lions explains that the curse was broken by the power of the pearl, but it wasn’t hinted that the pearl could do that before, nor does it explain why its power didn’t kick in before Jabun gave it to Link.
• Awesome Music: Has its own list.
• Awesome Levels:
  • The Forbidden Woods is carried by its wonderful art direction and musical ambience, along with the introduction of Wind Waker's upgraded boomerang.
  • The Tower of the Gods is generally seen as a highlight amongst most players, due to its unique atmosphere solid puzzles. The fact that you actually get to ride the King of Red Lions through the first half definitely helps.
  • The Forsaken Fortress during the second visit. Thanks to Link having the Master Sword and a vastly-improved equipment in comparison to his surprisingly difficult first visit during the game's prologue, he can now storm the whole dungeon and get rid of the Moblins that gave him so much trouble beforehand. The boss battles against Mini-Boss Phantom Ganon and later Climax Boss Helmaroc King also help, and so does the aftermath leading to the game's biggest plot twists.
  • The Savage Labyrinth is a badass combat gauntlet that allows Link's new, more fluid controls to shine.
  • The Earth Temple, despite its linearity, is famous for its creepy atmosphere and creative use of Medli, with the final Light and Mirrors Puzzle being a particular point of praise.
  • For those who don't mind the difficulty, the Wind Temple is a sufficiently challenging dungeon that requires you to pay attention to your surroundings and use your items effectively.
• Base-Breaking Character: Link. To some, he's the best Link ever for being Adorkable and more of an Unchosen One than a destined hero. He has character flaws for the first time, and the new graphical engine allows him to emote. On the other hand, some dislike him for just this reason — feeling that it reduces the role of Link to just any schmuck who stumbles into it. While not nearly as divisive as Samus, some have similarly argued that giving Link a personality took away from his mystique. A third group of fans find "Toon Link" to be a stupid concept altogether, and have hated the character and his design since they were first revealed.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • Helmaroc King, for making things personal at the very beginning of the game. The awesome chase up the tower of the Forsaken Fortress as it floods doesn’t hurt either.
  • The final fight against Ganondorf is considered one of the best in the series, and it's certainly left its mark on later games — Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and Tears of the Kingdom all have epic sword duels with the Big Bad, and Spirit Tracks (and Twilight Princess in the horseback battle before the sword duel) has Zelda with a bow helping you out. Ganondorf also gets finished in the most beautiful way possible: with a mighty leap, Link impales Ganondorf's forehead with the Master Sword, and Ganondorf turns to stone. The floodwaters that drown Hyrule for good bury him, as well.
  • The Wind Waker in general is filled with great bosses, be it the surprisingly elaborate first boss, Gohma, to Molgera (whose main appeal lies in its amazing battle theme), to the homage to Ocarina of Time's penultimate battle that is Phantom Ganon, a miniboss. All around, this game excels in making its bosses entertainingly challenging and unique.
• Broken Base:
  • The Cel Shading art style caused this. It all started with this game, and to this day, debates rage about which style is better.
  • It was all revisited when Nintendo announced a Wii U updated HD rerelease with a somewhat different aesthetic style◊. In particular, the excessive bloom is debated as to whether it enhances or undermines the game's original art style.
  • And continuing the trend, there have been some disputes over the game reportedly being priced at the full retail price, which many people claim is unreasonable for a 10-year-old rerelease. Considering that this was merely intended as a 'stop-gap' to buy time for the actual next installment in the series, this complaint is of course not without merit.
  • Is the sailing a wonderful, meditative way to pass the time, or annoying Padding?
  • Similarly, some fans disliked the decision to shorten the quest for the Triforce Charts/Shards in the HD port, feeling that the sheer length of the quest was part of the original game's charm. Others just consider it Fake Longevity and are glad the remaster trimmed it down.
  • Tetra's skin tone. Tetra is Ambiguously Brown, but she turns lighter when she becomes Zelda. This has broken fans into people who wanted a non-white Zelda and felt the change was unneeded, and those who don't care or think Tetra's skin tone is just a tan (since, as a pirate captain, she is constantly exposed to the sun). It doesn't help that early concept art shows Tetra with dark skin as Zelda, nor does it help that her ancestor King Daphnes has dark skin himself, leading to some questioning why couldn't Zelda have dark skin if her ancestor can.
• Breather Boss: Gohdan, the guardian of the Tower of the Gods. For a mid-game boss, he's very easy, to begin with, only having one real attack that you get plenty of warning of in advance and is fairly easy to avoid. Plus, he'll even snort out extra arrows and bombs from his nostrils if you run out of them during the fight. This is justified since the Tower of the Gods is a proving ground for the hero's courage, so it makes sense for the boss fight to be easier than you might expect. He's testing your heart, not your aim.
• Common Knowledge:
  • The development team never intended to move away from older fans of the previous games and gain a fresh new generation of young fans with this game. While the devs indeed wanted the game to look different than previous installments, they thought fans would appreciate it, and there was also a pragmatic reason for the whimsical cel-shaded art style that played a bigger factor: The game had to be released in Japan in 2002, so they only had two and a half years to develop the game, and they could not realize their vision of a huge ocean with realistic graphics in that time frame. Tellingly, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which did have the realistic graphics fans had long wanted, took twice as much time to develop a smaller game world.
  • The Complimentary ID is played up as a worthless Joke Item by a majority of the fandom, as all it seemingly does is make Beedle compliment you when you go to redeem it. Few players seem to realize that said compliment will refill your lost hearts, which isn't much since health is easy to come by (unless you're playing Hero Mode) but it's something.
  • The last pearl given to Link by Jabun is treated as a Free-Sample Plot Coupon and a sure sign that the game originally had more dungeons that had to be cut for time. That you don't need to explore a dungeon in order to earn Nayru's Pearl is justified in-game, though: when Jabun's text is translated in New Game Plus, he makes it explicit that the Tower of the Gods is his means of testing Link's worthiness, retroactively. That the lower floors of the tower are water-themed only further serves to tie it to Jabun, who is known as the Water Spirit. Lastly, the cut dungeons were not from this half of the game, but from the second.
  • A lot of people refer to Link's blue outfit that he wears at the start of the game (and throughout New Game Plus) as his "pajamas". Presumably, people make this assumption because Link starts the game by waking up while wearing this outfit, but nobody ever actually refers to his clothes as pajamas. The outfit could just as likely be Link's normal clothes, especially since he wakes up from what was probably a nap on the lookout post, as opposed to in bed.
  • Tingle is not the same thief who stole Lenzo’s Pictobox from him, despite what some players believe. He just happened to be imprisoned in the same cell the thief once was but on a separate matter. Speaking to the Killer Bees confirms that the unnamed thief disappeared years ago after tunnelling out of the cell as planned, whereas Tingle mentions that he was imprisoned because the townspeople took him to be a troublemaker. In the HD remaster, Tingle even encourages Link to take the Pictobox from its hiding place, while the message the thief left behind stated his intent to return for it himself once he escaped.
  • A prevalent misconception to this day is that this game takes place 100 years after Ocarina of Time, even though in-game, it’s stated that hundreds of years have passed since the kingdom was flooded alone. There’s also simple logistics to consider; a single century is too little time for everything since then to have transpired, from Ganondorf escaping his seal, to the kingdom’s flooding, followed by everyone gradually forgetting about it after coming to live on the sea. By the '100 years' logic, Link’s own grandmother ought to have been born while people were still living in Hyrule, or at the very least before it faded into legend.
  • There’s a rumor that you can win the Magic Armor by partaking in the auction instead of earning it through the game’s trading sequence. This is demonstrably false; there are only four items (five in the HD version) that can show up as prizes in the auction: a Joy Pendant, two Treasure Charts, a Piece of Heart, and the Swift Sail. The Magic Armor will never show up as a prize even after you’ve won all the others.
• Contested Sequel: Before it was Vindicated by History, the game had a big share of detractors when it first came out. The most popular reason for it was how very different it was from the previous Zelda games, especially Ocarina of Time. Inside the more devoted fanbase, however, the biggest complaints were rather the Sequel Difficulty Drop, which was way too excessive for most veteran fans, and the sailing system, which was largely considered a Scrappy Mechanic. Fixing these two issues was one of the main reasons why the HD remaster was so well-received, although there's still debate on how well it holds up compared to Ocarina of Time, especially between older vs. newer fans.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics seemed to like it, but fans had significantly different responses.
• Disappointing Last Level: The endgame past the Wind Temple is where many people feel the game loses a bit of steam and the cut corners due to the tight deadline become more obvious. The Triforce Shard hunt is considered overly long and drawn out (though the remaster does make things much shorter and less tedious). Then you reach Ganon’s Tower, which consists of a Boss Rush, with a short puzzle before each rematch, a puzzle where you find your way through a maze to find the Light Arrows, and a hallway leading to Ganondorf where you kill all of the enemies with one hit using the light arrows. The final boss fights and ending do make up for this though.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Ganondorf, thanks to his more sympathetic backstory that was introduced in this game. Fans often latch on to making him an Anti-Villain, saying that he was only evil out of circumstance, even though he himself makes it clear that even if he may have started out wanting to help his people, in the end it was power he wanted, and no amount of it would ever be enough. Up until this point, he hadn't even remembered his early, more noble aspirations. And beyond that he never takes responsibility for forcing the gods to flood Hyrule and his desire to restore Hyrule is because he wants it for himself, a goal he’s willing to kidnap random children for in the vague hope that one of them turns out to be Zelda.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Medli is considered quite the fan favorite thanks to her cute design, endearing personality and affable disposition, as well as her surprising bravery. Enough so to make her playable debut in Hyrule Warriors over fellow sage Makar.
  • Some have taken a liking to Aryll for being the only sibling that any incarnation of Link has ever had.
  • Jalhalla, for being a humorous and light-hearted boss in contrast to everything else in his temple.
  • Molgera for its boss theme, as well as being an Expy/King Mook of the normally underutilized Lanmola enemies. This boss theme ended up making it into Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and remixes of it have appeared in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Hyrule Warriors.
  • This game's incarnation of Gohma also gets some points for its unique design and boss fight compared to past and future incarnations.
  • Several of this game's enemies see a heavy presence in fan art for their unique designs compared to their more traditional counterparts, while still remaining reognizable as incarnations of those enemies. Big standouts include the more jackal/doberman-like Darknuts, Inca-inspired toucan Wizzrobes, and the skeletal, toothy, Aztec-looking ReDeads.
• Evil Is Cool: This game's version of Ganondorf is widely considered to be the best in the series, due him gaining some surprisingly tragic motives, while still retaining his sophisticated and deviously intelligent traits from Ocarina of Time.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Pot Lady" for Sue-Belle, as she's usually seen carrying a pot over her head and is the one who teaches Link how to lift them.
  • The purple plant-like tentacles in the Wind Temple and Forbidden Woods that grab Link and drain his magic power are nicknamed "Dexivines" after the Dexihands from Majora's Mask since they have no figurine and thus had no official English name. This name was used in the HD version's official guide.
  • This incarnation of the Great Deku Tree, due to the design of his face, has been called the "Shreku Tree."
  • The Battleship-like Squid-Hunt minigame is often called "Sploosh Kaboom", after the sounds Salvatore makes when missing and hitting, respectively.
• Fans Prefer the New Him: Aspects of Ganondorf's design in this game, particularly his Manly Facial Hair and powerlifter physique, have been incorporated into each incarnation of the character onward, both inside the franchise and out.
• First Installment Wins: Despite The Wind Waker's status as a Contested Sequel (though it was eventually Vindicated by History and the Wii U remaster was critically acclaimed), the consensus is that both subsequent Adult timeline/'Toon Link' games, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, failed to surpass its memorable storyline or match the level of its popularity.
• Game-Breaker: Has its own entry in the series page.
• Genius Bonus: The Wind Waker actually provides the names of two kings of Hyrule. Not only Daphnes but "Nohansen" appears to be a variant on the patronym meaning "Son of Nohan." This would make him Daphnes' father and, presumably, his predecessor as king.
• Good Bad Bugs: In the GCN version, you can infinitely replenish the Elixir Soup if you pause the game while pressing the button for the soup and then switch it out with an empty bottle. If done right, your "empty bottle" will now have been filled with a serving of soup.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • After the release of Skyward Sword, the ending of the game becomes this considering the Master Sword now canonically has a spirit living inside it. This means Fi was left to rust away at the bottom of the ocean for eternity, never to be wielded by her master again in this timeline.
  • This quote from Carlov, while referring in-game to the loss of members in the Nintendo Gallery, became retroactively meaningful for the controversial (even to this day) transition between the Nintendo GameCube and the Wii, as well as between the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo DS:
  Carlov: Ah, well, no worries one way or the other. We've been losing members due to our lack of "gimmicky attractions"...but we don't worry. True fans know we're the coolest.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the final battle, Tetra apologizes for oversleeping. Some things really don't change over the incarnations.
  • Sometimes, if you talk to Medli shortly after throwing her into a wall on Dragon Roost Island, she'll ask when Link became triplets.
  • One US commercial for the game featured a live-action sequence of a girl wearing a black robe locked in a tower, talking about how the The Chosen One's destiny is to save her. Ignoring the fact that it has almost nothing to do with the game (barring the fact that Link is trying to save a girl), her appearance and the commercial's overall tone are much closer to Twilight Princess.
  • The strange green faces◊ on the texture for the test room in Tingle Tower's attic (referred to in the game files as "tincle") look extremely similar to Pepe the Frog.
  • During the second half of the game, Link needs to restore power to the Master Sword after discovering Ganondorf sapped out the power from it, making it useless against him. Twenty years later, Link would once again need to restore power to the legendary blade (with help from Zelda) after it gets demolished by Ganondorf and is left completely ineffective against him.
• Hype Backlash: Inevitable, given that this is one of the more widely praised Zelda games in the fandom. In particular, some Twilight Princess fans are sick of the prevailing opinion that Wind Waker is a Sacred Cow while Twilight Princess is scorned despite both games getting similar critical praise.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The Wind Waker isn't particularly hard, to the point where fans often complain it's too easy. Link has a lot of options that grant a huge amount of control over the flow of combat, enemies tend to do less than one Heart of damage per hit, and health drops are very generous. Most dungeons are also designed to funnel Link down the correct path while none of their puzzles are particularly difficult.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Although previous installments got this problem too to different degrees, The Wind Waker was the game that definitely established this double standard, not only among fans but among critics.
  • Those who complain "It's the same" argue that the gameplay is basically Ocarina of Time all over again with a dull "oversea", instead of an actual "overworld". For these people, the art style change was nothing but a mere "disguise".
  • On a different note, the news that the Wii U HD port won't make any significant changes to the game beyond the graphic update and making the sailing system a little bit more agile made some fans upset. Especially the lost opportunity of playing the two dungeons that supposedly were scrapped during the development of the original game due to time constraints.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Tetra is Princess Zelda. They make sure you know this in future adult timeline games.
  • Hyrule was sealed by a Great Flood prior to the events of the game. It is destroyed for good at the end.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Sure, it's not like Ganondorf perished when Valoo burned down his hideout with Ganondorf still inside it after Link and Tetra managed to escape.
• Magnificent Bastard: Ganondorf, after escaping his imprisonment in the Sacred Realm and forcing the gods to flood the land in order to subdue him, rises once again. Knowing that a hero will arise to oppose him, Ganondorf kills the Sages empowering the Master Sword so it will be useless against him. Desiring to reform the Triforce so he can restore Hyrule under his reign, Ganondorf sends the Helmaroc King to capture young women across the Great Sea in the hopes of finding Princess Zelda and her piece of the Triforce. When Link and Tetra confront him, Ganondorf effortlessly defeats and nearly kills them, discovering that Tetra is Zelda in the process. When Tetra hides in the sunken Hyrule while Link works to restore the Master Sword, Ganondorf takes advantage of his absence by capturing her and ambushing Link when he returns. Luring the hero to his tower, Ganondorf challenges Link with a monstrous puppet and commends his skill when he wins. After lamenting his initial desire to escape the harshness of his desert homeland, Ganondorf attacks Link, successfully reforming the Triforce and nearly succeeding in his goals. Even after his plan is ruined, Ganondorf accepts his death with a quiet chuckle.
• Mandela Effect: Some people remember completing the Wind Temple before the Earth Temple, even though this is impossible in all versions of the game (Makar will not appear until the Earth Temple is complete).
• Memetic Badass: Link, and not without basis. The kid is under 13, yet he can use a hammer twice his size to kill a monster bird 20 times his size. Not to mention he's on a boat.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • 'Hoy, small fry! ^ExplanationThe fishmen who fill out Link's Sea Chart use this as their Catchphrase, and this is always their first line. Considering that the fishmen give useful hints towards 100% Completion and that a fully mapped out Sea Chart has its own benefits... expect to read this line a lot.
    • Che~yyy! ^ExplanationThis is the voice effect the fishmen make when they say their Catchphrase.
  • C'MON!!! Heroic Mime, subverted.^ExplanationHow Link tells a Tower statue/Medli/Makar to follow him if they weren't already.
    • Meow! Likewise.^ExplanationThis is what Link does to make a would-be thief think he's just a cat. If she can't see him, that is.
  • CHICKACHICKACHICKA^ExplanationThe entirety of the background music of the battle against the boss, Molgera, has a lot of chicka, as heard here. Any rendition of the song will be flooded with comments judging how much better a remix is based on whether or not the chickas were kept intact.
  • Link taking selfies. ^ExplanationThe Wii U remake allows Link to take selfies with his pictograph. It didn't take long for players to start using this new feature humorously; for example, having Link take selfies during otherwise serious moments, like boss fights.
  • For obvious reasons, there's a lot of Videos on YouTube, featuring this game and The Lonely Island's 2009 song "I'm On a Boat". There's a t-shirt, too, courtesy of Ninja Bot.
  • The opening cutscene on Outset Island has a moment where a groggy Link is looking at Aryll with a really bored-looking expression◊, which has become fairly popular as a profile picture and a reaction image. There's also a fanmade image related to this where Link has a cup of coffee, which is also common as a profile pic.
  • "Pass it on," a phrase used by people who use the Tingle Bottle in the Wii U version to distribute Nintendo Gallery-compatible pictographs.
  • Pausa ^ExplanationSeveral techniques used to Speedrun the HD version (such as the Manual Super Swim and the Item Slide) involve pause-buffering. Since these speedruns are done on the Spanish and Italian versions of the game due to them having the fastest text, this word appears repeatedly on screen when performing the technique, leading it to become a meme.
  • Barrier skip. ^ExplanationThe barrier around Hyrule Castle prevents you from going to Ganon's Tower if you don't have the fully powered Master Sword and the Triforce of Courage. If you could somehow bypass it, then you would have access to the endgame from the first visit to Hyrule before reaching the halfway point of the game. This is easier said than done, as the devs made the barrier too tall to glitch over, it's surrounding the entire castle so you can't go around it, and there's even a second barrier behind the first if you somehow get past the part that knocks Link back. The legendary "Barrier Skip" thus became infamous as the Holy Grail of the speedrunning community, as it would cut hours off the game's speedrun time if accomplished. It was such an massive roadblock that, at one point, people were offering a 2,000 US dollar reward for anyone who managed to find a way past it. It wasn't until years later, long after the reward had been abandoned, did someone finally figure out how to get past it. Even then, it's still notorious for how finicky and precise you need to be to pull the trick off.
  • (A) Let Go ^ExplanationA close-up image of Link with this text has become a reaction image for when someone wants to let go of something.
  • "Thank you!" ^ExplanationSaid by Beedle when you buy items from him, which will be heard a lot if you need to buy many items. The usage of the voiceline in many YouTube videos has made it memetic.
  • Look at this neat Doritos I got/HEY EVERYONE! CHECK OUT THIS KID'S DORITOS!^ExplanationThe Triforce pieces look like Doritos. The original post this meme came from used Wind Waker screencaps, specifically of Toon Link holding the Triforce of Courage and Ganondorf holding a defeated Toon Link in one hand, about to steal his Doritos- sorry, Triforce.
• Mis-blamed: Many will credit Yoichi Kotabe, a veteran Toei animator who worked for Nintendo from 1985 to 2007, as the artist behind the game's distinctive cartoonish visuals. It seems like a reasonable assumption to make, as Wind Waker bears a lot of aesthetic similarities to classic Toei animated films like The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon, and was released in 2003 so the timeline adds up. However, Kotabe had no personal involvement in Wind Waker's development — he has stated as such in multiple interviews, and his name doesn't appear anywhere in the credits, which list Yoshiki Haruhana, Satoru Takizawa, and Masanao Arimoto as the design managers instead. Javed Sterritt of The Hyrule Journals has a video going into further detail about this misconception and how it came to be.
• Moe: Aryll, Link, and Tetra, among other examples.
  • Medli, for many reasons, including being Adorkable, having a really cute design, being The Woobie due to her frequent and undeserved injuries during gameplay, and just being an all-around good friend to Link.
• Narm:
  • The HD remaster adds in a musical fanfare that plays when the shards of the Triforce of Courage fuse together, as opposed to the original’s use of silence to convey the gravitas of the moment. The tune ends up being so grand and heroic that it comes off as extremely corny to listen to. Not helping is that it doesn't sound anything like the style of music the rest of the game uses; instead, it's like something you'd hear in A Link Between Worlds.
  • Ganondorf's transformation into Ganon is suitably ominous until the curtain rises, revealing a grinning jittering marionette.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Although Wind Waker was announced first, "Toon" Link's official debut was in The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, released only 11 days before the Japanese version of Wind Waker. Before that, Link also had a toonish look in the photographs◊ in the DX version of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.
  • The HD version isn’t the first game in the series to allow you to take selfies. That was possible through a neat exploit back in Majora's Mask, wherein you could pull out the Pictograph Box and quickly snap a photo before the camera shifted to Link’s point of view.
  • One point of contention concerns the fact that the Ambiguously Brown Tetra becomes fair-skinned when she assumes the appearance of Princess Zelda. However, the first game to feature such a change was actually Ocarina of Time, in which Zelda’s skin tone also drastically changes when she sheds the guise of Sheik. Both transformations are even brought about by the same source of magic, the Triforce of Wisdom.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: While it eventually dissipated by the second half of The New '10s, for around a decade or so, it was difficult to discuss this game without bringing up the massive fan backlash it generated outside of Japan as a result of its cartoony, cel-shaded art style. Many thought it clashed heavily with the more realistic visual direction of the Nintendo 64 Zelda titles, a Spaceworld 2000 tech demo based on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and other high-profile releases on competing consoles. The controversy got so big that it directly informed the direction of future Zelda games (which are generally more popular in the west than in Japan), with Nintendo holding off plans for a Wind Waker sequel in favor of the Real Is Brown aesthetic of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and limiting later "Toon Link" games to handheld titles and spinoffs (which generally see less publicity than mainline home console entries).
• Padding: All of the sailing, the reassembly of the Triforce of Courage, and gathering enough rupees for Tingle to translate the maps leading to the Triforce shards, lead to a lot of time that feels wasted. While the sailing could at least be excused by the GameCube's hardware limitation to hide load times, the Triforce quest was clearly intended to artificially lengthen the game.
• Polished Port: The HD port for the Wii U isn't just a resolution upgrade. It adds various tweaks that add a nice something extra to the already amazing visuals (such as a higher quality soundtrack), there are fixes for some of the game's Scrappy Mechanics (such as a sail that speeds up sailing, a streamlined version of the Triforce piece Fetch Quest, etc.), and it's, overall, the definitive version of the game.
• Ron the Death Eater: Mrs. Marie, Windfall Island’s schoolteacher, is often reimagined as some kind of necromancer due to the fact that the Private Oasis she gives to Link has a pair of ReDeads hidden deep inside the sewer system the cabana is built upon. While the cabana deed was a disproportionate return on the 20 Joy Pendants needed to obtain it, there’s no evidence that Mrs. Marie knew the ReDeads or even the basement itself were there at all. She simply states that she hasn’t occupied the cabana lately due to sea travel not agreeing with her.
• Sacred Cow: A bizarre example; while The Wind Waker has its share of fans and detractors, many of its fans will adamantly defend it from criticism, more than the fanbases for other Zelda games. Some more vocal/zealous fans will even go as far as to take it for granted that anyone who plays the game will love it, claim that it's objectively better than other games in the series, and/or attack people who don't outright praise the game and its artstyle or who prefer its Contested Sequel The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: The HD remaster made a lot of changes to address some major complaints about the original, mostly in regards to its Padding.
  • The Swift Sail allows for significantly faster sailing and negates the need to change the wind's direction. It's also made available near the beginning of the game via the auction, where it's easily obtainable if you've been saving up Rupees.
  • The infamous Triforce Shard quest was cut down so only 3 of the 8 pieces require deciphering Treasure Charts. The rest are now collected directly from where you originally found their Charts.
  • The Nintendo Gallery sidequest has been heavily streamlined. First, you can receive the Deluxe Picto Box as early as the first trip to Windfall Island, which cuts out a step from the original that was padding and allows you to get a head start on collecting pictos. Secondly, the game now notifies you when a picto is considered valid for a figurine turn-in, removing a lot of potential frustration from the picture-taking process (especially for enemies that only spawn once, like bosses). Finally, you can now hold 12 pictos and turn all of them (plus any Tingle Bottle pictures you may have found) in to Carlov each day, further cutting down on wasted time.
  • The Forest Water sidequest was notoriously difficult in the original. You're given 20 minutes to water dying trees scattered across eight islands, all while having to deal with Gyorgs and Seahats along the way and being held back by the moderately slow sailing speed. The HD Remaster adds ten minutes to the timer, which makes for a much easier and less painful time when combined with the Swift Sail.
  • The addition of Hero Mode adds a much-welcomed hard mode to a game often considered fairly easy.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In the original GameCube version, sailing and the Triforce quest were both largely derided for artificially extending the game length. These were both addressed in the HD remaster.
  • Before and after each boss fight in Ganon's Tower, all equipped items are automatically unequipped, forcing the player to stop and re-equip each item they want to use. Unlike sailing and Triforce quest, this was not fixed in the HD remaster.
  • Using the command melody to take control of your partner characters in the Earth and Wind Temples gets old VERY fast, involves a relatively long animation each time (thankfully remedied a bit in the HD version) and doesn't make that much sense either. Why does Link even need a magic song to control his partners when he could just communicate with them in person?
  • Aside from the Triforce chart, none of the other collectible charts (heart pieces, sea charts, Big Octos, etc) actually mark down which ones you've gotten. Sadly, this was not fixed in the HD version.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Once the original game actually came out, the focus of complains from fans became the sailing system and the difficulty. In general, they thought the game was a quite drastic step down compared to all previous entries up to that point, and ended up having a negative impact on the game. Despite Link controlling overall better in combat, damage from enemies was quite low across the board with very few exceptions, and the parrying system trivialized many otherwise decent enemies. But most infamously of all on the long term, dungeons and puzzles were massively simplified. As pointed out by famous YouTuber Mark Brown in his analysis of the game's dungeons, these practically boil down to a thinly disguised linear series of individual rooms, without any real need of thinking about the dungeon layout as a whole, nor of thinking about puzzles throughout it, since most puzzles have their solutions close to them^note While some think Brown goes too far in saying that "there is only one good dungeon in the entire game", his diagnosis of the dungeons in general being simplified to the point of being a net negative is agreed by a majority. The game even has the first instances of overtly hand-holding the player, even at the late game, which the series would become infamous for in the next decade.
• Shipping: A lot fans enjoyed pairing Link with the Rito girl Medli, despite the fact they had no romantic feelings at any point for each other.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The Nintendo Gallery sidequest definitely counts as this. Many players spend more hours taking a picture of every single NPC and enemy in the game in order to obtain their figurine rather than proceeding with the story.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: Wind Waker begins with an unskippable prologue cutscene and has a few other lengthy cutscenes throughout your initial time on Outset Island, plus a decently long tutorial on the game's swordplay. After you leave, you then have to go through a very long Stealth-Based Mission in the Forsaken Fortress after losing your sword during your entrance. Once you get to Windfall Island, meet the King of Red Lions, and sail off to Dragon Roost Island, the game finally starts to pick up.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The game has a number of continuity errors and programming mistakes that can be easy to notice in certain cutscenes; for example, when Link meets the King of Red Lions, he continues to stare in the same direction even as the King lowers his head at one point, and during one of the game's ending cutscenes, while standing next to each other, Link and Tetra inexplicably swap positions while the camera cuts away from them.
  • The floor of your boat when in motion, repeatedly clips through the ocean itself.
  • In the HD remaster, the cel shader doesn't affect models that are in full shadow. Technically this results in more realistic shading, but since all the models are smooth, round, and not realistic, everything ends up looking pretty shoddy.
  • The lighting in the remaster in general leads to some unintentional quirks when it comes to generating shadows, as some objects (such as the interior framework of buildings) will cast them without any light sources.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • An Ocean Punk fantasy of an archipelago of islands that need to be traversed by ships, a boat that can be sailed by using magic to power the wind, and a heavy focus on exploration and voyage to develop Worldbuilding, this is as close as you can get to A Wizard of Earthsea.
  • The fact that the world is covered in oceans with no land except a bunch of islands, and people primarily spend their time traversing the oceans in ships, along with the aforementioned heavy focus on exploration to develop Worldbuilding, with some kind of secret that needs to be uncovered relating to the fall of an ancient kingdom, with brighter colors and a more cartoonish art style than it's contemporaries on top of that, the game bears a noticeable similarity to One Piece.
• Tainted by the Preview: The first reaction after the announcement of the game. Part of it was because of a tech demo based on Ocarina of Time that was shown at a previous expo, which showed Link and Ganondorf in gorgeous graphics (for its time). But more importantly, due to Nintendo's reputation during all of The Fifth Generation of Console Video Games, which cemented it as "the company that only makes games for little kids", at a time when most of the first generation of gamers were well into their teenage years (ie, the part of your life when the last thing you want is to still be considered a kid). Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were two of the few Nintendo 64 games that managed to escape the Animation Age Ghetto stigma (the only two coming from Nintendo's first party studios), so a lot of fans genuinely wanted the Zelda series to keep going down that path in the GameCube. As a result, the first trailer of this game made some people feel cheated, and although things definitely improved as time went on, it still took many years for the game to get rid of the taint completely.
• That One Boss:
  • The second boss of the game, Kalle Demos, asks you to use the Boomerang cut the 20 vines holding it up to expose it to damage. The problem is that you can only target 5 vines per throw, they slowly regenerate (so you better be quick), the Boomerang's targeting camera isn't entirely cooperative, and you have to do this while trying to avoid damage. Compounding this is that Kalle Demos's pod is so large that the Boomerang may end up grazing it, which the game treats as hitting a wall and cancels the attack without hitting the other targets.
  • The third stage of Puppet Ganon, which fittingly enough resembles and moves like Moldorm. After an entire game of boss fights that were interesting and visually engaging but not particularly hard, and enemies that constantly dropped generous supplies of needed items, the worm form that rockets around the room while you try in vain to shoot its butt with an arrow, fought in a room that is not particularly forgiving with its arrow or magic drops, can feel punishingly difficult.
• That One Level:
  • The Wind Temple is largely seen as this due to many irritating factors, such as wind-based puzzles, lots of shifting between Link and Makar, and because you have to spend most of it climbing up and down a central room comparable to the Water Temple, but tends to be saved because its boss is so fun to fight (with an excellent theme to boot). On Hero Mode in 'HD', the enemies can also quickly lay on the damage; it's not uncommon to hear people waste two or more of their fairies going through the dungeon on Hero Mode.
  • The Earth Temple is disliked for similar reasons to the Wind Temple; You'll be doing a lot of switching between Link and Medli to deal with rather finicky Light and Mirrors Puzzles, along with having to deal with Blue Bubbles and 'curse fog' which locks Link out of using his weapons. Wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for a section where you have to avoid a bunch of Floor Masters while you can't attack. On top of that, the very last puzzle in the dungeon is a very long and tedious light puzzle that, while not difficult to solve, can take far longer than needs be because of needing to push giant mirrors around and positioning Link/Medli just right so the light reflects off their shield/harp, which is far more difficult than it sounds.
  • On Hero Mode, Dragon Roost Cavern, the first 'proper' dungeon of the game, can easily become this. Because of the fact that pots and enemies don't drop hearts and it's not possible to get any health potions/fairies in a bottle up to that point, a greater part of the dungeon might as well be attempting a No-Damage Run. If you're diligent enough, it's possible to go in with four hearts instead of three but it doesn't help too much. The dungeon has a lot of Keese that can easily sneak damage onto you, as well as a few dickish Chu-Chu placements that can easily catch you off guard. Finally, you made it to just outside the boss room where the fairies are? Well, too bad, because you need to have the grappling hook to get to those fairies, which requires you to complete the miniboss fight against two machete-and-shield-wielding Bokoblins and then a Moblin, the latter which easily become Demonic Spiders on Hero Mode thanks to the large attack range of their polearms and quick attacks when disarmed, making it really easy for him to one-shot you if you're not careful during this particular encounter. It's not uncommon to hear that when people finally get to the fairies, they only have half a heart left. Thankfully, by comparison, the level's boss is much more manageable by comparison.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Completing the Nintendo Gallery is already a daunting task since you have to get pictures of every NPC in the game (including enemies and bosses), but it's made worse by its myriad of odd restrictions in the original release. First, the pictures have to be full-bodied front shots. Ever tried to take a decent picture of something when it's trying to kill you and probably moving around a lot? Also, a few enemies can only be fought once before New Game Plus, and you won't know if a picture of them is considered valid until you show it to Carlov. Second, the pictures have to be taken with the Deluxe Picto Box, and obtaining that requires doing a separate sidequest to upgrade the standard one. Third, you can only carry three pictures at a time, which means frequent trips to Carlov. Finally, Carlov can only make one figurine a day, so you have to play the Song of Passing twice per photo to get a figurine. There are 134 of these figurines in total, and while some of them are obtained in batches from a single picture, that still means a lot of times you have to pull out the Wind Waker if you're offloading multiple pictures. The HD version thankfully implements a huge number of changes to make the whole thing less painful, plus you used to be able to get some figurines from pictographs sent via Miiverse before the service was shut down in 2017.
  • Trying to sort 25 letters. Twice. On Dragon Roost Island, to secure a heart piece, the player must quickly sort a letter into one of six spots, a 3x2 grid. There are only 30 seconds to do it. The real problem is how much time it can take to have to move from one side to the other. The tenths of seconds wasted more often than not will cause a failure.
  • Getting a Heart Piece from Orca requires you to hit him 500 times before he hits you three times. Even if you can get into the rhythm of hitting him, then immediately mashing A and back when he blocks, there are times when Orca will still hit you before you can either jump out of the way or Link can pull off his counter dodge. Essentially, this can cause the entire thing to become a Luck-Based Mission depending on whether or not Orca decides "no, f**k your counter! You die now!".^note However, this can be averted if you simply do a combo or two and then block his attack; it takes longer, but it leaves yourself wide open less often.
  • Earning all the prizes from Squid-Hunt (which includes two Pieces of Heart) is a massive pain, thanks to the fact that the minigame basically boils down to luck and you have to win three times to get everything. This is especially infuriating with the third and final prize (a Treasure Chart to one of the Pieces of Heart) because you have to luck out even harder than normal to win with less than 20 shots.
  • A particularly finicky sidequest concerns the Windfall shop master, Zunari. After clearing the Forsaken Fortress, Zunari complains of a thief who's been breaking into his stall at night and alludes to a reward he would give to whoever manages to catch the thief in the act. This leads players to think the intended solution is just to photograph the attempted theft with the Pictobox, but you aren't able to show pictographs to Zunari or even tell him what you saw. The actual means of finishing the sidequest is by talking the thief out of her criminal ambitions, which requires you to follow her around the island without being seen or heard, successfully corner her in the stall, and then respond correctly to her pleas for sympathy four times in a row. Make one mistake and she'll flee the scene and be back to her old ways the next time the area reloads, and you're forced to follow and confront her all over again. Get the process right and she'll reward you for showing her the error of her ways, but this is still contrary to the premise of the sidequest being that Zunari had suggested giving you a reward and that you're supposed to be catching a thief.
  • Unlocking Blue Potions in the potion shop on Windfall is a long and tedious process of collecting at least 15 rare Blue Chu Jelly from all over the map, made completely superfluous by the ease of obtain them for just 4 Boko Baba seeds at the Forest Haven.
  • The trading sequence requires you to travel back and forth across the sea in search of merchants who will trade you new items for Zunari’s shop. The merchants are found on three different islands, only one of which you can warp directly to, meaning you’re forced to do a lot of sailing even with the Ballad of Gales. There’s no way of knowing what each merchant will trade you ahead of time, the path to the sequence’s ultimate reward is very complicated, and there are some items that aren’t required but still count toward 100% completion, making the quest that much more annoying.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Tingle Bottle was received positively in the years following the release of the HD remaster... until the shutdown of Miiverse in 2017 left it a completely useless and nonfunctional item. Since then, fans have become embittered that the Tingle Tuner wasn't just brought over from the original game and then updated to include the Tingle Bottle's function, as that would've at least allowed it to retain some purpose now that Miiverse is no longer online.
  • In the original game, the player could obtain the Hero's Charm, a mask that lets you see the life gauges of enemies, by bringing 40 Joy Pendants to the schoolteacher on Windfall Island. The remaster relocated the charm to the bottom of the Savage Labyrinth. This ended up robbing the item of a lot of its practicality, as it went from being easily obtainable after the very first dungeon to requiring the item from the third-to-last dungeon and a fight through a strenuous enemy gauntlet in order to get to it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Tetra's pirate crew are set up as a diverse team of supporting characters who will remain prominent throughout the game, but their number of appearances can be counted on one hand, and of them, only Gonzo and Nico really do anything.
  • Aryll is the first sibling an iteration of Link has been shown to have, not to mention one of the first damsels for him to save who wasn’t Zelda. With how her design took inspiration from Marin, one of the quirkiest characters in the entire series, Aryll had loads of potential to be an interesting and memorable character. But you don't get to see her that often, even after she's been rescued, and when she is there, she's just playing the generic, cutesy-little-sister archetype, with little reason for players to be invested in saving her.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: From the initial Wii U remaster screenshots, the realistic lighting mixed with the cel-shading makes the characters look unnervingly doll-like instead of actual characters. During E3 2013, the lighting was toned down, so the characters don't look doll-like anymore.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The Hookshot doesn’t get as much use as it did in previous games, owing to it being the main item of the penultimate dungeon. It can’t latch onto as many items as it could in Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask, the few enemies it’s effective on are more easily dealt with using arrows or the boomerang, and most of its optional uses can be circumvented using the Deku Leaf, which you find much earlier in the game. Perhaps not surprisingly, this ended up being the Hookshot’s last appearance in a 3D Zelda game, after which it was revamped into the Clawshots for Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword.
  • Many of the Tingle Tuner's features count, as well. The game is actually programmed with a bestiary, a detailed clock system, the ability to mark your map with waypoints and use bombs and potions on command, and even the functionality of the Hover Boots from Ocarina of Time. However, the only way to take advantage of these features is by purchasing the necessary tech to use the Tingle Tuner, the result being that most players have no idea just how useful it can be.
  • In a similar vein to the Business Scrubs in Ocarina of Time, you're able to restock on items inside dungeons by throwing bait down near rats' nests to entice them to sell to you. They'll sell anything from potions to ammunition, but unfortunately, the feature only has a chance to shine on your first visit to the Forsaken Fortress and in Dragon Roost Cavern. The rest of the game is largely devoid of rats' nests, and the ones you do find in select locations won't yield anything if you try using bait there.
• Unnecessary Makeover: Many fans largely prefer Tetra over her true identity, Princess Zelda, and hate the design for getting rid of the tanned skin and unique aspects of her character in favor of a more traditional design. It doesn't help that once Tetra becomes Zelda, she gets sidelined in the game, going from a snarky pirate captain and Action Girl to a more submissive Damsel in Distress, only showing signs of her Tetra identity in the final confrontation against Ganondorf. It seems Nintendo has caught onto this, given that in Phantom Hourglass, she outright hates it when she is referred to as Zelda by her crew.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Some players reportedly mistook Tetra for a boy at first glance, presumably since she’s the only female character in the game who wears pants. The confusion isn’t too surprising, considering she’s basically this game’s answer to Sheik, although she is consistently addressed as a girl from her first appearance onward.
  • Jan, one of the Killer Bees, has long-ish blue hair and a name that sounds like it could be short for "Janet," but his figurine confirms him as male.
• Vindicated by History:
  • The Wind Waker saw a lot of controversy during and following its release, due in large part to the tides of Ocarina of Time nostalgia. Complaints were either about the cel-shaded graphical style, the drop in difficulty compared to its predecessors, the padding sailing system (specifically during the Triforce of Courage quest), or a combination of the three. In later years, popularity polls frequently place it among the top five favorite games in the franchise (if not all Console Generation 6) and the art style has been hailed as a refreshing experience from other "brown" games like its successor Twilight Princess (if not all Console Generation 7). The successful HD remaster cemented all of this even further, especially since it addressed the issues about difficulty with Hero Mode, and the sailing system with the swift sail.
  • Sailing was initially seen as Padding of the highest order, and the Great Sea was seen as an incredibly empty excuse for an overworld. The explosion in popularity of open world games in the Seventh Generation has led to more people re-evaluating the series in terms of their overworlds. Now, while succeeding games like Twilight Princess and especially Skyward Sword get criticized for increased linearity and arbitrary handholding, Wind Waker's Great Sea is now praised for being one of the most open, in-depth overworlds with little barriers between story events, many useful treasures to find and discover, and balancing the openness with a well-written story while still retaining a larger degree of polish compared to other games with open worlds released during the Sixth Generation. Indeed, one sandbox game with sailing, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, explicitly cited Wind Waker as its inspiration and influence.
  • This incarnation of Link also fell into this. After Link was an adult in Ocarina of Time and the first two Super Smash Bros. games (which modelled the character after his popular 1998 portrayal), there were many fans displeased upon release that the new Link was once again a little kid. He was even derisively referred to as Celda. Years later, he's been praised as one of the better incarnations for having a more expressive personality despite being a silent protagonist. Nintendo themselves have even adapted these traits into future games.
  • For some people, the Tingle Tuner has become this. While Tingle himself is still unpopular (outside of Japan), many players have admitted to enjoying using the item and think that the features could have been used in various ways by the remaster instead of being removed completely in favor of the Tingle Bottle.
  • The graphical style in general. While it was controversial at the time due to the Animation Age Ghetto and what people were expecting thanks to the GameCube SpaceWorld demo, most fans have long come around to appreciating the game's excellent and timeless visual style, with many considering Twilight Princess to have gone too far into the other direction into Real Is Brown territory. Since then, Nintendo has been making efforts to try and find a good middle-ground, with Skyward Sword's painterly aesthetic and Breath of the Wild returning to cel-shading but with a slightly more grounded yet stylized anime-esque aesthetic.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The cel-shaded art style is very pretty, and this is one of the most expressive versions of Link out there. It's even better in the HD version. On top of that, the original GameCube release has aged like a fine wine (as opposed to more "realistic" titles, which tend to age not as well).
• The Woobie:
  • Link's sweet old Grandma. Poor lady breaks down sobbing after her granddaughter is kidnapped, and when you come back to Outset Island, she's literally sick with worry over Link and Aryll. Just the music that plays in these scenes qualifies as a Tear Jerker. You cure her with a fairy, after which she realizes how brave Link is for going out to save his sister, and decides she's going to be strong just like her grandchildren. The Elixir Soup she starts making (for free) after you cure her, which is the most powerful healing item in the game with added Quad Damage effects, doesn't hurt either.
  • Komali, before he gets his wings. The poor little guy spends all day holed up in his room clutching Din's Pearl and grieving the loss of his grandmother; you can hardly blame him for hanging on to the treasure when it's all he has left of her. His father, the Rito chieftain, doesn't appear to be the most outwardly affectionate person, either, so he could really use a hug. Fortunately, he becomes happy and braver thanks to Link's efforts. Even so, There’s also the second half of the game where Medli leaves her home to help Link and she leaves without telling Komali, resulting in the poor kid worrying about her. Again, he is thankfully pulled out of this funk at the ending cutscene of the game once he learns that Medli is safe and heads a search party for Link.

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