10 Video Game Moments Where You Thought The Villain Would Win

With hack-and-slash offshoot Hyrule Warriors being non-canon, the game had a lot of poetic license to take things… wherever it fancied, really. Ganondorf already has a lot of form with taking over Hyrule (heck, in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, he’d ‘won’ long before the game even began), but this title seemed to give him more power than ever.

The plot revolves around the villain’s attempts to restore the fragments of his soul (through the powerful mage Cia), which had been split to bind him. Though Link manages to defeat her, doing so revives Ganondorf via the Master Sword, and he soon brings Zant and Ghirahim to his aid.

Though Link is also supported by goodly characters from the back catalog (such as Princess Ruto, Fi and Midna), Ganondorf’s might overwhelms all of them. He claims all three Triforce pieces, laying claim to Hyrule Castle with his newly augmented army. It’s one of the villain’s ‘greatest’ moments in the series, and it’s only through the invocation of Hyrule’s legendary warriors of the past that Ghirahim and Zant are defeated, followed by their leader himself.