Ranking the TP Temples - Twilight Princess (summer 2012)

This has been discussed before, but I'm going to let the new blood here have their shot at this one. Also, maybe even some of the regulars here changed their mind.

#1 City in the Sky - Completely unique from anything in the series, great boss
#2 Lakebed Temple - The most intellectually challenging temple in TP.
#3 Snowpeak Temple - Item questionable, but great progression and subplot.
#4 Goron Mines - After seeing SS's fire temples, I appreciate this much more.
#5 Arbiter Grounds - Interesting, though linear. Overall good though.
#6 Palace of Twilight - Short, but interesting and visually pleasing temple.
#7 Ganon's Castle - A decent and brief test on every concept you learned
#8 Forest Temple - It's an okay temple. There's been better and worse.
#9 Temple of Time - Linear, bland, predictable, useless item, weak final boss

1. Arbiter's Grounds. Its my favorite temple in the game. I love the atmosphere and the whole Spirit Temple tie-in and the boss was fantastic.

2. Temple of Time. I love this dungeon so much. Its fun to go through and smashy smashy with the statue. (Whom i lovingly call "Biggins") The boss was fun and hilarious. Easy, but i enjoyed it.

3. Snowpeak Ruins. Loved the design here and the yetis. I didnt enjoy the boss fight but the concept of Yeta being corrupted is great.

4. City In The Sky. Design wise, this would probably be on top, but in terms of my preference, i put it here. Its the "Water Temple" style dungeon of the game. Its a real pain in the fanny and designed well enough to set your teeth on edge. The boss fight was a pain (in a good way) too.

5. Goron Mines. This is the best of the Fused Shadow temples. While the boss is kinda ehh, everything else was ingenius!

6. Lakebed Temple. Water Temple revisited but much simpler designed. Its not bad but not fantastic. The boss fight was glorious though.

7. Forest Temple. Ehh. The monkeys were great and Ook's appearance in the boss fight was awesome but overall, this level is boring.

8. Palace of Twilight. This one is a great concept but designed rather assy. Its a little too short and a little too...vertical. Zant battle was fun but yeah.

9. Hyrule Castle. ...lol....lololhahahhah even calling this a dungeon. Its so short and uneventful. Yeah the final fight is great but...lol.

I'll only delve into the seven main dungeons in this list.


NUMBER SEVEN: Temple of Time

The concept of revisiting an old location from Ocarina of Time and explore it further as an actual dungeon was really appealing to me, but the dungeon itself ended up having some issues that I will credit exclusively to the lack of any overarching feeling of engagement. The puzzles were rather straightforward, and there were few enemies to engage with. I rather liked the mini-boss battle, though the boss battle ended up underwhelming me. If anything, this temple stood out simply because of the Dominion Rod - that was the item that boggled my mind the most in Twilight Princess, and in retrospect I'd have loved to see what an item like that would do in a Zelda game that uses Wii MotionPlus.


NUMBER SIX: City in the Sky

I just didn't really like the interior design of this dungeon. It's neat to have a "sky dungeon", but several segments involving the clawshots in this dungeon just felt tedious to me. That said, the double clawshots were certainly cool at times. It was also pretty fun to battle Argorok, although it was a pretty straightforward fight with somewhat repetitive clawshotting back and forth.


NUMBER FIVE: Lakebed Temple

I don't particularly like this dungeon, but I think it's alright mainly because I find it short. The miniboss didn't stand out too much, it was a pretty simple fight. The boss was a bit tricky for me at first, but once I got him out of that hole of his it was also rather straightforward. I liked the underwater bombs though, as well as some of the puzzles where you had to use the clawshot (or rather, the ability to hang onto the clawshot after you'd hooked your way to the target).


NUMBER FOUR: Forest Temple

I rather appreciated this as the first dungeon, but in all honesty I wasn't really impressed all that much. I didn't expect it to be, either. What I did find was a dungeon with a nice sense of progress, a pretty decent item (the gale boomerang) and some intriguing enemies. The mini-boss/boss battles were okay, with some neat little twists of nothing else, and it was kinda cool how they implemented the monkeys into the dungeon's design.


NUMBER THREE: Goron Mines

Here we come to the dungeons I found to be very solid. The Goron Mines had a great lead-up, and the concept of assembling the boss key from three Goron Elders was a nice breath of fresh air. It at least helped to break up the formula of how dungeons are usually traversed in a Zelda game. I also have to mention the ingenius use of the iron boots to walk on magnetic surfaces, it really added something to the dungeon's design as well as the iron boots themselves. Hell, it even kinda makes sense that such magnetic surfaces would exist within the mine... sorta... ish. I also loved it when I got the bow, as the bow is easily one of the best items in the game. Shooting with it while upside-down was bizarrely awesome. The mini-boss was a pretty cool fight (it took me one or two falls into the lava before I realized that hey, this whole platform is covered in magnetic fields, maybe I should use the iron boots to stay rooted to the ground). The boss was very straightforward, but the atmosphere was great and he looked absolutely terrifying. The way the camera shakes/hops as he stomps toward you was really off-putting.


NUMBER TWO: Snowpeak Mansion

I really like this dungeon for two reasons - first, it felt really fresh and unique in how it made the dungeon not really feel like a dungeon at all, and second, it had some really engaging moments with enemies and boss fights. The mini-boss I remember was a bit of a pain for me the first time around (I actually died), and the room leading up to the boss key (or bedroom key I suppose) was also very engaging. The boss fight wasn't particularly noteworthy in and of itself, but it certainly was a weird feeling to be fighting Yeta who had been so soft and timid up until that point. I honestly jumped back a little when her face changed.


NUMBER ONE: Arbiter's Grounds

Maybe I'm a sucker for desert dungeons, but this one easily took the top spot for me. It had a great layout, a great item and some great enemies. It's one of the few dungeons that really incorporated the wolf form into progressing. When I came here, it really felt like I was playing on the wolf form's strengths instead of being reduced to a weaker state, which was otherwise how the wolf form felt for me. The spinner was great to use in the segments that it was used for, with some tricky jumps back and forth that I remember were hard for me to get right the first time around. Lastly, I have to mention that Stallord was loads of fun as a boss.

@ OP

I agree with most of your rankings but I liked the Snowpeak ruins over the Lakebed temple

Number Nine: Hyrule Castle. While this dungeon could have been unique, it was just boring and the puzzles were kinda ehh. It could have been expanded on a lot better.

Number Eight: Palace of Twilight. This dungeon had some very awesome designs, but it was way too short and kind of boring in some parts.
Now on to the main 7 dungeons.
Number Seven: Temple of Time. Sure this dungeon had a cool item, but it was way too linear. I didn't like the idea of bringing the statue back all the way to the beginning. It was a kinda bland and boring dungeon too.

Number Six: Forest Temple. A good and solid first dungeon, but there could have been way more. The dungeon item was really excellent, and I liked how they implemented all of the monkeys into the dungeon's design. However it was too simple and just plain too easy.

Number Five: Lakebed Temple. This temple was just an upgraded version of the water temple, but one thing it had in common with the Water Temple, was the fact that it was tedious and boring. Don't get me wrong though it was a challenging dungeon and the item and miniboss were both a lot of fun. The enemies were all fresh and kind of cool to me also.

Number Four: City in the Sky. This dungeon was plain awesome. One thing that I look for in a good dungeon is that is should be inside and outside, and that's one thing I liked about this dungeon. I loved the dungeon item, and this dungeon easily had my favorite TP boss fight. It did get kind of tedious sometimes with the double clawshot, but overall a great dungeon.

Number Three: Arbiters Grounds. I love desert dungeons in zelda, and this one is probably my favorite. The spinner was easily the best TP item. because it was just so much fun to use in this game. I like how it had a spirit temple/ forest temple tie-in from OoT. The only problems I had with it was that fact that it was too short, and that the spinner wasn't used a whole lot.

Number Two: Goron Mines. Oh my god I loved this dungeon. I loved how both the iron boots and the bow came hand in hand to make one awesome dungeon. The way the iron boots were used in Twilight Princess was so unique and fantastic. The puzzles were fresh, and I loved the dungeon design. The miniboss was also a lot of fun and I actually loved the boss fight of this dungeon. Easily the best of the Fused Shadow Temples.

Number One: Snowpeak Ruins. This is one of the best dungeons in zelda ever. The dungeon design was absolutely awesome and I loved the whole cozy atmosphere of the dungeon. It didn't even feel like a dungeon sometimes, which was something I loved. I normally hate ice dungeons in zelda, but this was just absolutely amazing. The dungeon item was fantastic and mini boss was really cool. Just everything about this dungeon was plain unique and fresh. Best dungeon of Tp in my opinion.

I don't know about how I'd rank everything, but Snowpeak Ruins are definitely on top. It takes everything I don't like about Zelda dungeons and turns it on its head. Zelda dungeons just feel too much like...Zelda dungeons to me. I always know what I'm getting into. It's find the map, find the compas, fight a miniboss, collect item, find big key, fight boss. The dungeons never make any sense either. They're all so arbitrary. Why would anyone ever build these damn places? I can't lose myself in the game it it's just so set up as a video game level while still trying to pretend it's a coherent world that makes sense. It doesn't embrace totally that it's a game like Mario, nor does it put up a proper pretense of reality like, say, Skyrim.

Snowpeak Ruins seems like a real place! Or at least as close as you're going to get in a Zelda game. I could see this place actually being an old manor that fell into ruins. Most other Zelda dungeons just seem like a series of arbitrary rooms with a common theme and some obstacles. The layout and goals of Snowpeak almost seemed natural.

It also offered a unique side story outside of "beat temple, collect item." You have a couple who have their own insular lives that you see affected by the overall story who you end up helping on your quest. It also offers a unique gameplay twist with the complete lack of recovery hearts but abundance of light-restoring soup, that you improve as you continue through the level. Also those damn chillfos are hard as all hell. I'm terrible against them.

All in all, I want to see more dungeons like Snowpeak Ruins in future Zeldas!

I feel too lazy to write a list, but suffice to say that Snowpeak is the absolute number one for me.

I actually kind of liked the Temple of Time as well, but I can't remember why. The boss was a huge letdown, all too easy...

Not a real fan of Arbiter's Grounds, although I loved the boss.

1. Arbiter's Grounds. I too am a sucker for desert temples, and have never been disappointed. I loved the battle to get in, and while I personally disliked the poe hunting, The item, atmosphere, sick miniboss, and epic finale rank this as #1 in my book for Twilight Princess.

2. Snowpeak Ruins. Frozen-over mansion on a column in the middle of an extinct volcano? Awesome. The dungeon enemies were annoying as all get out, and the music lackluster (like all TP dungeon themes), but everything about the architecture and boss made the dungeon completely worth it. Blizzeta Phase 2-3 remains one of my favorite boss themes ever.

3.Temple of Time. Now, I agree, this dungeon was ridiculously easy. The item was barely more useful than the spinner, and the boss was hardly less of a pushover than its Oot cousin. But the atmosphere, architecture, and miniboss were all sweet. Music was the best out of the dungeon themes too, imo.

4. Goron Mines. This was a really cool temple that was not restricted to the use of just one item. You actively used both the iron boots (in a ridiculously awesome way, I might add) and the bow to solve the puzzles. The mining machinery also made a good impression. The boss, while easy, was still pretty cool.

5. City in the Sky. This temple had so much going for it. Dual Clawshots, easily the coolest and most useful items in Zelda history, made their debut, the miniboss was unique if easy, and the dungeon itself's puzzles, atmosphere, and genuine coolness made an impression on me. Unfortunately, horribly annoying music, stupid Oocca (?), and a poorly-designed/cliche boss detracts enough from it to earn the #5 position. It's sad, really, because a few tweaks and this place would be worth a second playthrough all by itself.

6. Lakebed Temple. Most thought-provoking dungeon, as it was anything but linear. Deku Toad wins style points, as does the pretty epic boss fight. The fact that it involves so much water, and doesn't really stand out prominently in any way ranks it lower, though.

7. Hyrule Castle. This dungeon, if one could call it that, had really good music that preluded the final fight very well. Like most final boss dungeons, it was a conglomeration of every type of trial you could face, and didn't have a prominent theme to it. While its difficulty was enjoyable, the Castle really didn't have anything unique or new to offer, and fades into the background behind the others. Final Boss redeems it, kinda. Not really.

8. Forest Temple. So, yeah, this place was the first dungeon. The miniboss was more fun than the actual Fused Shadow guardian. There isn't much to this place, but it's better than what's to come.

9. Palace of Twilight. It left no lasting impression on me, other than a tron-esque climb to reach Zant, while trying not to get turned into a Wolf or teleported back to the beginning at inconvenient times. Not even a cool item to show for my efforts. I barely even remember this one. Might have been better if we got to see more of the Twilight kingdom, but no.

1. Hyrule Castle - the only nonlinear dungeon in the entire game. Coupled with amazing architecture and an overall feeling of grandiose, there is nothing that can top HC.

2. Everything else - too linear, as well as a less than spectacular design (except Goron Mines).

It's been a while since I've played TP. I don't remember all the dungeons very well, but this is the gist of it.

1) Snowpeak Ruins
2) Goron Mines
3) Arbiter's Grounds
4) City in the Sky
5) Temple of Time
6) Hyrule Castle
7) Palace of Twilight
8) Forest Temple
9) Lakebed Temple

Overall I thought TP's dungeons were really good. City in the Sky would have been higher if not for the Ooccoo and the annoying bawking in the background music.