The Legend of Zelda's best weapon is so much cooler than the Master Sword

Whenever I think about Link from the Legend of Zelda series, I instinctively picture him holding the Master Sword. I’m sure you do too. Link’s most famous weapon, with its indigo hilt and Triforce-etched steel, is undoubtedly the most iconic video game sword of all time. I mean, the Master Sword is so metal that Link needs to pull the thing out of a dragon’s head in Tears of the Kingdom. It’s the perfect blade to celebrate on Cool Sword Day, our most sacred of holidays.

But I’m not going to do that, because real ones know that the Master Sword is for chumps. Been there, swung that! It’s high time that we give some flowers to the actual best weapon in Link’s arsenal: the goddamn Biggoron’s Sword.

First introduced in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the Biggoron’s Sword is a comically large, two-handed weapon that has appeared only a handful of times over the past three decades. It doesn’t have the iconic design of the Master Sword or its cultural cachet, but it doesn’t need either of those things — it’s a big honking sword for big honking boys. This is the kind of shit you use to cut a cake at a Scottish wedding. In a world where we too often weigh the value of video game weapons by their artistic flourishes, the Biggoron’s Sword is a reminder that sometimes the best blades are the ones that can slice into a Moblin so hard that the poor bastard dies twice.

What makes the Biggoron’s Sword so special in Ocarina of Time is that getting it is a whole thing. It’s an optional weapon that can only be acquired by completing an obtuse trading questline. The Master Sword? You just pull the thing out of a stone. Big deal! The Biggoron’s Sword? You need to run a vial of eye drops up Death Mountain in four minutes and deliver it to the biggest dude you’ve ever seen, and then wait three days for him to smelt the thing. If you can manage that, your patience will be rewarded with a weapon that is about as tall as Link himself. Link can’t use a shield with it, on account of the whole two hands thing, but you don’t need defense when you’re brandishing God’s greatest murder weapon.

The Biggoron’s Sword has appeared in a few other games, and it’s also a pain in the ass to get in those — as it should be! In the Game Boy’s Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, you can only obtain it by linking the two games together and using a password. Inconvenient and awesome. In Breath of the Wild, you can only get it by scanning an Amiibo. Hell yeah, dude. The easiest way to get it is in Tears of the Kingdom, but even that requires you to go traipsing around the depths. You can only buy it with ghost souls, and that’s sick as hell, in my professional opinion.

The Biggoron’s Sword is so goddamn powerful that when Link uses it in SoulCalibur 2, each swing drains his health. Now that’s a sword!

Aside from it being cartoonishly large and impractical, the thing I actually love about the Biggoron’s Sword is that there’s a sense of history baked into it, just like the Master Sword. It’s named after Biggoron, the Big Goron who created it for Link in Ocarina of Time. Whenever it appears in other games where Biggoron isn’t actually present, you get the sense that his design has withstood the test of time. He’s like the Muramasa of the Zelda universe, leaving his mark on the history of Hyrule weaponry. The Zelda series is at its best when it’s leaving a loose sense of history like a breadcrumb trail, rather than trying to force every detail into a defined timeline. “Legend” is in the title for a reason; the tale of Biggoron making a big sword because Link gave him eye drops is as good as folklore.

With a rumored Ocarina of Time remake potentially on the horizon, I hope that the Biggoron’s Sword gets its due soon enough. For too long, we’ve let the history books tell us that the Master Sword is Link’s most powerful weapon. Frankly, we know that’s not true anymore. Any blade that can be corroded by Gloom is no sword I want in my sheath during a war against the King of Evil. I only trust the work of a gigantic blacksmith who believes his brother sucks so bad at making swords that he spins up a whole operation to prove he can do better. A sword powered by petty spite can’t be defeated.