Springtime brings new life with budding flowers and chirping birds, and the warmer temperatures tend to encourage friend groups and romantic couples to spend more time outdoors. But it is still February, not quite spring, yet a month which is still considered to be romantic thanks to this one special day which happens to be today – Valentine’s Day. Stores beg us to buy something as a romantic gesture to our loved ones, and you can see hearts anywhere you go. While there is some romance in the Zelda games (who can ever forget Ocarina of Time‘s Honey and Darling?), I was thinking of taking a closer look at some hearts you can find in the games instead, like the ones that tend to be a little trickier to find. I’m talking about Pieces of Heart.
It’s been a while since we last saw a Piece of Heart. The first time we ever got to see a Piece of Heart in a Zelda game was back in 1991, in A Link to the Past, and they have appeared in almost every Zelda game since, making them a classic collectible. However, they were absent in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, before returning with the recent release of 2024’s Echoes of Wisdom.
A Piece of Heart tends to glitter like the finest crystal glass, with a small red heart in its core and a larger heart encapsulating it, typically blue but the color varies depending on which game you’re playing. You need to find four Pieces of Hearts to give Link (or Princess Zelda, in Echoes of Wisdom) a new heart container. The only exception happens to be in Twilight Princess where you as the player need to find five Pieces of Hearts before Link‘s maximum health gets extended by one heart container. Who knows why the developers decided to give our favorite farm boy a harder time than the other heroes.
Some are trickier to find than others. Some are hidden in the game world in treasure chests or behind breakable walls, others can be won by playing mini-games, and a couple of them can even be bought. Few people other than Link seem to understand what Pieces of Heart are, or what they’re used for. Hena by the Fishing Hole in Twilight Princess jokes who’s heart Link has caught when he happens to pull up a Piece of Heart with his fishing hook instead of a fish. Shopkeepers might not know what they’re selling but they do recognize how it sparkles and, surely, that must mean it’s worth something, so they’re willing to let it go for a hefty price.
I can’t help but wonder where a Piece of Heart comes from. How are they made? Can they be made? And how come they only seem to work on Link (and now Princess Zelda, too)? The games won’t give me any answers but I have a feeling that they might come from pure love.
If Link pays a visit to fortune teller Madame Fanadi in Hyrule Castle Town and asks her to give a fortune in love for 10 Rupees, she won’t tell him what his love life might look like but instead give a hint of where he can find a Piece of Heart. If our hero makes his way up to Snowpeak Ruins and beats Yeto and Yeta in a race of snowboarding, he’s rewarded with a Piece of Heart. And if the Hero of the skies give enough Gratitude Crystals to the mysterious Batreaux, you guessed it, he will get a Piece of Heart in exchange.
Since some Pieces of Heart seem to come from gratitude or love, and are sometimes confused with love and people’s hearts, I’d like to think that that is how they’re made. I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure but it feels like a nice thing to believe.
Ultimately, a Piece of Heart works as a reward for players for taking time to explore the world and go out of their way to try things outside of the main quests. While that isn’t particularly romantic at all, perhaps it can work as a metaphor for anyone who is single today and is longing for a partner. Perhaps we all ought to stray from the main quest every once in a while and, who knows, maybe we will find our own Piece of Heart one day. To those of you reading who have already found one, I hope you know how valuable it is and won’t let it go easily, like the shopkeepers we’ve come across in the world of Zelda tend to do.
