Link's catchphrase, "Well excuse me, Princess!" is an internet meme and commonly used in-joke used by video game players, especially Zelda fans, and is spoken by Link on 29 occasions throughout the 13 episodes. James Rolfe of Cinemassacre has shown a more positive response to the series. While acknowledging that the dialogue "can make you cringe", he favored Link and Zelda's characterizations and found the action satisfying. He labeled "The White Knight" as the best episode for showing Link's heroic nature against the more pompous and vain Prince Facade, but described the following episode "Kiss'N Tell" as his least favorite for Link complaining throughout. Michael Mammano for Den of Geek commented that the series "falls squarely into the category of guilty pleasure" and continued, "it's not very good, but that doesn't stop it from being eminently enjoyable. It's quality nostalgia and, at a total running time of just over three hours, not a bad way to kill an afternoon". However, he also described Link's characterisation as "appalling", describing him as "a whiny, obnoxious, barely competent creep" and also considered the writing and animation to be poor quality. Nathan Simmons of SVG considered the animation to be "pretty stiff" but also opined that "the greatest sin of this cartoon series might be it's[sic] characterization of Link" who is portrayed as a "creep" and that "for longtime fans, however, it was simply painful to watch". Luke Plunkett of Kotaku noted "shoddy animation, poor voice work, execrable humour and terrible writing make it one of the decade's worst cartoons" but also commented, "for all its flaws, there's something about it that defies genuine ridicule. Something charming". He responded more positively to the show's faithful presentation of the artwork from the original The Legend of Zelda game and the music stating that it "featured great renditions of the game's most memorable music, especially the intro's version of the trademark title theme". Dave Trumbore for Collider described the series as a "20th century mess" and commented: "Despite 30 years of beloved video games that have evolved with each of Nintendo's successive video game systems, the one-and-only 1989 animated series remains a blight on an otherwise impressive record. This disaster, and similar ill-fated animated/live-action adaptations of Nintendo's intellectual properties, left a foul taste in the IP-owners' mouths, essentially locking out any additional adaptations outside of the video game realm". Writing for Destructoid, Chris Moyse commented that