Obvious choice is druid ...
(Maybe Shifter? Totally unfamilar with it but the name "shifter" implies it'll do at least some of what you want)
You want something with some bonus feats if you're going to fight as a wolf and with weapons, especially if you want sword & board. A shifter or a druid with wild shape (i.e. not nature fang) does not qualify here. And there is no Paizo feat for a skinwalker to go full wolf.
Maybe a feral champion warpriest? You don't get wild shape until 7th level, but that's about when you can make turning into a wolf worthwhile for any character - you want the trip ability in order to say you have combat options. A shifter can do that earlier (4th) but there's the feat problem for them.
Feats for a human feral champion warpriest might go
1: Dirty fighting
Human: Improved trip
Warpriest 1: Weapon focus (falchion, or no-dachi if eastern weapons available)
3: Power attack
Warpriest 3: Furious focus
5: Combat reflexes
Warpriest 6: Greater trip
Human Alt FCB 6: Armor focus (your favourite heavy armour)
7: Shaping focus
9: Poised bearing
Warpriest 9: Imposing bearing
11: Quick wild shape
Warpriest 12: Penetrating strike (your sword)
Human Alt FCB 12: Critical focus (your sword)
13: Quicken blessing
You'll need the wild enchantment on your armour to make poised/imposing bearing still work as a wolf. You can trip when human of course, but it has a higher action cost. As a human you can cast spells, talk etc. and the sword does more damage on a standard attack as well as probably being better vs. DR. Later on you'll get critical feats for it too. Note that a feral champion warpriest gets claws which they can use in either form but this one prefers to use a sword when human.
It's quite hard to make the character not be simply better in one form or the other. I started by making a sword/shield TWF build and it ended up being better at tripping with the shield than the wolf's bite, in every way.
You didn't mention any expected level for the build, so I'll throw a low-lv at you.
Any Race, Weretouched Shifter 4 / Brawler 2
Str 17+2, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 10
Personally, I'd dump charisma to get higher intelligence. Also, look into traits such as Cunning Liar or Emphatic Diplomat if you dump cha.
1 Combat Reflexes, Shifter Claws
3 Weapon Focus (Retrained at lv 4)
4 Lycanthropic Wild Shape
5 Planar Wild Shape, Martial Flexibility
6 Feral Combat Training (B), Flurry
Flexibility:
Dedicated Adversary for +2 A/D
Vicious Stomp if you think you'll trip alot
Ghostslayer/Rat Catcher/Blind-Fight (or any other situational feat)
***
In your base form, you'll carry a shield and flurry with a melee weapon (three attacks).
The weretouched archetype would allow you to use shields/armor in your hybrid form, but I'm guessing that's not the flavor you're looking for.
As a fully transformed wolf, you can flurry with your bite attack to gain three attacks per round. (Feral Combat Training works with Brawler's Flurry) Tripping like crazy.
Planar Wild Shape gives you scaling Damage Reduction/Energy Resistance/Spell Resistane while you're in hybrid or wolf form, at the cost of an extra use of your Wild Shape ability. Your number of uses per day is [Shifter level+Wis] 6.
shaping focus is no help for a feral champion warpriest with no dip
Special: This feat has no effect if you are not a multiclassed druid.
Dammit, you're right. While that only delays it a couple of levels, I was thinking level 7 seemed late anyway. I'll think again.
Hmmmm. Well if you wanted to just be lore link, it doesn't seem that hard to make. Link's main thing is being the Hero of Time, which gifts him with the combat and life experience of all the past incarnations of the Hero of Time. That translates into Link being naturally proficient to the point of mastery with pretty any weapon he gets his hands on, regardless of it's uniqueness, as though he'd trained with it all his life, and naturally be stronger, faster and more intuitive than normal people.
Of course that doesn't benefit him though when it comes to anything not related to combat as he only gets their EXPERIENCES, not their memories, and he's very much a mortal. So link probably wouldn't have much in the way of Cha or Con, but his Str, Dex, Int and Wisdom would all be pretty good. The way I see it, that would mean you need to meet the following:
- Wear exclusively Light or Medium armor (Link wears a tunic).
- Longsword + Heavy steel shield, longbow
- Have decent to high skill ranks for Perception, Survival, Swimming, Climbing, Riding, Acrobatics, Disable Device, Escape Artist, Handle Animal, Knowledge (Arcana, Nature, Planes, Dungeoneering, Engineering), Sense Motive, Spellcraft and UMD.
- Whirlwind attack, Spring Attack
- Be able to transform into a wolf (maybe dire wolf?)
I dunno how druids work, but all that can be accomplished with a straight up fighter.
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And I would add as a not, that link did not turn into a wolf with his own power, if you really want to run with this (and I think you should :D) you may need a bit if help
See if you.can get a party member (or a cohort) to play a witch (white haired archtype, or even just the prehensile hair hex gets you a version of midna) then all she has to do is cast beast shape on you and voila, twilight princess link :)
(Bonus points if the witch is a small race, and actually rides you into combat)
(Double bonus points if she takes hellcat stealth, and hides in your shadow)