The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The Short


Pros
- Pioneered 3D action games with a control scheme still used to this day
- Massive sprawling adventure across unique dungeons and locations
- Good music (see below)
- Transition between child and adult Link adds an awesome twist on an old formula
- Lots of secrets, sidequests, and more to explore
- Ocarina makes lots of things (travel, day/night cycle, etc.) streamlined
- The crazy windmill guy is the coolest ever

Cons
- Game looks downright awful, and didn't even look particularly great when it came out
- Music is good, but at least half of it is stolen from Link to the Past
- Story is nonsensical silliness that tries too hard to take itself seriously
- Unskippable cutscenes and slow text crawl
- Any attempt at stealth sections is tedious and poorly implemented
- Focus on jumping platforming where you can't manually jump
- While the idea behind the controls was excellent in 1998, trying to play this on an N64 in the modern day is difficult, obnoxious, and tedious
- When you respawn after dying in a dungeon, you aren't penalized severely but whatever items you used are gone forever, meaning item harvesting yay. 
- Lots of little contrived gameplay experiences
- Set a standard, making it so no console Zelda game after this one even tried to innovate (except maybe Wind Waker)

I can hear the hatemail writing itself already. 

The Long

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a classic and an important game in gaming history. When Mario 64 came along and showed everybody the right way to do 3D platforming, Zelda: OoT showed us all how to do modern 3D combat. While it was a bit clunky even then, the concepts of Z-targeting to focus on an enemy to kill it was a staple that persists to this day. Even modern, more refined (in terms of the combat) games like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry 4 use a targeting system based on single-enemy focus just like Zelda: OoT did back in 1998. It also created a sprawling, massive adventure that few have attempted to emulate (aside from Darksiders, but that was rather recently) since the game's initial release.

So yeah, Zelda: OoT did a lot of good and pioneered a ton of stuff, blah blah blah. But I'm reviewing games in 2012, not 1998. And as is it just so happens, I own an N64, a retro television, and even a rumble pak to get the full Zelda: OoT experience. So after burning through the game for the fifth or sixth time in my gaming career, how do I feel about Zelda: OoT after all these years? 

Well, sit back and take a deep breath, because there's some good and some bad upcoming.

And I thought my Final Fantasy VII review was going to be the hardest.

The story of Zelda: OoT is a simple one that isn't particularly engrossing. Like the Mario games they boil down to one main thing: save the princess, kill the baddie. Unlike Mario, however, Zelda sells itself as a mix between a JRPG and an adventure game, but without the character depth or clever wit of either. Sure, there are plenty of entertaining characters in Zelda: OoT, but there just aren't a lot of them. There's only a few towns (and that's with me stretching what the definition of a "town" is), and each only has a handful of inhabitants, and most of them either won't talk to you or don't have anything to say. Feels sparse. 

Anyway, the point is that little kid Link is chosen by Zelda in what seems more like a fake childhood cardboard fort club than an actual important scheme to save Hyrule, and he has to go collect some gems to open the temple of time because Zelda saw Ganondorf once, through a window, and decided he was evil. I guess because he was the only dark-skinned person to set foot in Hyrule she "knew" he was bad. Whatever. 

So off you go into this sparsely populated kingdom in an attempt to save it. After getting the three gems (which involves a convoluted puzzle to get eaten by a big fish. Brilliant scheme, that) you unlock the Temple of Time and warp to the future where, surprise! Ganondorf won and everything sucks now. 

I WIN

It was actually kind of a cool twist the first time, to show up in town and have it burned to the ground and full of ReDeads. From there it does what it did the first have only as an adult: find more crap at the end of dungeons, bring it back to Zelda for whatever reason (who gets captured. Obviously), team up with Sheik who is very obviously Zelda in disguise (though I don't know why), save Hyrule, yada yada. Though technically you defeat Ganondorf as an adult, which is after he got all powerful. Wouldn't it have been a better idea to have kicked his butt as a kid before he got all crazy? And then all the castle guards would still be alive, so you wouldn't have to fight him alone. There's an idea.

Well, whatever, you win. The story attempts to pad out its history with long, really really boring expository cutscenes about goddesses and the triforce and some bullcrap, but all of it is tedious and generally unimportant to the overall plot. The quirky characters are fun but don't add any particular depth other than a few funny lines, and as a whole the story is just straight up lacking. It isn't bad, and it's enough to make you want to keep playing, but it doesn't aspire to anything beyond that. It's either an annoyance (cutscenes) or just there (rest of the time), which is unfortunate because I can tell they were trying to do something big here.

Oh hey! Now I know why the game is called "Ocarina of Time!" Nintendo, you so clever. 

So who cares about that crap; it's not like Nintendo has every written a particularly compelling narrative in their lives (this is me ignoring the Mother/Earthbound games, but I guess Hal made them so my point still stands). What matters is the gameplay. How has that held up on my oddly three-pronged N64 controller? Does it still work after all these years? Well...yes and no. Mostly no. Yeah, cue fanboy rage right about now, but hear me out.

As stated in the intro, Zelda: OoT pioneered the Z-targeting system and the ability to be highly maneuverable in battle. Before this 3D games either had you fighting one-on-one (fighting games) or just sort of swinging in in arc and hoping you hit stuff. Zelda: OoT helped refine the "swing around and hit stuff" bit by allowing you to focus on a single enemy, and easily switch between enemies ("easily switch" is in theory based on that awful N64 controller, but more on that in a second). This was straight up revolutionary back in the day.

The game also had a heavy focus on having a large arsenal of items at your disposal that you then used for puzzles or to defeat enemies (mostly puzzles, though). While it didn't have an item count to rival the massive Link to the Past, Zelda: OoT in theory should have used its smaller number of side items to a greater extent, refining the game to be built around them. Which it did. Sort of. Hey, it did it better than Twilight Princess at least, which just gave you tons of crap you used once or twice and then never touched again. 

Shootin stuff. 

So back in 1998 I was willing to forgive that stupid-ass N64 controller because I didn't know any better. Hey, it was the first console controller to really use an analog stick right, only to have the idea stolen by Sony with the DuelShock (and fixed, because adding a second analog stick was exactly what it needed) but whatever, still pioneered it. But now, after we've evolved our controllers forward, going back to that horrid three pronged monstrosity is a huge annoyance.

A picture, in case you forgot. 

So my hands are bigger now too, meaning that middle trident prong I'm supposed to grab doesn't exactly fit well, and the whole thing somehow feels both encumbering and too small. But hey, this isn't a controller review, it's a Zelda: OoT review. And I'm going to tell you right now that paired with the N64 controller, Zelda: OoT really hasn't aged well in terms of controls.

The first problem is the analog stick is too sensitive. Yes, it can differentiate between walking and running which is great, but whenever you try to aim the damn thing flies everywhere. It can be hard to precisely move exactly the needed direction to hit a jump, and considering some later levels require pinpoint precision, this can be extremely frustrating.

Let's hit the jumping thing right now as an aside: why are the Zelda creators so averse to letting you jump on your own? The whole "auto-jump" thing is a massive pain in the ass. First off, you have to be running towards a ledge (or just walking fast) for Link to do his little bunny hop off it. Second, he'll "hop" off anything higher than his waist, rather than just stepping down, which can lead to some stupid platforming mistakes. Third, when you actually do want him to just climb down, you have to inch ever so carefully, because one slight tap on that oversensitive analog stick and he'll go leaping off to his death rather than carefully hanging down. All of this could be fixed with manual jumping controls. Come on, you have two shoulder buttons you could have used here, or moved the A button (aka the "roll 90% of the time, talk 10% of the time") button to a shoulder since it isn't used that much and had A be jump. Novel concept. Mario jumped just fine, why can't Link do it on his own?

These are all emulator up-rezed shots, FYI, in case you thought your memory deceived you. 

That's just a small gameplay niggle amongst many. Camera work is horrid throughout (just like Mario 64), which makes getting those precision-required imprecise jumps a lesson in tedious repetition. It seems to work ok in a wide open space (like Hyrule Field or during most bosses), but when you are in a cramped room the camera can't seem to figure out how to function, unable to look through walls and forcing a pan as you step away from the door (which also requires you to adjust where you are pointing the stick, as the movement is based on camera's viewing direction). It's really, really obnoxious.

The bad camera, poor jumping, and mediocre analog controls make the whole game feel very loose, which (based on dungeon design) isn't what the creators were shooting for. Yeah, you can still beat the game, but you can't say it wasn't filled with cheap deaths or hits because of the horrible controls. It's an "added bonus" of difficulty stemmed from poor design, and while I was willing to give this game a cut because it was the first of its kind in 1998, need I remind you it is 2012 now, fourteen years later. The fundamental controls are bad, people. That's just the sad truth about the N64.

The Biggoron sword is awesome, though

There are also lots of parts of the game that just feel sloppy, which may or may not have to do with the awful controls but now I'm not entirely certain. Dungeons are decent in their execution (though that water temple is still infamous) and tend to work well overall, but they don't seem to use all the tons of items you have as much as I'd like. While some (hookshot, boomerang, arrows, etc.) are used frequently, the rest of the assortment seems neglected. Stuff like the Eye of Truth are only used in single dungeons and maybe one area in the overworld later, which makes it seem like a wasted slot. Deku nuts are almost pointless save a few very rare instances, and the same goes for breakable Deku sticks. The hammer can be fun to smash guys with but you have to use the stupid C buttons to do it, which isn't convenient at all.

There's also a lot of running from place to place without anything inbetween, especially across Hyrule field. This is sort of fixed with Epona, who is a bit faster and can sometimes jump fences if you point her exactly at them with the analog stick and at just the right speed (good luck), but since you only get her as an adult that's a lot of wandering around as a kid. A lot of wandering around. 

Does it still hold up? Barely. While the fundamental control issues and weird ideas (Unskippable text? Bad jumps?  Dungeons that rely too heavily on being able to see what you are doing? Fetch quests? LOTS of fetch quests?) bring it down, the core design still seems solid. Dungeons are well paced and strike a good balance between easy and hard, increasing with difficulty at a pretty good clip relative to game progression. A lot of the puzzles can be clever (though for most, if you've solved one you've solved them all: shoot the open eye stone), and there are tons of minigames to infuriate you because you can't control the game well enough to do as well as you'd hope. So the basic infrastructure is there, it's just in the fundamental control scheme that we hit an issue. 

Again: I'm not saying you can't overcome these awful controls. You can. It just is way more worth than should be necessary. I shouldn't have to fight a game every step of the way until reaching some middle ground where neither of us are happy. 

Gee, who would have thought. 

This game looks bad. Like Final Fantasy VII bad, except that game at least had nice battle graphics and CD power cutscenes. I thought this game looked crappy in 1998, with it's super blocky polygons and barren, boring fields, but now it just looks all the worse. Playing at the original resolution (which most of these screenshots aren't) with the super texture fuzz going on makes it hard to know what stuff is. Characters animate stiffly and this translates into clunky battle controls (exacerbated by that freaking controller) which can lead to frustrations. Everything has jagged edges to it that look unnatural, most of the ground just being one massive texture. Yeah, it's an old game and I should cut it some slack, but whatever: still looks bad. I do like that the characters emote, though, something Square couldn't figure out until the PS2. It's too bad they don't talk...which still hasn't happened. Alrighty then.

Music is decent but not fantastic. Yes, I just dissed Zelda: OoT's music, now I'm really gonna get it. It just all sounds...midi. And not particularly original. Yeah, you have your traditional Zelda tunes, but most are stolen exactly from the SNES's Link to the Past. They all seem to be missing like three or four instruments that should be backing up the rest of the notes, like they were only allowed to have three unique instruments playing at once. Come on, the SNES had more options than this. Maybe it was due to the lack of CD technology, but the songs really weren't that exceptional minus a few standouts. 

This song is awesome, though, even if it seems to be missing some key background instruments

So where do we stand? Zelda: OoT is a long game, though it does get a bit tiresome near the end of repeating the same style of dungeon for 20 odd hours, but hey...at least I'm not sailing around looking for freaking Triforce shards rather than killing stuff for the last 1/4 of the game. There's a bunch of other stuff I didn't touch on (the stupid "wallet" not holding enough coins, getting your shield burned mid-dungeon, some other stuff) but I don't feel like I need to. If you love this game, odd are you are blinded to its faults, which means you've either already sent me hatemail or are in the process of writing it right now (or just clicked off this review after seeing my long list of "Cons"). Let me be absolutely clear: I loved this game as a kid, flat out loved it. But that was a different time; it was fourteen years ago. Not to mention every Zelda game since this one has done nothing to change this formula, so if you really wanted to play this game again in all its refine glory, pick up any version not released on the N64. Seriously. They're the same game. 

Anyway, the point is that I've actually played through this again, on an actual N64, with an actual N64 controller, and while it hurts me to say this the game has not aged well at all. I'm surprised the 3DS re-release has gotten such critical acclaim (probably rose-tinted, to be honest, or they fear fanboy ire) considering they say it was relatively untouched, which means it is still a wonky mess. Zelda: OoT is a gem from the past, like a golden idol to a god nobody worships anymore. Yeah, it's still awesome to look back and remember the good times, but we don't worship that guy anymore; his time has passed. 

It's still solid enough underneath the jank to enjoy, though expect massive amounts of frustration (my wife played this after the modern Zelda games, and while she enjoyed it she was certainly annoyed by a lot of its problems). The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is still a landmark game for what it did for the industry, but as it stands it's time to send it to the old-folks home and let its younger, fresher grandkids take the glory. 

Three out of five stars. 

Ah, memories. How you betray me.