The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Review

I hate the idea of labeling anything in a broad artistic medium the “best ever.” There’s a wide variety of games, many of them trying to do something completely different from another. How do you compare The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (OoT) to Silent Hill? It’s completely fucking impossible, there are several values of both completely missing from the other game. There is no comparison. How can you claim that there is one game that completely overshadows every other accomplishment?

It is only one aspect of video games in general, and it’s the equivalent of saying that only games that have the specific qualities that an action-adventure game can have deserves to be called the best. It’s very narrow-minded, and I immediately disregard someone’s general thoughts on games the moment they try to say there is really a best game ever made. I suppose it is just another way of saying it’s your personal favorite, but fuck that. Show some openness and willingness for discussion and learn to appreciate more things.

I’m having a lot of trouble trying to articulate what I’m trying to say, but I think people can understand my point. Ocarina of Time is widely hailed as the best game ever made, so I associate it with that negative reaction when I see it top every best-game ever list. It’s much worse, though, when the person has no reasoning as to why it deserves that place over everything else ever made, other than their own nostalgia for it and it being a popular, accepted opinion. “I feel like I have to accept it as fact, because people act like it’s a fact.” But no, I won’t, because I don’t think there is a best. I don’t think anything deserves to be called the best. It’s a stupid concept to begin with.

I’m just bitter, though. I’m more into video games than most people, so I’m sick of seeing the same lists and favorite games over and over again when a lot of niche titles are neglected. The truth is though, there are certainly much worse choices people could be touting as the best game ever made.

Ocarina of Time is honestly a really, really, good game. I think I would call it one of the best in the sense that it does what it wants to do very well in regards to its genre and contemporaries. It’s a great adventure game. I first played OoT when I was a kid too, having gotten it for Christmas. I instantly loved it. Surprisingly, I don’t remember it being that popular around other kids I knew. I remember there was this pair of brothers that played it and got stuck all the time in dungeons and would lend me the game to get further for them and then give it back. That was fun.

I’m at a loss for words as for what to say about OoT. In every aspect, the game is well designed. It was a huge fucking game for the time it came out, and even today adventure games with a fully explorable, interactive world are rare. It takes a tremendous amount of work to make an entire 3D game world. The environments have a perfect amount of detail in them, too. In the Kokiri Forest you can see fairy sprites (or bugs, I’m not really sure) flying all around the area and in front of your screen. I liked how the lava in dungeons actually steamed. A bunch of minor details like that.

On the other hand, I felt the world map was totally barren. A mostly flat plain with a breakable rock or some bushes here and there that usually cover up a hole that drops you into a grotto that looks like every other grotto in the game that has some chest that gives you rupees or something. The world map is little more than a hub to access the more detailed sub-sections like Lake Hylia.

While that may be the core purpose of any world map, there could always be a greater variety of terrain, enemies, and other details to make it more memorable. An adventure game needs to feel like you’re exploring a whole other world. Termina in Majora’s Mask (MM) was certainly a much better overworld and every part of it was more detailed than OoT’s, including the other sections like Great Bay and the Deku Swamp.

One thing I do feel Ocarina of Time has over Majora’s Mask is the pacing and dungeons. The scale of your quest is much larger and therefore more satisfying in OoT primarily because it has more dungeons and is the longer game, and that’s a plus. The temples are also designed better than MM’s, which are mostly unmemorable with the exception of the Great Bay Temple (a really underrated area) and the Stone Tower Temple (the best dungeon from either game).

My favorite temple was always Fire Temple, because the scenery changed more often. Some rooms were full of broiling lava when not all were, and though most of the dungeon had a brown color scheme, some rooms were yellow or even green. I also liked the variety of obstacles in that temple, with the maze that had rolling rocks going around every corner, or the maze in that one room where if you got to close to an invisible fire wall, it would sprout up and knock you back. It’s just great. No room in the Fire Temple was wasted. Fuck Gorons though, they’re annoying.

The Water Temple is hailed as being the most difficult part of the game, but now that I’m no longer 10 and realize I can just look at my map and go to places I haven’t been, it’s piss easy. It’s still the worst though because you have to move a lot in those sluggish iron boots and kill those shellfish with your hookshot which you have to hit dead fucking center or it deflects off and you’re completely at the mercy of your Z-targeting and whatever angle you’re aiming from. I also liked the Spirit Temple, and it is only ruined by how fucking short it is. The mechanic of having to switch between your kid and adult self to complete a temple definitely should have been exploited further (but only for that dungeon, or it would have gotten annoying).

The Forest Temple had great scenery and music, but I found it a pain to play at some parts. I’d always get stuck at a certain point and I hated that big room where you have to push the blocks because Link moves them so slowly. The Shadow Temple is good too but overshadowed (lol) by the Bottom of the Well, which is definitely one of the coolest parts of the entire game. Very atmospheric and the closest the game comes to being genuinely scary. The Shadow Temple also has great spooky atmosphere, but it’s outdone by the lesser, mini-dungeon that comes BEFORE it, which is a shame. Riding the ghost ship on the river Styx was really cool too.

The kid Link dungeons are mostly practice dungeons for the rest of the game and don’t compare, but I do think Jabu-Jabu’s Belly gets far too much hate. I think it was really cool to explore the inside of a living creature for a dungeon, and it really isn’t that frustrating to play as long as you use your map. The biggest pain is escorting Ruto around, but she actually doesn’t stay with you long at all before she’s taken away. There’s also the Ice Cavern, said to be the ruins of a discarded temple in the early concept version of the game, but while it is entertaining, it’s not very memorable with its repetitive textures and design.

A big part of Ocarina of Time for me is the culture surrounding it. Remember all the Triforce rumors circulating the internet? People would photoshop screenshots to make it look like they had finally obtained the Triforce through some secret, hidden event and everyone would try to replicate their theory only to realize they’d been duped. But the fun of it all was realizing how possible it was.

Ocarina of Time had a big world that was already full of plenty of secrets, people who loved the game were always searching to find stuff they missed and get more enjoyment out of a game they thought they were finished with. Completing a game you love is always satisfying, but it’s bittersweet too knowing that you’ll never be able to feel the same way about it as you did when you were experiencing it all for the first time.

There’s also the beta screenshots, early screenshots of the game while it was still in development that frequently appeared in gaming magazines. I used to LOVE browsing Zelda fansites and looking at all these old screenshots, wondering about the game we could have gotten. It was incredibly how much the game changed from some of those screens to the final product. There were screenshots of Link in totally different dungeons and areas that looked nothing like the final ones we saw.

There was even actual footage of Link opening a type of treasure chest seen nowhere else in the game that housed the actual, real Triforce that players were originally meant to obtain at a certain point in the game. Around the chest you could look down and see clouds, making this screenshot appear to be Link in the abandoned Sky Temple (also a subject of many fake rumors online).

There was also the Unicorn Fountain, being able to equip medallions, and a particular screen that appeared as if you were originally able to go past those 4 Gossip Stones in front of the Temple of Time. I could go on and on. I wish I could somehow play the early demos of the game and see what those places were for myself, but I doubt anyone can now.

To conclude this, I do prefer Majora’s Mask over Ocarina of Time. I think both do different things better than each other and which one you prefer depends on which of those things you value more in your video games. Ocarina of Time has a better over-arching quest and more consistent dungeons for example, while I feel Majora’s Mask has better sidequests, a more elaborate world, and better art design and atmosphere.

As I play more games and grow older, I’ve come to realize for myself that the artistic values of a video game are more special and affect me on a deeper level than the gameplay aspects. But a great game can never be without either. And as much as I want to reject Ocarina of Time‘s popularity and stature, to some extent it really does deserve all the praise it gets. It’s just a fantastic game, and very few can compare to it in its genre.