Game Debate #124: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

[TDIRunner | 2,774]

Never played it.  While there are several older Zelda titles that I would like to eventually complete, the two N64 games aren't really on that list.  

 

Edit.  Have we really not done Super Mario World or Super Metroid???

Edited October 21, 2022 by TDIRunner

[Lynda Monica | 350]

I like this game a whole lot, and I still have fun when I replay it once every few years. I rated it an eight, as I feel like there are still too many annoying aspects to Ocarina of Time even when you know what you're doing. However it's one of the titles that made you really happy to own an N64.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,091]

1 hour ago, cj_robot said:

I'm not sure what it is, because ALTTP had me hooked from beginning to end, but none of the 3D Zelda games have ever given me that feeling.

It's because the 3D Zelda games generally lack the non-stop action and enemy fighting of the 2D Zelda games.  Think about any 2D Zelda and what you're actually doing most of the time: running around and constantly killing or dodging monsters; now think about what you're actually doing most of the time in a 3D Zelda: running around and... that's it, just running around. Once in a long while you might stumble upon an enemy or be intercepted by one, but most of the time playing a 3D Zelda is tatamount to holding up or forward on your thumb stick.  It gets a little better in the dungeons, but that has more to do with the puzzle aspect than anything else.

All that said, I absolutely love Ocarina due in part to nostalgia and in part to the theme of it being a Zelda game that's set in Hyrule, but man, those 3D Zeldas have got nothing on the 2D ones in terms of actual game play...

[Reed Rothchild | 9,586]

@Tanooki Keep in mind with my scale  a 10 is one of your favorite games

[Brickman | 4,014]

8 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Eh an 8, simple as that.  In good conscience then and now I can not overlook problems the game has, corners that got cut, and odd design choices that made it less fun than it ended up being.  Not saying it wasn't fun, but it got grating at points.  It still bothers me that fanboy trolls loom over this ones nintendo bj happy press of the era ranking it as the #1 game of all time, kind of a real kick in the teeth to superior titles as it's hardly flawless.

The story is fantastic with the time shifting, it just works well with a nicely crafted land that opens up in the most unsuspecting of places. The area designs are largely quite good, the bosses are excellent, the music is great too.  A lot of thought went into how bad early 3D control, camera and angles work creatively making up the z-lock on system.  That made the game a chore for challenge, not a chore for fighting the garbage game engine, and so well done other games used it.  Some to great effect like Indiana Jones which took a windows painful to tolerate playing title into one you really could move around in smoothly.

The thing is in various places of the game it slips, good long repetitively boring sparse areas or just backtrack hell.  Then there's the utterly dopey omission of no jump?!  Stupid as all get out, every 3D title since saw the error in that blunder, it makes the game toxic annoying in spaces where you could make the basic leap but the bad design won't do it.  And despite the fixes to the engine, it had some very horrible camera and camera/confusion points most famously the water dungeon...ugh.

Is it a great game?  Enough so yes, it is fantastic...ehhh...no if you're not a fanboy, and perfection... hell no, not even to its own franchise let alone gaming in general.  Ocarina to Time is to N64 as Final Fantasy VII is to PS1 -- fanboy fodder, millions of loaded trolls willing to die on a cross preaching the excellence and perfection that both aren't there who go to such lengths to gang up and troll dumb polls for years, decades since, famously like the game/character battles gamefaqs has.

Fair write up and your issues with parts of the game are definitely valid. Playing the 3DS remake made me notice things I had forgotten about the game that aren’t the best.

I can fully admit that my 10 has nostalgia added in to it haha.

 

[Link | 2,732]

Tough call. 

I start out "good game but not quite great" - Hyrule Field is boring, Navi and the owl are annoying. And it's easily surpassed now by Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild. 

But the combat is fantastic, and the foundation for every subsequent 3D game. The music, story, and dungeons are likewise excellent. (Pro tip: take notes on the switches in the Water Temple. Suddenly it's not so confusing.) 

It is a great game after all. So I give it an 8.

I last played it in July of 2020.

[Kguillemette | 1,547]

One of the GOATs. I replayed it a couple years ago on the GameCube port, and I was reminded why. It holds up immensely well and is one of the best paced adventure games ever made. It's right about perfect.

[Link | 2,732]

I played the master quest once. My memory is that it was nothing but remixed dungeons. Similar to the master quest in the first game, but by this point I really expected more and better. And some of it was bizarre nonsense like cows sticking out of the walls in Jabu Jabu.

I played MM once as well. I didn't care too much for it. More weirdness and an avalanche of side quests. I had to turn to walkthroughs excessively. 

[RH | 4,970]

What's the best version of this game to play (if you've already played the OG on the N64, of course)?

Other than the original, are there any other "Master's Quests" versions of other Zelda titles?  These are the only two I know.  I wouldn't mind something like that but I'd need a bit more than simply shifted rooms and tougher enemies.  An extra dungeon or two would be nice.

[WhyNotZoidberg | 586]

9/10. Everyone should play Ocarina. Because of its historical significance:P

[Tanooki | 4,952]

@Reed Rothchild@Brickman

Yes I know it's about favorites, but if you really wanted me to only base it on that, I'd have to put it against the other Zelda games I'd be hard pressed to be as kind, definitely not an 8, probably a 6-6.5 range. As brickman put it, valid points I have there, and the 3DS recreations of them years later made it even more clear where the game was lacking as it did clean up some, not all, like the water dungeon still sucked and no jump is annoying in obvious areas it does it, when it wants to behave and others you just can't which is grating.

I am able to separate nostalgia on mine, I never had it.  I have to admit, I never finished the game in a single effort.  I got fed up with it around the shadow temple as the issues just mounted to where I went off to play something new.  Before another semester of college (summer break over) popped up I sat myself down one afternoon, took a now or never 'fuck it' mentality, ignored everything and did the last 2 dungeons and ganon in an entire sitting because I felt wrong leaving it unfinished, the first zelda I would have left unfinished.  I've gone deeper into the game since, usually not too far, never finished it twice as it's just well...average, among its own franchise and even more so against others of the type.  Sure it ushered in a way to see adventure/rpg style gaming in 3D that works, but it's crusty, very crusty, doesn't hold up anything as well as the tighter earlier camera/control Mario 64 gave us and it's using a modified version of that games engine at that.

I'd be more inclined to 9-10 range rate Breath of the Wild for restoring the franchise to being wholly fun again, and Wind Waker as that was truly ground breaking and a whole lot of fun, repeatable fun at that, and due to the cel shaded designs aged like a fine wine.  Twilight Princess I'm not big on, never finished it either, yet I'd still put that over Ocarina. The only one with my contempt is Majora's Mistake as I call it, because the game f-ing sucks at so many levels.  It broke my blind Nintendo fan trust in that franchise entirely and began a slow crawl of burnout that had me quit on the franchise had BotW been another re-run of the format.

[Webhead123 | 687]

There's no denying the impact OoT has had on the gaming industry and the insane fanbase it garners. There's also no denying that I found the whole thing pretty dang impressive in its day and it was the primary reason I bought an N64.

That said, even at the time, I wouldn't have called it a 10-out-of-10 game nor my favorite game in the Zelda series. Other than a few trips to replay the Great Deku Tree dungeon, I haven't been compelled to replay the whole thing in probably close to 20 years. Today, I'd probably rank it somewhere around 6th place or so in my rankings of Zelda titles.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that OoT is a great game, an important game, an industry-defining game even...but never in the running for any personal "best of" lists for me (outside of maybe "Best of the N64").

I was tempted to give it a 7 but thought maybe that was being a little too harsh for the sake of harshness. So, OoT gets the benefit of the doubt and gets an 8/10.

Edited October 21, 2022 by Webhead123

[phart010 | 1,708]

14 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Then there's the utterly dopey omission of no jump?! 

Zelda needs to set itself apart from Mario. Jumping is core to Mario, sword swinging and attacking is the core mechanic in Zelda. Also, Zelda is going for more of a “real life physics” feel. So the little jumps that Link does when you approach a ledge is about right. In real life, people usually jump to clear some horizontal distance, very rarely we jump to traverse vertically. He’ll pull himself up ledges or climb to make vertical movements.

Again, It’s not a Mario game, so I’m fine with no jumping 

[Tanooki | 4,952]

Yeah I'm going to very disagree with that.  The 64 games are unique in that for 3D titles they don't jump.  Gamecube forward and even since they have.  They limited the game just a bit too much to the harm of the game.  It's not Mario, but it's also not some dude who can't walk over a calf high rock either, it's pathetic.

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

49 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Yeah I'm going to very disagree with that.  The 64 games are unique in that for 3D titles they don't jump.  Gamecube forward and even since they have.  They limited the game just a bit too much to the harm of the game.  It's not Mario, but it's also not some dude who can't walk over a calf high rock either, it's pathetic.

Incorrect! The mechanic is perfect, works perfectly, and the game is perfect.

I know it's my opinion. But still  

[phart010 | 1,708]

[MagusSmurf | 577]

3D Zelda seems to scratch a special itch for a lot of people and I'm not sure this type of game has ever really been done better than in Ocarina of Time. I certainly haven't experienced any that were.

Majora's Mask is really cool but I feel like the game only works as well as it does because you should already have your knowledge of how Ocarina of Time worked to fall back on; the time stuff and general weirdness might have been too overwhelming otherwise and even as it is some people still can't get around it. And then there are only 4 real dungeons of which the 1st still felt fairly "First Zelda Dungeon-y" (seemed really unnecessary too; if they were wary of scaring off new players, WHY THE HELL DID THEY START THE GAME LIKE THEY DID!?) and I thought the 3rd was a bit too cumbersome.

Wind Waker and Twilight Princess have fairly bad, annoying starts (I guess Majora's Mask kind of does as well to an extent? but at least it feels sorta justified there); overly large and empty overworlds; and often long and annoying out-of-dungeon quests that kill the pacing. These are overall great games with some improvements over N64 Zelda but when you break down how these games actually flow it's really hard for me to pick them over Ocarina of Time given the added busywork. If you liked Ocarina of Time really well to begin with, it's hard to say incremental improvements here and there outweigh the nuisances.

Skyward Sword I only played the first few hours of before getting distracted but it got enough criticism that I'm gonna assume there were indeed issues with it.

Mystical Ninja starring Goemon is a good game (and predates OoT) but the camera/controls/general handling are too janky and I don't recall any of the dungeons being very inspired.

Not much on PS1 really compares. Soul Reaver is kind of neat for proving that, with some clever workarounds, the console was technically capable of hosting a good Ocarina of Time-ish game and it's a fairly good game in itself. Better than Ocarina? Nah, basically nobody thought so then or now. If you ever thought 3D Zelda went too heavy on the block puzzles, man, do I have a game that's not for you!

If we were gonna get a game to out-OoT OoT it probably would have happened around the PS2 era. Nobody was likely gonna bother put the major studio budget, time, and talent it'd probably take to do so much after that when there are much more recent, relevant Action-Adventure or Action RPG trends to chase or invent yourself. *Looks over list of PS2 Action-Adventure games and Action-RPGs for highly regarded stuff I haven't played that might be remotely like 3D Zelda.*

Hm, okay. Okami doing this kind of game better than any 3D Zelda sounds at least plausible. I don't have a good grasp on quite how Dark Cloud 2 or the Onimusha games play to know if they're easily comparable and I'd be pretty skeptical at them beating out OoT but it might be possible. Not seeing much else and nothing on PS3 seems to be "like Zelda" while also having the decent acclaim and popularity to make it remotely likely that they're "actually better but don't have the nostalgia, influence, or name brand to get recognized as such" or whatever.

[Link | 2,732]

4 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Gamecube forward and even since they have. 

Are you saying you can jump in Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword? ‍ 

[Kguillemette | 1,547]

12 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Yeah I'm going to very disagree with that.  The 64 games are unique in that for 3D titles they don't jump.  Gamecube forward and even since they have.  They limited the game just a bit too much to the harm of the game.  It's not Mario, but it's also not some dude who can't walk over a calf high rock either, it's pathetic.

No jumping allows for the game's natural barriers to feel more real. Ocarina of time, to me, is a sublime immersive experience. I actually feel like having a jump button would make the game worse by making it feel less immersive.

[AstralSoul | 503]

It's straddles the fine line between 9 and 10. Objectively it's a 10 especially for it's day. Nostalgia for this one is also overwhelming. But for me personally it's a 9, which is what I ultimately gave it. No real reason other than it's just not one of my favorite games of all time and 10/10s are reserved for the best of the best IMO. It's also not my favorite Zelda. Still it's hard to deny how influential the game is and how Nintendo got the Zelda formula down in 3D in one try.

[G-type | 2,525]

I would probably want to play Link to the Past, first.

[mbd39 | 2,029]

Where's pegboy?

 

[Tanooki | 4,952]

7 hours ago, mbd39 said:

Where's pegboy?

 

Getting pegged?

[wongojack | 221]

I give this one an 8.  I was in college for the N64 era, and we did play video games, but me and my roomates had a Playstation, and I just never considered getting another system.  It wasn't like I even chose anything, my dad thought I would like it and bought the Playstation.  Somehow, I got to take it to college.  It was just magically in my life one day.  Hooray for me.

Anyway, I never played Goldeneye, Super Mario 3d or Ocarina of Time back then, but I have played them all now.    When I finally played it, Ocarina of time was not a perfect experience for me.  There were several points that really hurt the game and they came down to me simply not knowing that specific objects existed that were required to progress in the game.  The two big ones were the Lens of Truth and the Fire Arrows. (I also played the entire Water Tempel without Zora's Tunic - blech).

Anyway, the specific problems I had aren't really the point. I think I can safely say it was a great game 8/10, but it was definitely version zero for 3d Zelda.  The really tough question for me then becomes "what is the best 3d Zelda game?"  Leaving out BotW makes it an extremely tough choice, but this version zero might still be the answer.

 

[Foochie776 | 1,062]

One of my all time favorites. Master quest is on my backlog!