Warning: lots of images/complaining incoming
I was unsatisfied with this remake but wanted to be sure nostalgia wasn't blinding me, so I decided to replay MM64. I expected that the original would feel dated and unappealing coming off the MM3D.... but the exact opposite happened. Replaying the original only cemented my belief that MM3D is a bad remake. That may put me in the minority, but here's my case beat by beat.
Visuals
The original holds up surprisingly well with GlideN64's hardware lighting, bloom, and 16:9 enhancements and the 20fps completely slipped my mind once I started playing (with 3D on, MM3D chugs at about 25fps anyway). MM3D
is gorgeous, but there are occasions when I honestly think this setup looks better:
Song of Time
Going back to the original yields a big gain right away. The original save system restores this:
Starting up a clean cycle with the impact of the splash screen is great. In contrast, booting up MM3D feels like you accidentally loaded someone else's save file. You don't remember where you are or what you're doing for a second, and it can be difficult to keep track all the sidequests you were juggling. Saving anytime you want is liberating, but it lowers tension and tempts you to quit in mid-session more often. I found myself accomplishing more in each sitting with the original, and saving + resetting the 3 day cycle at once is infinitely more rewarding than the owl statue method.
If the need arises, you can still save at an owl statue any time you want. Which makes me wonder what the major problem really was with the system... Unless you have a habit of loading files and then backing out without saving,
why was this such a big fucking deal?
The swamp
The Deku nerf isn't the worst change in the game, but it's still a downgrade. To my surprise,
spin hopping itself wasn't nerfed in MM3D; the Deku himself simply accelerates more slowly all around, even when running on land. This means that in addition to being unable to spin hop, Link also can't do regular hops at the same speed as the original, either. I see no reasonable explanation for why this was changed.
Spin hopping in the original is not only faster, but enables you to jump to pads much further away. You have more freedom in terms of how you get across the swamp as a result, and there's a more aggressive and satisfying feel when keeping your momentum unbroken like this. It's a solid upgrade.
I was taken aback by how much better the original Odolwa fight was. MM3D reduced him to a stupefying cycle of deku bombing/head stabbing, but here he truly feels like a boss for OoT veterans. You have to watch his movements and fire an arrow just as he's about to strike in order to stun him; if you're too slow, you'll have to sidejump or backflip to dodge his blade depending on whether it's a vertical or horizontal slash. If you run out of arrows, or just want to change your approach, you can use bomb flowers or deku bomb him from above.
In MM3D, you don't even have to fucking do anything to stun him- he becomes confused the moment you burrow in a deku flower and just stands around politely waiting to get bombed. You can't even choose to ignore his extreme deku bomb weakness and fight him the original way, as his attack patterns are completely altered now.
In MM64, just when you've gotten the hang of his patterns he wildly changes his approach, encircling you with fire, spin attacking, and releasing swarms of moths and spiders. You have to dodge and figure out so many attacks rapid-fire that it can easily get overwhelming. Technically, he's still
capable these things in MM3D, but the fight is over so fast he never gets a single attack in- you're invincible when in the deku flower, and he can't even see you when in flight. He never gets wise to your approach or forces you to use a different attack. In the original, the fight never seems to unfold the same way twice; in MM3D, it can
only unfold one way.
The Mountains:
On the plus side, reaching snowhead is a lot easier in MM3D thanks to the C-stick. I was never able to climb the entire ramp in a single unbroken roll before, but in MM3D it's easily possible. This is one of the few times where the C-stick actually felt like a vital enhancement.
This one is just a dick move. This snowhead fairy was already the hardest in the game, but for some reason MM3D decided to make it exponentially more tedious by adding a divot to prevent you from accessing it with a jump, even with the bunny hood on. You now have to slowly float down from the deku flower at the very top of the tower to get this. Fuck you, Mr. Aonuma.
As another small plus for MM3D, Goht is a little more interesting in MM3D thanks to the eyeball weak point breaking up the pacing. After getting used to stopping to use the sword or arrows to attack, it's a little duller to go back to the original since you're doing nothing but rolling the entire time. That said, the fact that his hooves now kick you back when rolling directly into his back is annoying; you have to hit him in the side or ramp up onto his upper back now. His lightning bolt attacks are also noticeably nerfed and don't seek you as accurately.
Fuck you, Mr. Aonuma (cont'd)
The worst thing about MM3D isn't that it penalized Zora swimming with magic use. The worst thing is that they didn't add magic to even allow Zora swimming as an
option. The best swimming controls in history were effectively restricted from use. It's amazing how fast magic drains even without trying to use the original swimming- between constantly having to ram boards open and attack enemies, I still nearly ran out of a double bar of magic when doing the pirate fortress and narrowly avoided running completely out before finding shiro with the lens of truth.
Having the original swimming back felt so great that it'll be painful to ever replay MM3D again. No scouring the bay for magic, no dreadful slow-swimming, no bullshit... just fun. The controls are so natural I found myself effortlessly dolphin diving out of the water and onto platforms without even realizing I was doing it. It's not just fun- the bay was
designed around this mechanic. Omitting it makes those expanses tedious to explore, and the consumption of magic can easily break the game- running out prevents Pinnacle rock and the stone mask soldier quests from being completable.
Not only that, but the fact that players are punished for Zora swimming with magic loss means that new players will never really use it outside of the beaver race (which is much more annoying thanks to the constant buzzing). The new Zora playground on the moon forces you to dolphin jump onto ledges with strict timing and no room for error- I find it hard to believe that new players will be adept enough at handling a control scheme they were
forbidden to use the entire game to get through this section without major frustrations.
The slow swim has its uses, but making it come at the cost of one of the best mechanics in the game was just stupid. It's such bad game design that it honestly makes me concerned about Aonuma's judgement for Zelda U.
Gyorg's new fight is admittedly fuller and more interesting, but the final stage drags on too long and the atmosphere of the arena itself is severely reduced; the original really channels the darker, heavily shadowed concept art for the game, and the lack of visibility in the water makes Gyorg more frightening. It's hard to call either way, but the original is more atmospheric and quick to get to the point- I didn't miss the new fight much.
Ikana Canyon
By this point, I'm really not sure who Nintendo was remaking this game for. I never had a problem catching Skull Keeta. In the event that he slipped away, I accepted I had simply been too slow. It was a challenge, but simple with the right items- the bunny hood and gilded sword are quick enough to cut your way right to keeta without even needing to slow him down with an arrow.
MM3D made this fight so stupidly easy that the entire premise of a combined fight/chase sequence collapses. He can be caught so abruptly that the chase component of the fight never even gets started- I effortlessly caught after the first barrier, only fighting two skeletons, without using arrows or the bunny hood at all. The point of the fight is that it's a
gauntlet of enemies and you have to cut through them as fast as you can to reach Keeta- killing two guys doesn't exactly have the same impact. Did anyone here fail to catch him in MM3D even once?
This is a case of the game
not changing something that led to disappointment. The elegy of emptiness was this game's "iron boots" equivalent. If there was one uncontroversial change this game could have made to make everyone happy, streamlining this segment was it.
After the song was played once, they could have added a "clone" icon on the touchscreen to allow Link to copy himself on the fly from there. At bare minimum, they could have omitted the encore performances so that the player doesn't have to sit through the song 18 times during the Stone Tower climb alone-
Wind Waker HD actually did this, making it all the more baffling that they didn't do something here.
Twinmold is another tricky fight to judge. Once again, it's a fuller, worthier boss that's undone by poor pacing. The original wasn't as weak and gimmicky as I remembered it, but MM3D turned it into something closer to what the boss of the final dungeon should be. It starts off really strong, but just drags on too long and too awkwardly in the final phase to fulfill its potential. I also didn't mind going back to the original that much here.
Miscellaneous
Going back to 3 buttons was rough, but it's not as if MM3D resolved this problem. ZL and ZR on the New 3DS aren't even available, and only one direction on the D-pad is used for anything. The other 3 directions would have made great spots for permanent transformation mask placements so that players would never need to swap them out of inventory again. Again, Wind Waker HD did something similar to this with the D-pad when sailing, so it's frustrating that Nintendo seemed to forget that lesson so soon. Had they utilized all 5 of those wasted buttons, a player could feasibly get through the game without ever having to swap their main items out at all.
The fairy rewards also could have been handled better. Getting the fairy sword after every dungeon was completed is pretty lame, as you don't really get any opportunities to appreciate it aside from the final boss- OoT gave you biggoron's sword right after reaching adulthood, allowing you to use it for over half the game. It's also a little lame that the sword itself is still an item and can't perform a normal spin attack, even if it does work when cursed.
As long as they were rearranging the rewards, it would have made more sense for the great fairy sword to be given after Great Bay, then save the double-heart enhancement for Stone Tower. OoT only rewarded something as huge as double hearts at the very end- literally halfway through Ganon's tower.
Finally, the new bomber's notebook is really annoying. Yes, it's more comprehensive and helpful, but the constant interruptions get the point of actually slowing the pace of the game down. It also interjects and opens just as you're about to receive a heart piece
to tell you that you're about to receive a heart piece, which dampens the perfect pace of the classic reward theme/victory animation. The original notebook's subtle popups were fine; opening the book and completely pausing the game every time you speak to a NPC is too much. They also removed the original notebook jingle, which was a variation of the clocktown theme, and for whatever reason replaced it with a generic "bing" noise.
Conclusion-
There's honestly only one thing about the original that I found hard to go back to, and that's the lack of
gyro aiming:
It's amazing how much the ability to freely move the camera helps out. I found myself dreading the target shooting games and Romani ranch segments because of this, though the analog stick is serviceable enough to get by.
It's also the case that the targeting was improved in MM3D. The bow originally fired at a vague point above the arrow head, requiring a certain amount of intuition about where the arrow would strike. Now, the arrow fires precisely at the pixel above the arrowhead, making it faster and more reliable. Similarly, Zora Link's fins now fire from the top of his head rather than his neck.
There are obviously tons of other improvements MM3D makes that I didn't mention here, but that's because they're mostly trifling, minor tweaks that are easily sacrificed. I like having the banker default to depositing my max rupees, and the secret backdoor in the deku palace is convenient, but I can easily play without these.
The same isn't true in reverse. The things MM3D
takes away are massive, and I feel that regaining these huge mechanics in the original makes up for the loss of a hundred
small tweaks. A remake shouldn't diminish anything that made the original title great. It should only enhance and expand on those things, the way that REmake and Zero Mission did. With its callous disregard for the original mechanics, MM3D just came off feeling like a Special Edition.
Because of those poorly thought out omissions, MM3D led to a few frustrating moments that made me feel like I hated this game for the first time in my life. In contrast, I enjoyed replaying the original through and through, 20fps and all, and the entire experience reaffirmed my love for the game. I was holding out hope that Nintendo would patch MM3D since it became obvious that fans were upset about the Zora changes, but it's clear now that this is the way the game will stay.
What does everyone else think? The consensus seemed to be that most people loved it, even though it was incontrovertible fact that the Zora swimming sucked dick. I'd be interesting to hear what people have to say now half a year later.