for those who have kept up, after playing and loving BOTW and TOTK I decided to try some of the older Zelda games. The four ones that were most recommended to me were link to the past, ocarina of time, wind waker, and link between worlds, and I am going to go through them in release order. I played and loved link to the past already you can see my thread on that here:
now I am playing ocarina of time, and it is... it's fine.
I think this is the first zelda game I've played that doesnt feel timeless. botw and totk both feel like they have this sort of timeless quality of unrestrained adventure to them, and link to the past is basically probably the most perfectly designed game I have ever played. ocarina of time by comparison feels very aged and very old. I dont mean this in a graphics way, I actually dont care as much about graphics as most console players do, I mean this in a general polish and mechanical way.
this makes sense to me, it's one of the early era 3d games, and more than that, it basically invented a lot of 3d game design concepts so it makes total sense that compared to, well, almost everything else that came afterwards, it feels janky and aged. but ya, the controls, camera, combat, the size of the world or the towns, the emptiness of the central hub area, all this feels pretty aged. the ui is very weird too (there is a late game dungeon where I had to keep going into the menu to switch equipment every few minutes, and it was a long and cumbersome process each time). there's a lot of stuff in this game that just doesnt hold up.
But! the core design, story, atmosphere, music, and adventure is all as amazing as in any zelda game, in fact in a lot of ways I would say this is the best zelda has ever been on a lot those fronts. I fucking love the story, and I was a little surprised at how well told and how cool it gets, its actually more story focused than any modern nintendo game I played (I love the twist about link's parentage, the seven year time jump, and the reveal of who shiek really is). the dungeons in this game are insane, far beyond anything in botw and totk, probably put together (forest temple is amazing, it still blows my mind they did this on a n64, and while water temple is really annoying with the constant menu management, the actual core design is so cool). boss fights are great, the music is amazing (and this is all midi! somehow), and the game has amazing pacing, with very little downtime. this makes sense, it's basically a 3d remake of a link to the past, which also similarly had no bloat, but it does lose points for losing the intricate world of link to the past, and just sort of replacing it with a big open empty space with nothing in it except annoyingly spawning swarming random enemies, some spiders to hunt, and ghosts to find.
in general, I think the world part of tis game is the weakest, which is a bit disappointing because in all three of the zelda games ive played so far, the world was my absolute favourite thing about all of them, while in this the world just feels super limited. I know its a bit unfair of me to expect a early 3d game to compare to peak 2d design or the open world mastery of botw and totk, but tis very jarring when I am playing this for the first time and with no nostalgia for it.
I still like this game a lot (it's definitely my least favorite of the four I have played so far though), but I think this one would benefit a lot from a resident evil (or at least a bluepoint style) style remake. keep the core design as is (its honestly amazing), keep the story and adventure as is (all excellent), but fix the controls, camera, combat, and expand the world a bit, and we should be good. its a very good game, and I totally understand why its so praised. I think it's a game worth playing, in the end, even if I like the other ones I played more.
next I will play wind waker.
