to start off, i think i wouldn’t be doing my due diligence if i didn’t mention the fact that i do have some nostalgia for this game, specifically for the original N64 version. even though i was born after the original came out, it was still a formative part of my childhood. i have many memories playing OOT on the N64 at my grandparents’ house with my sister, and even though i never got very far at that time (i was bad), it was still very special to me. fast forward some years, and i did finally beat OOT on Wii Virtual Console with my sister. i've loved zelda games in general for basically my whole life. i was link for halloween twice. i have a vivid memory of when i whistled the song of storms at my sister’s baseball game and it actually started raining. i was like 8, and i had to convince myself i didn't have magic powers of some sort. needless to say, this game and this franchise is immensely important to me.

yeah, this game still fucks (original thought is dead!!! long live original thought!!!). to be fair, i have watched so many goddamn randomizers of the original game, so it’s not like i was returning to a world long forgotten by my little decrepit 20-something mind, but still. fucks.

obviously, the biggest points to make about this game come from what’s new and fresh in the remake. i would not classify myself as anywhere near being an fps snob, but 20 fps on the N64 version is a little distractingly low frequently. the 3DS runs this game at a stable 30 fps for basically the entirety of the game; i only noticed some slight performance issues when an extreme number of particles/ pickups were on screen. the visuals are updated, yet still feel pretty faithful to the overall style of the game. there’s some texture changes here and there, and some things look drastically different, such as adult link’s face, but it’s not a complete rewrite of the ‘look’ of OOT. the dual screen of the 3DS does some WORK for this game. you have the on-screen minimap up top still, but you can also see the world and dungeon map on the bottom screen while everything else is happening, which makes navigating dungeons so much more friendly. on N64, you’d normally only have 3 C-buttons to bind items to, but here you have the X and Y buttons, as well as two “I” and “II” buttons that you can also map items to. additionally, there's a dedicated ocarina button, essentially freeing up yet another slot due to how frequently it's used. even though it does still pause the action to interact with your equipment screen, getting in and out is sooo much more fluid than it ever was on N64. items can fit into any slot on the items screen, which is kinda nice so you can organize them how you want, but it also ends up becoming incredibly cluttered extremely fast, as you swap out items and they end up in different spots than you may have originally intended. personally, i would rather have discrete, locked, item slots in your inventory so you can just use muscle memory to tap and select, but this is an extremely minor nitpick. gyro controls are here, and man are they welcomed. usually it feels a little clunky to aim with just the stick on N64, but gyro lets you fine tune your aim that makes sections such as horseback bow+arrow so much more comfortable.

the ocarina has got to be one of the coolest items in any game i’ve played. yeah, it’s a neat idea to have a little instrument with magical properties that can do things from making it rain, to changing the time of day, to warping you across the world, but the implementation is absolutely ingenious. it’s actually absurd how Koji Kondo was able to write insanely iconic themes that are all limited to begin with the same selection of 6 notes you can play on the ocarina. i always get chills learning new songs. Zelda’s Lullaby, Saria’s Song, the Song of Time, Song of Storms, i could go on and on. they’re all so distinct and memorable. it would have been trivial to have the functionality of the ocarina be subjugated to selecting a song to play on a menu, but no, they make you play the notes yourself. granted, you’re not playing the full song, as that’s out of the range you’re given, but you are still the one playing the notes that launch into the performance. when i was younger, i even had a little 6-hole sweet potato Ocarina of Time that i would constantly play little tunes from the game on. it’s so fuckn neat, it’s only right that the game gets its name after it.

one thing i absolutely adore about 3D zelda titles is how discrete their worlds and items are. while the following RPG mechanics are certainly not inherently bad qualities to have in a game, there’s no leveling up or XP or an excess of only slightly different weapons stats-wise. instead, there’s hard, discrete lines drawn in the sand of the game design. you don’t have 242 HP or something, you have an integer number of heart containers evenly divided into quarters. 4 heart pieces make a whole. there’s not 20 different pieces of armor, there’s three distinct tunics. same for swords. same for boots. you could say: hey, why would i not want more equipment in my game? to me, the answer is intentionality and milestones. when you get anything new, be it a dungeon item, or a heart container, or a new song, it feels significant. also, you immediately start thinking, oh shit, what else could i do with bombs? didn’t i see some cracked rocks in that one area? im about to blow type-shit, truly.

dungeon-talk speed round!!! (some spoilers for dungeons and bosses, my friend)
- inside the deku tree? yeah, i guess you could say i’m inside the deku tree. great intro dungeon that gets you accustomed to the structure of a 3D zelda dungeon without overwhelming you with ANY small keys or a complex dungeon map. Gohma is a spider that’s also shaped kinda like a hand, and i think i’ll cheers to that.
- dodongo’s cavern? boom. now we start getting more use out of the new dungeon item we’re graced with. king dodongo absolutely ate that shit.
- inside jabu-jabu’s belly? this place looks fucking disgusting, and also you have to carry a wet child-princess with you. i actually think it’s fine?? Barinade is honestly pretty neat and one of the most fun bosses in the game to me.
- forest temple? poe noe! those ghouls took the fucking flames on the elevator! however will we get to the boss now?
> the fairy bow:
phantom ganon is an aesthetically amazing fight, and i love the callback to deflecting orbs at Agahnim that gets intensified against the real ganondorf
- fire temple? rock guys in jail :(. hammmerrrr. gyro aim does some real work here because you can turn Volvagia into a pin cushion with the bow. unfortunately this strat does not work well on an airplane because usually they hate it when you turn in your seat and 3DS (verb) the face of the person next to you.
- ice cavern.
- water temple? THIS ONE IS MY FAVORITE /gen I LOVE WATER TEMPLE HOLY SHIT!!! it fucking chugs in the original N64 version, but here? we got better indications of the water levels post-lullaby. we got iron boots that aren’t on the gear screen, but are X,Y,I,II equippable. it’s actually sooo fun. i am a complete and utter FOOL for multi-state dungeons in zelda-like games. Morpha: water tentacle? poke him in the corner :). poke poke poke.
- bottom of the well.
- shadow temple? pretty fun and inventive uses for the lens of truth. also you can put on slippy shoes. I LOVE HAND-BASED BOSSES LIKE,, gosh and also he’s literally playing the bongo, and he name is the bongo, but two of them two of them.
- spirit temple,,, 🤤. pretty neat. Twinrova is honestly a super neat concept for the boss, but waiting for good rng on the final phase is bleh.
- gerudo training ground :O
- ganon’s castle? yeah so uhm,, you do a bunch of little ‘trials’ i think they’re called. wait a damn minute… trials? like,, like from MST aka medallions, stones, trials?? holy shit, that’s kinda a deep pull from Nintendo, referencing an extremely niche internet community. guess who got they goron tunic eated by a fucking like like in the shadow trial that then also voided out, causing the room to reload and the voracious garb gobbler to no longer possess their crimson vesture? twas i. and yes, this is the worst thing to ever happen to anyone. ganon’t.

while i don’t think this one has the best characters, nor story, nor dialogue, we have some quite fun inclusions. we got: evil maya fey, :3, sark, and this motherfucker is eating beans (!) ok but seriously Sheik is a banger character with a banger theme. so badass. Link’s sword flourishes also go hard. not as hard as they would later go in Twilight Princess, but OOT was ground zero for those sick moves of his.

it’s extremely nice that the map indicates whether or not you have all of the gold skulltulas in a region or dungeon, but i wish it was a little bit more specific sometimes. for example, the world map will display “Market” as one of the visitable locations, but the tracker for the gold skulltulas actually includes the path to hyrule castle as well. so, if you’re looking in hyrule castle town at night for gold skulltulas, your ass is looking in the wrong place!! also, even though the shard of agony is a very welcome inclusion that’s more accessible than the rumble-pak-requiring stone of agony on N64, it is still only helpful if you actually know where to walk around to look for grottos. also, i can understand wanting to not lock an item with utility behind the full 100 gold skulltulas, but ‘infinite money’ is really just not interesting. rupees are so useless–especially by that point in the game–that i would honestly rather just have a unique do-nothing item on the gear screen a-la Hestu’s gift.

there’s also a new ‘hint’ system of sorts through a Sheikah Stone outside of your house as a child and the temple of time, but i didn’t use it. hopefully it helps figure out some slightly more obscure parts of the game!

also new to the game is a “boss challenge” mode, which lets you refight any of the bosses up through Twinrova. it’s a cool addition, i suppose, but i don’t super care. there’s also a Gauntlet that you unlock after winning all the refights, which acts as a boss rush sorta mode where you can pick between two chests with some random items after each boss and have persistent health and ammo, but i didn’t find it to be too interesting either. still, i think it’s a fairly neat idea to include. some of the items that you can get from the chests are absolutely laughable though. like yeah thanks for giving me the giant’s knife, game. if you’re gonna have a time-attack boss rush mode, it’s a little annoying to also have to pray for good rng with your loot on top of Twinrova.

overall, i’m really glad that i replayed this game and finally got 100% completion. this is the longest review i’ve written for this website, and i’m afraid it’s a little bit messy and not friendly to read, but hey, we just be trying shit out. this is a real special game for a lot of people for a reason, and i’ve really gotta get around to playing majora’s mask all the way through one of these days. it’s unfortunate that the MM 3DS remake seems to make a lot of ‘unnecessary’ changes that i’m not well versed on, but i will trust the fans of the OG.

3D shooters are a genre long and particularly afflicted with 'just so' game design; Half-Life popularized a reload mechanic where you tap a button and wait to have your gun refilled from a pool, and this became a defacto standard for no particular reason over not having reloading, or reloading that actually has gun magazine management, or dozens of other one off systems meant to represent a games ethos. Halo introduced a two-weapon system that, along side a nuanced weapon selection forced you to always accept a trade off, games without nuanced weapon selections copied it wholesale, usually resulting in defacto one weapon system because you really need to carry the M16 at all times to get anything done. Halo Infinite in turn has a sprint button with so little effect that you need a stopwatch to tell if it makes you faster- because Halo doesn't benefit from a sprint mechanic but Shooters Have Sprint. Helldivers is perhaps the only studio published 3D shooter in half a decade if not more where there is no 'just so' game design, from meat and potato mechanics like your gun's recoil being semi-deterministic to help you avoid the regular concern of friendly fire, and your gun being loaded from a small pool of disposable magazines, to fun details like running out of spawns but completing the mission objective still constituting a victory.