It sometimes feels like every game I've ever loved was at least partially inspired by the Zelda series. Tunic, Elden Ring, and even Outer Wilds cite the sense of adventure and exploration that Zelda provides as major inspirations, and all of these are games that I enjoy for that exact reason. Growing up, the only Zelda game I played was one of the ones on the DS (I don't remember which one), and as a kid it bounced off of me as I found the enemies intimidating for whatever reason. The only real memories I have from that game as a kid was throwing pots around to farm rupees since I didn't want to continue on the main path. Fast forward many years to when I played this game for the first time, as I felt that playing this series was something that was long overdue for me.

Having now played Ocarina of Time I can see why so many people love this game. Despite my 6/10 rating and all the problems that I have with this game I can see why the problems I had would not affect a different player as much as it did for me. The game provides the great sense of adventure that this series is known for, the vastness of Hyrule field and the surprising ways different areas are connected help this feeling immensely. The soundtrack also contributes greatly to this feeling. It's especially impressive how many iconic melodies were constructed with the limited notes that can be played on the Ocarina. There’s the time travel system, which is great in both the shift in tone, but there's another aspect to it I very much enjoyed. For players who take in their surroundings and go out of their way to talk to many NPCs, there's lots of details and changes that feel rewarding to discover once time has passed. Small storylines are constructed with the minor characters that make the world feel so much more alive. These storylines are never really forced on the player however, which is good in that it makes finding these storylines feel more rewarding for players who are interested, while simultaneously not wasting the time of players who aren't as interested. It's a win-win for both types of players, which is not easy to pull off.

As far as I’m concerned, exploration is king in Zelda games, and this game pulls it off incredibly well, perhaps even perfectly. Most of my problems with this game concern aspects outside of exploration, most notably puzzles and combat. It’s for this reason that I can understand the love for this game coming from someone who doesn’t value those aspects as heavily as I do, but for me those two areas failed in ways that I just couldn’t reconcile with.

Sidenote: It's worth noting that as of writing this review I have only completed two Zelda games (the other one being Breath of the Wild), and that I'm not sure how many of the problems I'm going to bring up are unique to Ocarina of Time. Despite not playing many other Zelda games I somewhat suspect that some of the problems I bring up here are ones that show up in some of the other games, but since I’ve never played them I suppose I can only speculate.

While puzzles were alright for the most part, they never really went above and beyond. There were never any standout “a-ha!” moments that the best puzzles in other games provided for me. Perhaps it isn’t fair to hold the puzzles in this game to that high of a standard though, most of the puzzles fit well into their respective dungeons and can provide some challenge, however that description isn’t something that can be applied to all the puzzles in Ocarina of Time. My problem with a lot of the puzzles in this game is that they aren’t really puzzles so much as they are exercises in figuring out what the game wants from you. The best puzzles in this game, or in any game, are those where the goal is clear but the steps required to achieve the goal require some interesting use of mechanics or the environment to achieve said goal. Too many puzzles in this game don’t require interesting use of mechanics however, and are made difficult through obfuscation of the goal. Interesting puzzles are replaced with uninteresting games of hide and seek with the designers, or leaps in logic that are solved by either trying everything until something works or just looking up the solution.

For an example of the former, take the Forest Temple, where progress through the dungeon is gated through use of small keys. This dungeon challenges the player with difficult enemy encounters and creative use of the hookshot, providing the player with small keys as rewards for these small-scale challenges. On my playthrough I eventually ran into a locked door and was struggling to find a small key to unlock it. I found myself backtracking through rooms to look for some sort of challenge I had missed that would reward me with another small key. I imagined I missed a side area that would perhaps contain a strong enemy for me to defeat and gain a key as a reward, but it seemed that no such room existed. After struggling to find it I eventually resorted to looking up the answer, which was that there was a chest hidden at the entrance to the temple that I had missed. These sorts of “hide and seek” puzzles with small keys (or other key equivalents) occur a few more times in other temples, and they miss the point of what makes solving puzzles interesting. This approach to puzzles that substitute interesting use of Link’s abilities for games of hide and seek is not only uninteresting, it permanently damages the experience of all dungeons going forward. Now that I know that the designers aren’t above simply hiding the solution to a problem in some corner, every dungeon I explore past that point must now have every room meticulously observed from every angle with every tool in Link’s arsenal to ensure that nothing is being missed. That the “hide and seek” puzzles are in the minority compared to more interesting ones doesn’t change the fact that my experience with dungeons is now permanently poisoned with this knowledge. My enjoyment of the dungeons was significantly lowered after the first time this happened to me for this very reason. Whenever you get stuck or lost in a dungeon for this reason, the game isn’t punishing a lack of understanding of the tools you have to work with, it’s punishing you for not checking every nook and cranny of every room, and now you must do exactly that. While most puzzles in Ocarina of Time are exercises in game knowledge and logic, the few hide and seek puzzles that were exercises in backtracking and tedium really soured my opinion of the game.

The second category of bad puzzles, puzzles that involve leaps in logic, are ones that I’m a bit more inclined to forgive than the hide and seek ones, as they are only bad on a case-by-case basis. There’s also the fact that I may have missed some hints from the game involving these leaps in logic. Despite these concessions, I’d be lying if I said that running into these puzzles wasn’t frustrating and confusing. One such example was figuring out how to enter the Jabu-Jabu dungeon, which was another case where I had to look up the solution, and while it makes sense looking back on it I still am confused as to how I was supposed to figure it out on my first playthrough. A more egregious example I experienced was in the Ice Cavern, with the central gimmick being the use of blue fire to open up new areas of the dungeon. This mechanic is introduced in a room with a frozen chest and a platform holding the blue fire. Navi comments that the blue fire seems unnatural and hints that it could be used for something. I came to the conclusion that what I was supposed to do was aim an arrow through the fire such that it landed on the red ice and melted it, a mechanic used in other areas to light torches with. This solution did not work, and once again I had to look up the answer. Now, I’m not sure whether this mechanic was better hinted at elsewhere or if this is just some Zelda logic that’s consistent with other games in the franchise, but the actual answer was that the fire could be bottled (?) and dumped onto the red ice. This particular example stuck out to me since not only does the actual answer not make any logical sense, but using arrows to transfer fire from one area to another is a mechanic that was already taught to the player and it doesn’t work here simply because it’s not what the designers intended for you to do. Not to mention, creative positioning of blue fire and red ice to create bow and arrow puzzles would’ve been more interesting than the glorified lock and key system that it currently represents. It’s frustrating puzzle design and doesn’t require any lateral thinking from the player.

There were enough examples of these hide and seek/confusing solution puzzles that I often had to resort to looking up a guide, which is something I despise and avoid since it kills immersion for me. With that being said, looking up solutions to puzzles in other games can still result in an “a-ha!” moment where seeing the solution to the puzzle play out can be interesting. This never happened to me when doing so for Ocarina of Time, which I feel really speaks to how many of the puzzles in this game aren’t really puzzles so much as they are exercises in figuring out what the game designers want you to do. They aren’t “a-ha!” moments so much as they are “oh” moments. Too many puzzles in this game were made difficult in the least interesting way possible.

Combat is another aspect of this game that fell short of expectations. Bosses in the game were often glorified puzzles where the solution was always to use whatever new item Link gained in the dungeon (with some exceptions), and only occasionally challenging, oftentimes for the wrong reason (the Jabu-Jabu midboss was thoroughly irritating to fight). As for combat with normal enemies there’s a severe lack of nuance in most encounters that makes combat dull. All but a few enemy encounters are too easily dealt with by either holding up your shield and striking whenever convenient, or by poking them down with ranged weapons. Just about the only standard enemy that gave me trouble (without being overtly designed to be a simple annoyance) were the Iron Knuckles introduced in the second-to-last dungeon in the game.

The final boss, Ganon, was also very disappointing. The first phase of Ganon requires use of Light Arrows that cost magic to shoot, which can lead to situations that I feel were overlooked by the developers. I unfortunately ran out of magic during this fight (I missed the upgrade that doubles your magic bar) and eventually had to backtrack and come back with extra magic potions in order to properly defeat him, which really killed the mood. I failed and was forced to backtrack not due to a lack of skill, but due to a lack of resources that I didn’t know I would need before entering the fight. In regards to this problem people mention the pots at the bottom section of the arena, and I’m suspicious that the people that mention this have never actually tried this since for me they only ever dropped hearts and arrows (I don’t think any of these are guaranteed to drop magic refills). Not to mention that by the time I would need the extra magic that could potentially be in those pots, enough of the arena is destroyed that by the time you slowly climb back up the tower to the main area it’s nearly impossible to get back into position without getting swatted back down just to have to climb back up again, which makes for a frustrating and time-wasting cycle until you pull it off successfully. Surely the health loss from taking a hit is punishment enough, let alone having to climb up the excessively tall pillar in the center of the arena.

The first phase is an uninteresting rehash of the Phantom Ganon fight earlier in the game. The great evil that the game has been building up to is defeated by playing tennis with him until he dies. This mechanic wasn’t interesting the first time it was introduced, and it’s even more boring the second time it shows up. After this there is a timed escape sequence that is made interesting by an enemy encounter partway through. This moment worked very well for me as it was one of the only times where I was incentivized to take a more aggressive approach to combat to defeat them quickly, as opposed to the overly effective but slow defensive approach that I had used for most other encounters. The final phase has an interesting moment story-wise where your master sword is taken from you with the unfortunate gameplay implication being that Ganon is easily defeated by bludgeoning him to death with a hammer for everything but the last few blows. Ultimately, the final battle struggles to feel climactic as a result of failures in the design of the mechanics of the fight, despite the tone that is insisted on by the visuals and music.

That’s pretty much it for my issues with puzzles and combat, both of which missed the mark surprisingly significantly considering that they are pretty major facets of the game. As for other miscellaneous annoyances, stealth sections are annoying (the Gerudo section being particularly tedious and infuriating), there is too much menuing and swapping around inventory slots (water temple is most infamous for this but let's not pretend like this isn’t a problem with the game as a whole as opposed to one dungeon), and Hyrule field is too open and empty (Epona probably shouldn’t have been missable). The story wasn’t amazing but it wasn’t bad. There are interpretations of themes of growing up that I’ve read in some of the reviews on here that feel too subjective for me to take seriously. Not that the theme of “growing up is scary” is a particularly interesting or original topic to tackle in a game anyway.

I’d like to emphasize that the fun I had exploring the rich world that Ocarina of Time offers outweighed my issues with the puzzles and combat, but the fun I had doesn’t absolve this game of its issues. When I finished Ocarina of Time I couldn’t help but feel that I didn’t experience the masterpiece that I had expected going into this game. At the time I couldn’t really put a finger on why I felt this way, but after writing all this out I better understand my feelings for this game. There’s just too much that this game simply doesn’t excel at, and too many parts that just fail to land for me. This was a game I went into wanting to love in the same way that all my favorite game developers love, but I suppose it was inevitable that this game fell short of my unreasonably lofty expectations.