Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

I am glad no one is nominating TP as the best Zelda game.

Although that might just be because it is the newest.

It's definitely one of my favorites. It's just long as hell.

[XZero]

Twilight Princess, while really good, wasn't really one of the best Zeldas in my opinion. It was long, which is both good and bad insofar as it was almost too long. I also never liked the filter or whatever they had over the graphics. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go back and play it. There's something not quite ... crisp(?) about it.

Ocarina was revolutionary and has held up fairly well. Majora and Wind Waker are those love it or hate it games. Link's Awakening and LttP are generally universally revered. I think you'll find that these generalizations are pretty consistently reflected if you go back and review the last few pages of this thread.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

The length and the emphasis on cutscenes are probably what keep me from going back to Twilight Princess right now. I love the general premise of the game: It carries on with the dark and bleak theme from the future portion of Ocarina of Time, and dials it up a notch in my opinion.

The one thing that makes it standout to me other than the pretty scenery(if you mean the liberal use of bloom lighting, I think it was intentional to maintain the "world in twilight" feel) was that the game managed to take all the combat and exploration mechanics from OoT and make them feel so much better. In that regard, I feel that Twilight Princess is probably a realization of everything they were trying to achieve with Ocarina in the first place.

[The Damned]

I loved the fact that it was such a big place.

TP Lake Hyrule was as big as OoT Hyrule itself. It felt massive and open as fuck. Hell, jumping off the bridge to get to it was fun.

I wonder if that's where they got the opening for Skyward Sword from? Where Link just runs and jumps off of a cliff into the clouds.

[Bleck]

Twilight Princess' biggest problem is that it's hollow.

The largest (non-Wind Waker) Zelda map ever made, and the most visually intricately detailed - and there are what, three sidequests? Two of which give the same reward, which in itself is only really useful towards completing the third?

The most impressive and intimidating bosses in the series, and yet they're all easy as pie to defeat?

The most story-driven Zelda game ever made, and yet, still relatively empty compared to the tragic Wind Waker, the bizarre Majora's Mask and the melancholy Link's Awakening?

Twilight Princess tried to be the biggest Zelda ever, and somehow ended up being the smallest.

[The Damned]

So, if we somehow put the whole game in a pot, and let it simmer for a, like... what, 15 minutes? We would have a better game?

[EC2151]

Agreeing with Bleck wholeheartedly on that one.

Hyrule Field was huge, but once again, just plain EMPTY. Not as empty as OoT's Hyrule Field (which is actually very very bland), but since it's so big, you can really take in all the .... nothing going on. Yeah there are some enemies here and there that try to harass you, but where's all the things to do???

The handful of quests out there only give money, which is a pretty lame reward after the 30th chest of 100 rupees. You max out WAY too fast, and the game just gives you invincibility armor to continuously suck out all the money you were getting. If you had less than 1500 rupees going into Ganon's fight, you must have missed out on at least a third of the game.

Heck, it was so fucking cool finding these dark dangerous caves in the middle of NOWHERE, exploring what felt like mini-dungeons with tough enemies... Only to get 500 rupees at the end? Laaaame. LttP and LA, and Majora, and Wind Waker gave you cool interesting shit for going off the beaten path- like optional items, charts, heart-containers, item expansions... All this stuff was great (and in WW's case, you needed all that money because of fucking Tingle...); exploring was fun!

It was fun in TP, too, lots of fun, even. But the payoff did not live up to the effort getting there. What do you get for bugs? Rupees. What do you get for poes? A bigger wallet, to hold all your rupees.

And, as I said, the world was empty- one shop (no, I'm sorry, two) in Kakariko, and like, 5 NPCs in Hyrule Castle Town. Abandoned Village was pointless- just a setup for a minor action skirmish (which was so cool! And then just wasted and never brought into play again).

There was nothing to spend all your gosh-damned money on. So it just piled up and in worse cases, just SAT THERE.

I have beaten Wind Waker roughly 5 times now (and I still have yet to find everything). I've only completed Twilight Princess once. Now, don't take my comments the wrong way, as it was a great game and i really enjoyed it, but i tried to play through it again and i didn't feel like it. Once was good enough (at forty hours, mind you!).

And while I don't know what the whole cooking analogy has to do with anything, I do know that I think they approached TP in the wrong way. Aonuma's crew wanted to recreate OoT for a new age, but fell short- there were a lot of tired elements and formulae at play that were just irritating (like the "hit boss's weakness three times to kill it" stuff... all the while NEVER CHANGING THEIR FORMULA AS THE FIGHT PROGRESSED). Stuff like the "never use the item outside of its dungeon" design.

It just needed a lot more polish into making the game mechanics and items mesh together into the world, when it is clear that they rarely ever tried to make the dungeon items be anything more than boss-keys, when a better Zelda game (such as Link's Awakening) would make them fun and integral tools to further your adventure.

[RDX]

What the hell, I haven't disagreed with Bleck once in this thread.

Going off of Charlemagne, I'm really excited for Skyward Sword because it seems like they're fixing all of those issues. The battle system is basically broken in TP, and to be fair it always was broken, because using the shield is essentially the same as activating god mode. No one can touch you when you've got your tiny shield up. And if Link's got a combo going, well, the enemy is pretty much screwed. Even though the Darknuts could cause Link to stagger, they never took the opening given to them, they'd just make Link step back a little bit and then stand there waiting while Link gets his shit together. The stamina gauge fixes all of this, so that's good.

Though where's the magic meter? Why'd they do away with that?

I will give TP credit for, as Mr. Charlemagne put it, having those mini dungeons dotted around the map. I went back to TP to get the heart pieces some months ago, and was actually pretty entertained finding all these random grottos that turned out to be these pretty big labyrinths. I had to go back and forth to the one in Lake Hylia a couple of times because I kept running out of lamp oil or arrows or something.

[The Damned]

Sometimes...sometimes, he says things that no one can really argue with.

And when they do, they find out they are in a very small minority.

[The Phalanx]

TP just...I found it very forgettable. Aside from Super Riding Disc Dragon boss and Ganon, I really can't remember anything that really stood out in the game. At all.

That's the crutch of it for me, really. This huge game with nothing that stuck with me after the fact. Every other Zelda game I can think back on fondly and want to play it again, but TP just felt like more of a chore than an enjoyable experience.

[liquid wind]

What the hell, I haven't disagreed with Bleck once in this thread.

Going off of Charlemagne, I'm really excited for Skyward Sword because it seems like they're fixing all of those issues. The battle system is basically broken in TP, and to be fair it always was broken, because using the shield is essentially the same as activating god mode. No one can touch you when you've got your tiny shield up. And if Link's got a combo going, well, the enemy is pretty much screwed. Even though the Darknuts could cause Link to stagger, they never took the opening given to them, they'd just make Link step back a little bit and then stand there waiting while Link gets his shit together. The stamina gauge fixes all of this, so that's good.

Though where's the magic meter? Why'd they do away with that?

SS does seem to be fixing a lot of issues that have been with the series for a long time now, but this makes me a little worried about its battle system

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZVEF5l-WPk

this still seems very broken to me...

[ShinnyMetal]

What tp had missing the most was charm. Thats my biggest complaint. The game was taking itself way to serious. majora's mask was dark but it still had a great kind of humor and charm that I loved. wind WAker is probably my favorite because evything about it is whimsical and light hearted. I loved outset island prollythe most out of any Zelda town. It looks like to me that they are going to try and charm us again in Skyward Sword and every bit of me is excited to play.

Edit: and I can't wait tio pick up my preorder of OoT 3D tomorrow :3

[RDX]

i would certainly hope the first miniboss of the game is incredibly easy

[Flare4War]

Robin Williams named his daughter after the Zelda character? Cute too..

Just so you know..I thought this was awesome. And I agree, she's very pretty.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

"what do you mean I have to get a thing"

The point is that the fetch quests should be optional.

Getting the Biggoron sword in OoT was loads of fun, because it was optional. You don't have to do it, but if you do, you're rewarded with an awesome-ass item.

Triforce shard hunting is 1) far less varied and 2) NOT OPTIONAL. You must do it to move ahead. It's a stupid, pointless chore which takes for fucking ever and is not the slightest bit entertaining.

I will agree that TP really could have been fleshed out a lot more with side quests, more varied rewards, more interesting items, etc. But still, I'll take TP over WW any day.

[Bleck]

arbitrarily deciding whether or not a fetch quest is fun based on whether or not it's optional doesn't make any sense

[EC2151]

To throw my hat into the ring, my three favorite Zeldas are MM, LA, and WW, with MM and LA usually swapping "all-time best Zelda" titles like a pair of overblown WWE wrestlers.

Link's Awakening is incredibly playable, the items are fun, the world is a charm to explore, and is full of memorable moments...

And not only that, but the game mechanics make for an incredibly open-ended game.

And much like how Sakamoto, Gumpei, et all did not intend for the insane sequence-breaking in Super Metroid (but nonetheless gave the game unprecedented replayability), the warp glitch pretty much means you can sequence-break as much as you want in LA and play the game however well you damn feel like. It's a lot of fun! Want to beat Turtle's Rock before you even get the sword? Go ahead and try it out! Want to keep Marin with you so you can show her how much of a badass you are across all these dungeons? Go ahead, champ!

And even if you don't use the glitch to sequence-break and fuck around, the game is solid enough in the adventure-department to just enjoy it straight up. I think the game is better than LttP in that regard- LA was just an incredibly refined experience, and not a single screen, not a single item, not a single NPC was put to waste. In that sense it's a marvel in economic, tight, game design.

MM was fun for the high amount of optional, fun sidequests you could do. On top of 4 of the best 3D dungeons in the series, you could really do the RPG part of the Action-RPG, as you could go out of your way and affect the story (or at least, the game-world characters) in a way you couldn't do in any Zelda game. Yeah, it's no Fallout 1, but it's still fun, and adds a lot to the lasting-value of the game. Finding masks is fun, and most of them are legitimate rewards that make the game better for finding them (like the all-powerful bunny hood). Plus, the focus on a concentrated group of NPCs makes each NPC in MM memorable, more-so than their OoT counterparts. Outside of, say, Malon, Talon, and Ingo, and the sages, there aren't really any characters in OoT worth remembering- they're forgettable. However, in the course of MM, you come to know a wide range of fascinating characters, and the game's apocalyptic setting makes for some really tender and/or nuanced moments as these NPCs try to come to terms with the fact that the world is ending. It's unheard of, especially in a Nintendo game, to have characters like that. TP tried to be dark and "deep", but MM blew it out of the water.

WW's greatness comes from the sense of freedom and exploration you have (which is one of the core tenets that Zelda was built off of), and after the first three jewels, you could just start going anywhere and exploring the world. Despite claims to the contrary, treasure hunting was very fun, and all the secrets, nooks, and crannies waiting for you to expose them. The world is colorful and vibrant, the dungeons, while on the easy side, are nonetheless expertly designed and plenty of fun, and I still have yet to discover everything in the vast Great Sea. Plus, the story of the game is, as was said, "tragic" in a way I didn't ever think a Zelda could be. There is a lot of nostalgia being tugged at in WW, and the sense of loss over the old world of Hyrule probably made all of us shed a tear on the inside ;;

Too bad they were followed up with the mediocre DS sequels, which more or less destroyed the mythos established in Wind Waker... But hey for all we know the likely thing is that the next Zelda game will render the DS games out of place, canonically, or in the "timeline" or something like that.

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ON topic, I've heard from a few people that while OoT 3D is mostly the same game, there are a few changes here and there. Apparently there's a glitch that when you unlock a door, Link starts spinning around like crazy like he's got St. Vitus' dance or something.

Another thing I've heard is that a few of the cool touches of OoT were changed- one guy told me that some of the timed text moments are no longer there... EG, like when you meet Ganondorf on the bridge, in the original, the text would show up "Heh.......heh.....heh...." and would show up with each laugh. This is not present in the remake.

Not a major complaint by any means, but I always thought that was really cool in the original.

[StarZander]

ON topic, I've heard from a few people that while OoT 3D is mostly the same game, there are a few changes here and there. Apparently there's a glitch that when you unlock a door, Link starts spinning around like crazy like he's got St. Vitus' dance or something.

Another thing I've heard is that a few of the cool touches of OoT were changed- one guy told me that some of the timed text moments are no longer there... EG, like when you meet Ganondorf on the bridge, in the original, the text would show up "Heh.......heh.....heh...." and would show up with each laugh. This is not present in the remake.

Not a major complaint by any means, but I always thought that was really cool in the original.

Yes, this is true. He does spin around some, but like crazy, but whatever.

About the timed text, that is also true. I noticed it first when Darunia is dancing and says "HOT!" right when the camera comes behind a flame. This timing is now a bit off.

Someone asked when I last beat the game, and I think it was a couple of years ago, but I've done it dozens of times and still enjoy it. OoT is just great that way.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

arbitrarily deciding whether or not a fetch quest is fun based on whether or not it's optional doesn't make any sense

Well as the old adage goes, "you can't force fun."

[liquid wind]

LA was just an incredibly refined experience, and not a single screen, not a single item, not a single NPC was put to waste. In that sense it's a marvel in economic, tight, game design.

this is why it pleased me when nintendo started repeatedly using the word "density" to describe their goals for skyward sword. like they finally realized that a huge world filled with NOTHING isn't a good direction to go in. it worked for SotC but that game has a totally different feel than what zelda games have traditionally gone for

Finding masks is fun, and most of them are legitimate rewards that make the game better for finding them (like the all-powerful bunny hood).

bunny hood best thing ever, it's amazing that they managed to miss on having an item like that in TWO games following MM. obviously the hood itself may not make so much sense as WW and TP don't have the surrealist themes that MM did and having the hero wear bunny ears everywhere would be out of place, but damn nintendo, give us SOMETHING

It's unheard of, especially in a Nintendo game, to have characters like that. TP tried to be dark and "deep", but MM blew it out of the water.

especially for the simplicity and eloquence that the heavy themes were handled with. TP tried to be closer to a JRPG having a lot of long conversations and it just doesn't produce the same impact as actually interacting with the characters and watching their day to day lives as MM allowed. MM still has a lot of my biggest "awwww" moments in gaming like romani and cremia's last dinner

WW's greatness comes from the sense of freedom and exploration you have

I really don't see it this way, you have a big wide open area but you need to stop constantly to change direction, and you don't travel all that quickly, there's a lot of just sitting and waiting. I think the game encourages you to stay on a linear path because of this, you can explore, but it barely rewards you for doing so and makes it more difficult than it should be

the dungeons, while on the easy side, are nonetheless expertly designed and plenty of fun

I never really got anything out of WW's dungeons. they're probably the least intricate of all the 3D zelda's, least challenging, really have a weak sense of atmosphere to me compared to the other games...but then again none of them are as bad as the first few in OoT so at least it has some consistency to it

Plus, the story of the game is, as was said, "tragic" in a way I didn't ever think a Zelda could be. There is a lot of nostalgia being tugged at in WW, and the sense of loss over the old world of Hyrule probably made all of us shed a tear on the inside ;;

agree with this, the visits to old hyrule are amazing, the first time you go there and the end of the game...

But hey for all we know the likely thing is that the next Zelda game will render the DS games out of place, canonically, or in the "timeline" or something like that.

I would really like to see PH recanted like the CD-i games but I don't think it will happen :/

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

You know what Zelda game had the best sense of exploration? The original.

"Here's a shield, kid. Inside the cave directly in front of you is an old dude from whom you can grab a sword. Or not. Whatever, it's up to you. Oh and screw giving you any directions. That's for babies. Welcome to Hyrule, now get the fuck off my lawn."

[Avatar of Justice]

You know what Zelda game had the best sense of exploration? The original.

"Here's a shield, kid. Inside the cave directly in front of you is an old dude from whom you can grab a sword. Or not. Whatever, it's up to you. Oh and screw giving you any directions. That's for babies. Welcome to Hyrule, now get the fuck off my lawn."

I can't play games like that. Poking at walls randomly to find dungeons isn't my idea of fun. Glad they stopped that crap with the NES.

So, I'll admit TP is actually my favorite Zelda. The gameplay is solid and there's a lot of badass scenes in it. Like fighting that one dude on the bridge with your horse. And sword fighting Ganon to this music

.

EDIT: Well, TP is my favorite 3D Zelda. Link's Awakening wins for 2D.

[XZero]

So, I'll admit TP is actually my favorite Zelda. The gameplay is solid and there's a lot of badass scenes in it. Like fighting that one dude on the bridge with your horse. And sword fighting Ganon to this music

.

I do have to agree with that last part about Ganon; no reasonable person could claim that the final battle in Twilight Princess is anything other than completely badass, and the only thing that could have improved that particular point would be if that same song were fully orchestrated. As it stands, either that battle as a whole or the way Link defeats Ganon in Wind Waker would win the award for most epic Zelda moment.

On another point, I picked up my copy of Ocarina today and registered it with Club Nintendo for my 50 track soundtrack (which, by the way, doesn't start shipping until July 5th or so, but it specifies that quantities are very limited). I played the game for about 2 hours, which meant beating the first dungeon, getting a heart piece or two, and obtaining Zelda's song on the ocarina. I had 3D on the whole time. I now have the 3DS headache, which manifests, at least for me, when two very precise points in my head, one on the top-left and one on the top-right, started to hurt. I'll play some more later tonight after taking some Advil or something.

I find the graphics to be phenominal, especially with the 3D effect turned on. All of those little light things floating around in Kokiri Forest, particularly around the Deku Tree, look really cool coming at you. The history cutscenes talking about the goddesses looked especially neat. The 3D is very well done. From a gameplay perspective, everything works and feels natural from the outset, and this is coming from someone who's played this game on both the N64 and the GCN using a Wavebird. The slider pad works just fine, though it seems a little less precise than a joystick is. The music doesn't seem much different thus far, though I thought I noticed a slightly different instrumentation choice for one of the songs. It's probably something that's always been there but was more pronounced coming out of the DS speakers. Navi's a pain in the ass, as always.

My overall thoughts are summed up thusly: anyone who has a 3DS, whether they've played this game before or not, owes it to themselves to pick it up. It's one of the best games ever made, and it looks great--much better than any of its other releases--with or without 3D enabled. But if you don't have a 3DS, I'm not sure I'd recommend buying one just for this game. With Sony's PS Vita price announcement, there's a fair chance Nintendo will drop the 3DS price to $200 to be super-competitive at the holidays. At that point, there should be at least 5 AAA first party titles available: Zelda, Mario 3D, Mario Kart, Star Fox 64, and Kid Icarus, plus anything 3rd parties come up with between now and then. Christmas will probably be a better time to pick up a 3DS, and you can load up on games, some of which will be a bit cheaper since you can find them used. Nonetheless, the bottom line stays the same: whenever you acquire a 3DS, you really, really should get this game.

[ShinnyMetal]

I do have to agree with that last part about Ganon; no reasonable person could claim that the final battle in Twilight Princess is anything other than completely badass, and the only thing that could have improved that particular point would be if that same song were fully orchestrated. As it stands, either that battle as a whole or the way Link defeats Ganon in Wind Waker would win the award for most epic Zelda moment.

Especially since in TP you can distract the shit out of ganondorf with your fishing pole lol. Best thing ever

Yeah the graphics are amazing and a bit more than I expected from 3DS so soon. I would be so far in but I had to work. Still kind of bitter about the exclusion of a bundle in the US but I'm having fun nonetheless. I agree with the circle pad on not being so precise as an analogue stick but it's still great. Still can't wait for skyward sword now (and the hopes of MM being remade also but it won't happen lololol)

[Thalzon]

I'm loving the lack of prerendered blurriness. Each house in Hyrule is detailed quite well, and that makes it feel like a whole new game... Though I still have pretty much every secret memorized.