The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D Review

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (which I will, from now on, be abbreviating as "OoT3D") has been out for a couple of weeks now, so I thought that it deserved a review from yours truly! If you just want a quick summary of what I thought, skip down to the final paragraph. If not, read your brains out below!

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is widely considered to be the best game ever made. Period. So when it was announced that this very same game was coming to the 3DS with bonus modes, enhanced graphics, an orchestrated bonus musical track, and 3D support, it's pretty safe to say that, across about half of the world, roughly 8 million peoples' heads exploded. And that's not counting the ones who only got seriously injured. Well people, the wait was long, but it was worth it, and I'm here to tell you why.

OoT3D is the same OoT that you all know and love. It still has all the same temples, all the same charm, all the same interesting characters, and the very same Navi. Yes, that's right, Nintendo decided to leave Navi's annoying tendencies in the game for "nostalgic purposes". I'm not saying for Nintendo to just outright pull Navi out of the game. That would be a ridiculous notion. Just... give us some more varied sounds, please? "Hey, Listen!" can get quite annoying after hearing it the thousandth time (trust me, I'm not exaggerating). Aside from that however, there are quite a few notable changes. First of all, colours seem to be more vibrant and... well... colourful. The character models have a much higher polygon count (which really isn't surprising in the least), the frame rate has been significantly improved, textures are light years ahead of what was offered on the N64, and animations are much smoother and really just much more realistic. There is a nice anti-aliasing effect that was put into the game, and it makes things seem smoother and more realistic, however this effect is turned off when 3D is switched on, which really isn't actually that big of a loss. In fact, I barely ever noticed it. Speaking of 3D, it's a quite noteworthy addition to the game, and makes everything come to life even more. If you buy this game, then playing it in 3D is a must, because it really does a much better job of immersing you in the world. It almost feels as if some of the cutscenes were originally designed to make use of this technology... without Nintendo even realizing it!

The controls in the game are, like every other Zelda game, awesome. I know that many people complained about the controls not being preferable to the N64 controls, however I had absolutely no problems with them, and considering the fact that the two controls are completely different, I think that Nintendo did quite an admirable job at making them work. There's now a button dedicated to your Ocarina, so you don't have to keep swapping it in and out of your inventory anymore, and now you can equip four items. All of this makes for a much better inventory system overall. My only problem is that you have to really use your thumbs for the touch screen button (seeing as how the 3DS' stylus was positioned on the top left hand of the system). Reaching for the stylus is impossible when trying to act fast like you always are in a game like this, and when using my thumbs, sometimes the buttons wouldn't read input properly. However, this is a drawback of the 3DS system design, not the actual game itself. When Nintendo inevitably releases their second version of the 3DS, I'm sure there will be some notable design improvements, and that most people won't have this problem anymore. For the time being, however, you have been warned.

There are a few bonus modes in the game, most notably the "Master Quest". This is basically the same game, except the game is a mirror image of itself, enemies take off twice as much damage, and all of the dungeons have now been remixed. It may not sound like much, but these things all make the quest infinitely more difficult, especially if you've already beaten the game, like I had. I found myself going left to get to Kakariko Village instead of the right that is required in the new mirrored world when I was exiting the castle, simply because my mind was trained to do that. Suffice to say, the new quest will make you think a wee bit harder than before. There's also a boss rush mode that is unlocked about halfway through the game. It's interesting, but it's not really going to keep your attention for too long.

The sound and music are amazing in this game. True, none of the music has actually been changed, and there's only one bonus track that's been fully orchestrated (you'll have to figure that one out on your own, guys... sorry!), but that doesn't really matter, because it's all so amazing! From the Lost Woods to the famous Windmill Hut (which Nintendo ingeniously decided to call "?" because of its sheer weirdness), all of the music here is absolutely mind-blowing. The music makes Hyrule Field as epic as ever and the Forest Temple as creepy as ever, and its definitely not something you want to miss out on. Leave that sound slider "up", children. When it comes to sound effects, I noticed that a few things were changed. Link's classic screams and cries are still here (Yah! Hah! Hyah!), and as mentioned eariler Navi is as present as ever, but most of the footstep noises in the game were changed, some enemy cries (as well as friendly cries), were changed, perhaps most notably the Goron sound.

The graphics have, as mentioned above, also been drastically changed. You already know what I like about the graphics, and how much they've been improved (a lot!), but there are some things that I think weren't quite touched up enough. All of the staircases are still flat, which is mostly forgivable I think. It's not really all too noticeable, although a fully rendered 3D staircase would have been nice. The things that stuck out the most to me were the environments themselves. I noticed that not much was done to floors, ceilings, walls, mountains, rivers, or fences when it comes to polygons. In fact, most, if not all, of the environments look almost exactly the same polygon-wise (because obviously the textures have been improved, as well as the particle effects and various other things). Things are still jaggy and rugged, and things don't look too smooth. It's pretty much the same environments that were featured in the N64 version, albeit with better textures, which is a slight disappointment. It is forgivable however, and the game still looks quite nice. It's just not pushing any boundaries when it comes to the 3DS hardware.

Ocarina of Time 3D is an absolute must-own for anyone with a 3DS. Yes, that's right, even if you have the original. The graphics have been drastically improved, and even if they're not pushing the hardware to new heights, it still looks pretty damn great. Its music is mind-blowing, and its scale is epic. The Master Quest gives it some added replayability, and its the kind of game that you'll want to play a few times. Some of the glitches are interesting to check out as well, and according to the developers, a lot were left in for nostalgic purposes. Awesome? Long story short, this is an epic game that everyone should own.

I give The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D 98/100 Master Swords.