The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Link’s back
Ocarina Of Time is the first Nintendo 64 installment to the great The Legend Of Zelda series. It has always taken a long time to release a new part to the series, but it has always been worth the wait. After the masterpieces The Legend Of Zelda & The Adventure Of Link for NES, A Link To The Past for SNES and Link’s Awakening for Game Boy it took a long time for the next release to come.
Before the release of Nintendo 64 the creator of Zelda and Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto had always said how great games he could make if he had hardware powerful enough to work with. When Nintendo announced Nintendo 64 and that one of the first games would be Mario 64, fans were absolutely thrilled. The result was one of the best games ever made. When Shigeru announced new Zelda game, he stated that it would be even better that Mario 64…
Expectations for Ocarina Of Time were HUGE, but, as always, Mr. Miyamoto did not disappoint. The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time is simply incredible game. It would take many, many pages of text to describe how fine and wonderful game it is and why you should buy twelve backup copies and hide them around the city (just in case your house sets in fire destroying your copy), but I’m not going to do that. There are pageloads of essays about Ocarina of Time’s greatness, so there’s no point in adding one more. I’m trying to keep it brief.
Time travel is one of the most important aspects in the story and we’ll get to play as both young Link and adult Link. They both have some differences, only young Link can use the boomerang, for example, while the hookshot is exclusively for adult Link. Interesting part of the story is that Ocarina of Time is the actually first game in the series, as this is the first time we’ll encounter the evil sorcerer Ganon in his human form, Ganondorf. As those who’ve played the series know, Ganondorf lost his human form and became Ganon. Ocarina of Time tells you the events that led to this.
Gohma makes a comeback
The best game ever?
Let’s make it simple, if you own N64, buy Zelda. If you don’t own N64, lend it, borrow it, buy it or acquire it in “other ways” because this is a game you don’t want to miss (And get Mario 64 while at it, it also damn good). Ocarina Of Time is absolutely one of the greatest (if not the greatest) games ever made. One tip. When buying Zelda, remember to hold it above your head once finding the box and making the classic sound effect. That way people are sure to let you cut in the line.
Graphics are very impressive. The draw distance is long and there are no noticeable slowdowns. Colors are used well and backgrounds look great. Overall, the game looks very good. Music and sound effects are not bad either. Link has a limited range of voices (screaming when falling down, attacking enemy, getting hit), similar to the shouts Mario 64, for example. Dialogue isn’t spoken, that doesn’t bother me, though. The voices of Young Link and adult one have basically the same lines, but the higher pitched young version can sound annoying sometimes.
Koji Kondo continues as the composer for Zelda and Mario series, and delivers one of his best soundtracks yet for Ocarina of Time. Although the classical Zelda theme is sadly missing in action, the new tracks and especially the theme of Gerudo Valley make up for it.
The gameplay is familiar for those who’ve played Zelda-games before. Change to third dimension of course changed the game a bit, but the the system is very simple, so newcomers shouldn’t have trouble mastering the basic controls. The strengths and possibilities of N64′s controller show up in Ocarina of Time. Every button is used somehow and the actions have been placed perfectly.
The analog stick is used for movement, A & B buttons are the main action buttons, while yellow d-buttons are used for items and such. Z-button on the bottom of the controller is used for targeting. Pressing it in middle of a fight locks the camera, allowing player to dodge enemy attacks and moving around without losing the enemy from sight.
There’s no special button for jumps, as they’re done ‘automatically’. As you run towards an edge, Link automatically jumps when reaching it to the direction you’re running to. Although it seems like you lose a bit of the free control, this works really well. Link isn’t supposed to be jumping around like Mario anyway, not with all the equipment he’s carrying.
I always thought the world map in Zelda III was enormous. As it turns out, I was wrong. It is tiny when compared to Ocarina of Time’s map. The playing area is so huge that it actually takes quite a time to travel from one end to another, even when traveling with a horse. (Yes, you can ride a horse in OoT).
There aren’t many bad things to say about Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In fact, I can’t think of any major ones. Like every 3D game, Ocarina of Time has it’s share of camera problems, but these remain minor. Some dungeons could’ve been a bit better (personally I hated the dungeon inside the big fish Jabu-Jabu), but overall their level is very high, offering challenge and lots of things to explore.
If I had to use just one word to describe the challenge Zelda offers, it would be ‘massive’. Even though the difficulty level isn’t particularly high, the game has so many things to do, secrets to find and places to search that it’s really amazing how Nintendo has managed to fit everything in one N64 cartridge, while still maintaining high audio and graphical quality. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the most complete games I’ve ever seen.
Next in horizon
After Ocarina Of Time was released, it soon became apparent that the wait for the next game wasn’t going to be as long as it was when moving from SNES to N64. The sequel, Majora’s Mask was released only about a year after OoT. Since Majora’s Mask was released, Nintendo has released Zelda games with unbelievable speed. There are the two Oracle games for Game Boy Color, upcoming remake of Zelda III for GBA and a brand new adventure for GameCube. We’ve come a long way from the times a new Zelda was released like every five years or so…
