Is Ocarina of Time (N64) Overrated?

[IntelliMission]

@bluejay Since you're 13, here's a spoiler for your life: your tastes will evolve and change a lot. There is a high chance when you're 20 you will say "I remember when I was 13, I was so retarded, I hated 2D Zeldas". Many things like that will happen to you a lot. Well, at least they should.

[bluejay]

I don't hate 2D Zeldas. I sort of like Zelda II and I definitely like ALBW. What I don't like is the original Zelda.

[+wongojack]

20 minutes ago, bluejay said:

This is interesting. Then is literally every single Zelda game over-hyped by Zelda fans? Because I've seen wayyyyy to many people praise literally every single Zelda game and now I'm seeing for myself what some of these games are like as well as people who aren't very fond of them.

I would say that there is definitely some room for the franchise to be considered overrated - yes.

 

BTW here is another thread that I started on OoT during my playthrough in 2017:  Oh, there is a "Lens of Truth" . . . Complaining about Ocarina of Time - Classic Gaming General - AtariAge Forums

[NE146]

18 minutes ago, bluejay said:

I don't hate 2D Zeldas. I sort of like Zelda II and I definitely like ALBW. What I don't like is the original Zelda.

No definitely not overrated. Like in so many things, tech, music, art, etc. It's way too easy to look back on an innovator that broke the mold and blew everyone's mind doing something first that influenced EVERYBODY... and then be less than impressed because everyone since then has latched onto that creation they loved and spun off on it adding small incremental improvements over many years. But you can't forget who set that standard.  

 

There was nothing like Zelda at the time.. unless you count stuff like Ultima or whatever, but let's get real ?

[bluejay]

Speaking of which I don't like Ultima either. I'd rather play Zelda than Ultima.

[bluejay]

Hey, guess what? I'm starting to enjoy OoT. As I mentioned before I took the "search every square inch" approach and now I can actually start figuring stuff out and having fun. I figured my way through Dodongo's Cavern and the King Dodongo battle was easy once I figured how to not get burnt or squished. I ran out of bombs and deku seeds halfway up Death Mountain though. I had to backtrack all the way down and back to Hyrule Market to restock my supplies and stopped to trade in some masks.

OoT is definitely better than LttP.

[glazball]

@youxia and @NE146 got it right.  The simple answer is no, it's no overrated.  Sure, it's easy to critique in hindsight but there is simply no way to overstate how groundbreaking and influential the game is.

 

Let's not forget that OoT arrived in a time when the internet was unknown to most people and a game guide was your only option for looking up tips, aside from talking with friends of course.  Like the original Zeldas before it, it requires the player to explore without always knowing where to go or what item to use.  That sort of gameplay is forever lost to time now with internet/YT guides being so ubiquitous and quality-of-life features like quest markers visible from across the horizon.  No, sometimes you had to leave the N64 on for hours while at work or school so that you wouldn't waste any time exploring and experimenting trying to make your way through a complex dungeon.

 

Does that mean it's a perfect game in 2020?  Well of course we have better games now - but very, very few of them require you to care about every inch of gamespace like OoT (and Mario 64) did.  It's a masterpiece and will always be considered as such.

 

 

 

 

[bluejay]

@glazball Seriously, by 1998 the internet was pretty big. Nowhere near what it is now but still it was pretty damned popular. Internet guides existed in 1998, and so did Atariage although under a different name. As I've already mentioned, no doubt it was an amazing back in the day. The explore everywhere type gameplay is outdated and sometimes frustrating. Hence it's no longer used. Ocarina of Time is no longer the amazing game it was back in 1998. It's just a "good" and flawed game. What I'm saying is it doesn't deserve to be in 2nd place in 2020. I've seen to many people simply ignoring the flaws and praising it to be the most perfect game.

[zzip]

On 11/30/2020 at 1:10 AM, bluejay said:

Ocarina of Time was undoubtedly a brilliant game back in its day. It was the first 3D Zelda game, and did a fair job at impressing hundreds of thousands of people. It was the most critically acclaimed video game of all time until Breath of the Wild came along. If I had a chance to play it back in 1998 I'm sure I would have been absolutely amazed by it.

I played OoT for a few hours on my N64 today. Started from the beginning and made it to Kakariko Village, (damned lady can't rescue her Cuccos herself.) stopping by at Hyrule Castle. I have to say, I wasn't particularly impressed. I found the controls to be clunky (just like any other N64 game) and the overall layout of the map to be lackluster. Having a central hub (Hyrule Field) connected to all the different areas (Castletown, Kakariko, Gerudo Valley, etc.) doesn't feel like an adventure, but just moving towards a certain destination. I can't make the dialogue text move faster and it really takes a while to wait until for the text to catch up with my eye. It seems minor but given that I'll be reading dialogues for half the game it's quite annoying. There are some puzzles here and there that are slightly trickier to figure out, but maybe that's just me. And the graphics are shit.

I can cut it a lot of break for being one of the first mainstream 3D games and especially on the N64 platform. But I don't think it deserves to be the second best game in the world either. Maybe I'm no person to judge since I haven't played it bitd nor have I beat the game yet, but I think I've played NES games that I enjoyed more that OoT.

I noticed that games that are acclaimed based on technical achievement don't age well.   Games acclaimed based on cool innovative gameplay do.   So a lot of early 3D games don't really hold up for this reason, except for nostalgia's sake.

 

19 hours ago, bluejay said:

Speaking of which I don't like Ultima either. I'd rather play Zelda than Ultima.

Similar thing at work here.  Pen-and-paper games like Dungeons and Dragons were super popular in the 70s and 80s, and it was only natural to want to bring that kind of game to computers, since they could handle character sheet management, dice rolls, rule lookups much easier than humans could.   Ultima games were some of the earliest to capture the D&D feel in a videogame.   Each one innovated a little more than the last.   I remember getting Ultima III soon after getting a disk drive.  At first I was giddy at finally having a game like this, but by the end, the formula felt tired and repetitive.   But then comes Ultima IV with a bigger map, many new features and an innovative story line where instead of finding some ultimate treasure or killing the big-baddie, the goal was to improve yourself.   It was mind-blowing at the time.  But then again subsequent Ultima games come along and make it seem dated, and other RPGs take the formula even further..    and I could see why young people today wouldn't have much interest in playing a tile-based RPG with a simple interface in a world where games like Witcher III, Skyrim and Dark Souls exists.  

[IntelliMission]

I think RPGs were a good idea before video games could emulate just about every single physic, random chances and fighting styles. I believe turn-based combat, random encounters of XP points feel forced in a game where your movements in the physical world should determine your "turns", encounters and "experience" (which, once you're part of the action, is stored in something called brain instead of a number).

 

This is why I've always preferred action RPGs and this, combined with how overrated stories are in games, I've always liked Zelda more than Final Fantasy despite being a huge PS1 fan and only liking a handful of Nintendo games.

Edited December 2, 2020 by IntelliMission

[zzip]

24 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

I think RPGs were a good idea before video games could emulate just about every single physic, random chances and fighting styles. I believe turn-based combat, random encounters of XP points feel forced in a game where your movements in the physical world should determine your "turns", encounters and "experience"

I don't think it was forced, it was just a direct translation of the pen-and-paper rules into a videogame.   It's what the RPG fans expected to see.   If you are designing a party-based RPG as opposed to one where you control a single character, then turn-based combat is almost necessary.  

 

I was coding my own RPG back in the day, and I always found turn-based combat tedious, so I was working on hybrid system where each party member would have their orders on how to fight (what weapon, ranged vs hand-to-hand, magic, etc).  And once combat started they would go about their thing while you watched.  You could pause the combat at anytime and give new orders.   I think some RPGs nowadays do something similar, but when I was working on it, I hadn't yet seen anyone else do it in their game.

[turboxray]

On 11/30/2020 at 8:25 AM, IntelliMission said:

1) Some games just look better in pixel art. It happens to Mario and Zelda, but also to Monkey Island, Street Fighter, Abe's Oddysee or Prince of Persia.

 

2) The controls are more complicated in 3D and sometimes even the camera gets in the way. The combat system gets repetitive too. This video explains it perfectly (and with a touch of humor):

 

 

A highly one side ADHD borderline ridiculous opinionated rant. Seriously lame points haha, and I'm even that much of a fan of OoT. I dunno. I don't have ADHD so I guess I don't have those issues with the game.

[glazball]

On 12/1/2020 at 12:50 PM, bluejay said:

@glazball Seriously, by 1998 the internet was pretty big. Nowhere near what it is now but still it was pretty damned popular. Internet guides existed in 1998, and so did Atariage although under a different name. As I've already mentioned, no doubt it was an amazing back in the day. The explore everywhere type gameplay is outdated and sometimes frustrating. Hence it's no longer used. Ocarina of Time is no longer the amazing game it was back in 1998. It's just a "good" and flawed game. What I'm saying is it doesn't deserve to be in 2nd place in 2020. I've seen to many people simply ignoring the flaws and praising it to be the most perfect game.

I'll concede that in 2020, when looking over the entire history of video games, some would say that a simpler game like Pac-Man or Tetris should be ranked higher than OoT, since they are more accessible (pick up & play) now.  However, you're judging the game with the hindsight of 20+ years, which is unfair.  There are flaws and I don't think anyone would argue that it's truly "perfect" (because nothing is), but that is beside the point.  It was and still is a massively important, influential and fun game.  Compared to it's contemporaries it was the best of the best and that's why it still gets mentioned as possibly the best video game of all time even now.

 

 

[jerseystyle]

I think it's hard to seperate "best" from "most influential/impactful". There were so many innovations in that game that still exist today: big 3d Hub worlds, the "Z Targeting" feature, the day/night cycle (which I know existed prior but IMHO not really pushed forward till here).  I remember seeing an ad for it at the local movie theatre and just being BLOWN AWAY.  It was such a leap forward for 3d games at the time, just like Mario64 was the year or two before.

 

I'll tell you, OoT came out during my sophomore year at college.  My buddies and I got it on a  Friday and basically lived in my dorm room for the weekend, pounding beers and trading the controller amongst 5 of us (I was over 21 so had my own "suite" style room to my self with an awesome couch/living area) until we emerged, Sunday afternoon, blinking, hungover, and so pumped with having finished the game.

 

I've played it a few times since then and still enjoyed it.  To be honest I like playing WW, LttP, LBW, and BotW better (I think all Zelda games rules to various degrees), but I do not have the fond memories of those that OoT gives me.  

 

So, yeah, it would definitely be a top 5 game in my book.  I think one can argue that everything is outdated to a certain extent so that kind of talk is fairly meaningless to me in terms of quality.   I mean, hell, this is a retro site- doesn't that prove the timelessness of everything anyway?

 

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by jerseystyle

[bluejay]

I decided to quit playing in the middle of the forest temple, at least for a while. I appreciate everyone's opinions but I'm not a fan of Ocarina of Time. As we've all agreed on it was a brilliant and revolutionary game in 1998, but it hasn't aged well at all. It was released in the early days of 3D and it shows. Some of you might like the complexity of the dungeons that force you to look for every last detail to find a tiny clue, but to me that's just tedious. Again, I'm not saying it's a bad game. It has its share of fun and exciting moments. But It's not the second best game of all time in 2020. It might have been in 1998 but definitely not now.

Meanwhile, I started Skyward Sword, and it's most definitely miles better than Ocarina of Time. The controls are more fluid, graphics are pleasing, and the puzzles you have to solve is just that right amount of complexity that forces you to think but not have headaches while doing so. It's a much more modern and player friendly game, and what I expected from a 21st century Zelda game. I also played a bit of Twilight Princess but I'm waiting until  I get a Gamecube controller because I'd rather play without motion controls.

I'm interested to try out Wind Waker. Curious whether it'll have the frustrating and cryptic characteristics of the older games or the less complex and more player friendly style with the newer games.

tl;dr: I don't like OoT, SS is proving to be much more fun.

[Steven Pendleton]

The forest temple is one of the most annoying places in the game to the extent that I consider it to be the game's single lowest point. The game becomes more interesting after that, so you basically abandoned it just before it gets better. I'd say un-drop the game and try a few other places. You don't have to do them all in order, for that matter; as long as you have the items that let you get to a certain dungeon (or use glitches), you can go there at any time unless there is something that I am forgetting.

 

Wind Waker is interesting. It has its own annoying aspects (Triforce pieces), and it's been a while since I played it, but it's definitely different from Ocarina of Time. Is it better? Hard to say. Since you're 13 now, you would have been born around the time that it was released... and, interestingly, I myself turned 13 two weeks after its North American launch. I don't remember if I got it for my birthday early or I bought it with my own money or whatever, but I do remember the Best Buy where I preordered it. Still have that special preorder bonus disc in storage in the USA somewhere... I think it's worth an interesting amount of cash these days.

 

Many people thought it was ugly/looked childish back then (not me; I was indifferent), but it is still a nice looking game to this day. Wind Waker definitely was rushed, though, and you might be able to tell. Still, it's worth a try. I'd probably take the Wii U version over the Gamecube version, as Wii U lets you sail faster and I think it made getting the Triforce pieces easier, but it's always nice to see it in widescreen, as well.

[bluejay]

4 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

The forest temple is one of the most annoying places in the game to the extent that I consider it to be the game's single lowest point. The game becomes more interesting after that, so you basically abandoned it just before it gets better. I'd say un-drop the game and try a few other places. You don't have to do them all in order, for that matter; as long as you have the items that let you get to a certain dungeon (or use glitches), you can go there at any time unless there is something that I am forgetting.

 

Wind Waker is interesting. It has its own annoying aspects (Triforce pieces), and it's been a while since I played it, but it's definitely different from Ocarina of Time. Is it better? Hard to say. Since you're 13 now, you would have been born around the time that it was released... and, interestingly, I myself turned 13 two weeks after its North American launch. I don't remember if I got it for my birthday early or I bought it with my own money or whatever, but I do remember the Best Buy where I preordered it. Still have that special preorder bonus disc in storage in the USA somewhere... I think it's worth an interesting amount of cash these days.

 

Many people thought it was ugly/looked childish back then (not me; I was indifferent), but it is still a nice looking game to this day. Wind Waker definitely was rushed, though, and you might be able to tell. Still, it's worth a try. I'd probably take the Wii U version over the Gamecube version, as Wii U lets you sail faster and I think it made getting the Triforce pieces easier, but it's always nice to see it in widescreen, as well.

Wind waker is much older than I am. Believe it or not, it's been a whopping 18+ years since its release. Must make you old timers feel... old.

I don't have a Wii U so I'm gonna have to play the GC original, but playing on Wii U is kinda cheating when it comes to honest opinions. Obviously it'll be better like the 3ds OoT is better than the N64.

I like the Wind Waker's graphics. Certainly better than OoT. Speaking of OoT, I'll probably go back after I'm done with Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, and whatever Zelda I feel like playing after those three. If you do say Forest Temple is the worst part of OoT, I'll just use a walkthrough to get past that part. The developers really got carried away with the usage of slingshots and crypticness (if that's a word).

[Steven Pendleton]

1 hour ago, bluejay said:

Wind waker is much older than I am. Believe it or not, it's been a whopping 18+ years since its release. Must make you old timers feel... old.

I don't have a Wii U so I'm gonna have to play the GC original, but playing on Wii U is kinda cheating when it comes to honest opinions. Obviously it'll be better like the 3ds OoT is better than the N64.

I like the Wind Waker's graphics. Certainly better than OoT. Speaking of OoT, I'll probably go back after I'm done with Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, and whatever Zelda I feel like playing after those three. If you do say Forest Temple is the worst part of OoT, I'll just use a walkthrough to get past that part. The developers really got carried away with the usage of slingshots and crypticness (if that's a word).

Oops, you're right!  I somehow got 2020 - 13 = 2003. Yeah, I am super terrible at math somehow...

 

Anyway, you'll do fine with the Gamecube version. It's not all that different, but I personally like the Wii U version also because I can lay down in bed with the gamepad like a lazy dude and play most games, including Wind Waker HD, on the gamepad, so there is that aspect as well!

 

Honestly I hated Twilight Princess so much that I never completed it and dropped the entire series after that. Anyway, for Ocarina, if you have the bow, you should be able to complete the fire temple without completing the forest temple. I believe you need the Megaton Hammer from the fire temple to complete the water temple, and I think you must complete the water temple to get to the shadow temple without glitches. Spirit temple is kind of weird and I forget at what point you can go there, but you need your horse. Maybe the Longshot from the water temple will do it as well, but it's been a while. Go try some other places if you can. Spirit temple is particularly interesting.

[bluejay]

26 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Oops, you're right!  I somehow got 2020 - 13 = 2003. Yeah, I am super terrible at math somehow...

 

Anyway, you'll do fine with the Gamecube version. It's not all that different, but I personally like the Wii U version also because I can lay down in bed with the gamepad like a lazy dude and play most games, including Wind Waker HD, on the gamepad, so there is that aspect as well!

 

Honestly I hated Twilight Princess so much that I never completed it and dropped the entire series after that. Anyway, for Ocarina, if you have the bow, you should be able to complete the fire temple without completing the forest temple. I believe you need the Megaton Hammer from the fire temple to complete the water temple, and I think you must complete the water temple to get to the shadow temple without glitches. Spirit temple is kind of weird and I forget at what point you can go there, but you need your horse. Maybe the Longshot from the water temple will do it as well, but it's been a while. Go try some other places if you can. Spirit temple is particularly interesting.

The bow is found inside the forest temple. Besides, don't you need to complete forest temple to completed the game anyways?

Interesting how differing people's opinions are. A lot of people call OoT a masterpiece while others say it's outdated. Some call Majora's Mask the most perfect Zelda game while it obviously isn't to everyone else. Some say TP is the best Zelda game ever while some like you dropped the series in disappointment.

[Steven Pendleton]

14 minutes ago, bluejay said:

The bow is found inside the forest temple. Besides, don't you need to complete forest temple to completed the game anyways?

Interesting how differing people's opinions are. A lot of people call OoT a masterpiece while others say it's outdated. Some call Majora's Mask the most perfect Zelda game while it obviously isn't to everyone else. Some say TP is the best Zelda game ever while some like you dropped the series in disappointment.

Yeah, you need to get the bow from the forest temple since I believe it's required for pretty much everything else in the game at some point, but once you have it, you can go elsewhere if you desire. You'll still have to do all of the dungeons eventually, of course, but you can skip it after you get the bow and go back there later if you want. The game doesn't give you as much freedom as something like Super Metroid, which lets you do anything in any order aside from the Space Colony and Tourian, but it's not linear like Wind Waker is.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[+wongojack]

@bluejay - I think you've made the right choice to move on to a more updated game.  I shared my opinion earlier that I think all of the games in question here are kinda just variations on the same game.  Originally, I tried to play Wind Waker right after I finished Twilight Princess, and that was a big mistake.  The games are just too similar for me that I can't play them all in a row like that.  Just move on enjoying Skyward Sword.

 

Regarding the Forrest Temple - It really did take a lot of time to closely examine the rooms to figure out the puzzles, but I honestly didn't consider it to be "worse" than any other part of the game.  Personally, I think you've probably played enough to get your opinion of OoT.  LOL - I kinda wish someone had told me to stop playing in the Forrest Temple.

 

For an age reference - I was 10 or 11 when the ORIGINAL Zelda was released, and I loved it.  The Nintendo Players guide helped a lot with that though.

[IntelliMission]

Hintbooks are much better than guides.

 

Many graphic adventures have 90% of good puzzles and 10% of crazy, impossible to solve puzzles.

 

What I do with these games is to create my own hints so I can have a better experience the next time I play the game.

 

Is there a hint book for any Zelda game?

[bluejay]

Seriously though, I'd love to watch a millennial try to beat the original Zelda with no guide whatsoever. He/she'd probably throw the controller into the TV.

The motion controls don't always register correctly (i.e. I try to jab into a deku baba but link instead swings his sword) but I think it could be an improvement over traditional controls. It offers a wider variety of attacks and you can aim your sword anywhere you want. It's just only occasionally annoying.

Regular hintbooks are very hard to come by online these days. You can have a full walkthrough or nothing at all.

[Reaperman]

I didn't care for OOT back in the day, and haven't been back to it. N64 was a system that completely changed my tastes. It pushed me away from Mario and Zelda, which I felt weren't fun any more.  So I did not follow them to 3d (though I stuck with their 2d/2.5 handheld incarnations for a good bit longer) and N64 pushed me instead toward racing games.  From then on, I started just loving racing games on all consoles, because IMO, 3d graphics improved them, at least as much as they ruined adventuring/platforming for me.

 

I also own the other n64 zelda, but can't recall even trying it.  Any chance that's going to change my mind?  I also didn't care for mario or conker's bad fur days or whatever.  It's something with the perspective of the playfield, and how the levels are laid out because of the new perspective that will probably never be fun to me. There's just so much 'nothing' in those 3d wander around games. [/unpopular opinion]

Edited December 5, 2020 by Reaperman

[Steven Pendleton]

7 hours ago, bluejay said:

Seriously though, I'd love to watch a millennial try to beat the original Zelda with no guide whatsoever.

Challenge accepted. My Nt mini will be getting here in a few days and I've never played it beyond the first few minutes before getting bored, so...

 

It will take me a while (somewhere between a month and a year or 2. It's pretty low priority~) to get around to it, as there are other games that I want to play first. I will also be playing the FDS version because of the FDS audio, so yay, Japanese text! I can read Japanese, but it's going to be in kana only, most likely, as I don't think the FC can do kanji in most cases. No kanji actually makes it harder to read, unfortunately.

Edited December 6, 2020 by Steven Pendleton