flamepillar's Full Review: The Legend Of Zelda Ocarina Of Time for Nintendo 6...
This was the last video game I ever really and truly awaited with that same uncontrollable anxiety as I once did for Castlevania IV, Final Fantasy II, Super Metroid, and Final Fantasy III. Nowadays, I just don't care about video games that much. I started on Grandia for the Play Station about a month ago, and haven't even gotten off the first disk yet! And it's not that it's a bad game at all. I just don't have that same passion for video games that I once did.
However, there is nothing like the resurfacing of an old classic, sucking you into its world all over again, pelting you with the memories of what life was like last time you entered into its realm. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is doing just that for me right now. Although I don't see 2001 as being one of my more memorable years, I also start to realize when I look back, that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The Legend of Zelda, the original 8-bit adventure for the NES system, is tough to compete with. A lot of us will never forget how excited our young, impressionable selves would feel when we pushed a block in a dungeon, and it would move, followed by that indescribably eerie fanfare. This is one thing that Ocarina of Time delivers big-time on. It's one of those really little things, but not so for us Zelda fanatics. Although A Link to the Past (a.k.a. Zelda 3) was a terrific game, I really think that they overdid it with that fanfare on Z3. It was much more high-pitched, and there were moments in that game when the fanfare would occur four or five times a minute (or even four or five times a second, switching the floor holes in Mothra's dungeon!). It got quite annoying, to say the least.
The original Legend of Zelda, which I shall refer to as Z1 from here on out, came out during a time when the thought of interactive dialogue between characters in video games was completely unthinkable. About the best dialogue you were going to see here was Buy somethin', will ya!, or one of the more interesting pieces of dialogue, Please deliver this letter to the old lady. A letter? WOW, an everyday item! Even though you couldn't do anything with the letter, it was still cool to carry it around. It just felt more like real life. Even then, though, the development of a story was kept to a bare minimum within the game itself. You would basically read the first half of the story in the instruction manual, and see the second half when you finished the game. In between, it was pretty much Link swung his sword and destroyed an Octorok. He picked up a rupee. He went east. He set a tree on fire. He went downstairs. He bought 4 bombs. Yeah, that would make a real exciting book.
Well, as time passed, RPG's started to develop a following which now pretty much leads the pack. People wanted to know how Link saves the Princess besides killing monsters! Z3 was a bigtime indicator that people wanted more interaction between characters. When Link first awoke as his Uncle was leaving the house, video game players around the world swooned. It's like we were really there experiencing everything, now that there was something to experience! I remember having dreams about that rainstorm sequence at the beginning for the longest time.
Even though the story of Z3 was more well developed than anything before its time, it still had its drawbacks. The last 2/3 of the game, when you gathered the seven crystals, they all just told you the same thing seven different ways. "You are the chosen Hero. You must defeat Ganon, he made a wish and his heart wasn't pure, so it turned this into the Dark World, yadda yadda yadda."
Ocarina of Time delves way way way deep into the past. We learn about the origin of the Triforce, and how Hyrule itself was made. Impa takes a more dominant role than she ever has before. We learn about how Link was raised and what happened to his mother (don't get too excited about that part, it's basically a cop-out).
Perhaps the greatest thing about Ocarina of Time is its characters! Even when they don't play a major role for more than just the few minutes before and after a dungeon, they give you a real reason to want to get through it. The Gorons are starving, and you want to beat the Dodongo so that they can once again munch on those tasty rocks. King Darunia is one of my favorite characters of all. Princess Ruto is missing her sapphire, and you want to help her find it. (Well, not really, I'm with ImAmes in that this is one annoying maze to get through!)
Some of the temples later in the game can get pretty tough, and it's easy to get lost if you don't know where you're going. Once you do know where you're going, though, some of these temples are really fascinating to just walk around in. The whole haunted vibe of the Forest Temple (if you ask me, the Forest Temple is even more haunted than the Shadow Temple), the sweltering inferno that is the Fire Temple (there's even a flame pillar in there!), or the OH-MY-G0D-THIS-IS-FRUSTRATING Water Temple. You'll be switching to the subscreen to switch on/off your Iron Boots at least 75 or 80 times throughout the course of the Water Temple. The Shadow Temple is more or less an underground cave with invisible obstacles, but the Spirit Temple is one of those really neat Egyptian looking dungeons built inside a gigantic goddess statue, where you feel like someone is always watching you.
The overworld of Hyrule is pretty boring itself. You want to get Epona the horse as soon as you can so you can get where you're going quicker. But when they talk about the "land of Hyrule", really the first thing that comes to mind is the overworld. All the overworld really is is one gigantic grassy plain with occasional landscape features along the outside edges. On the north side, there's Hyrule Castle. On the northeast side, stairs leading to Kakariko Village, and as you head south, the entrance to the forest village, then Zora's Domain. On the west side, there's a little mountainous terrain that eventually leads to the Gerudo Village. The rest is just cliffs all along the outside. There's nothing at all on the south side except for the entrance to Lake Hylia. In the middle, there's a circular cliff surrounding Lon Lon Ranch. Other than that, it's all grassy plains with the occasional group of trees, shrubs, rocks, maybe a river or a fence. Not a monster to be seen, except for at night when mini-Stalfos emerge from the ground. When you actually enter one of these areas, like Lake Hylia or the Gerudo Village, the landscape is awesome, all kinds of details. The overworld is mostly dead, though. About the most exciting thing to watch out there is the sunset. And yeah, that is pretty freakin' spectacular.
So, about the music. If you've ever played Z1, I'm sure you remember how scary the music in the dungeons was. Especially if you were real early in the game, walking around outside, and you bombed a hole in the wall, only to walk in and find yourself in "Level-7". The music in the first three dungeons of Z3 was somewhat similar, then in the last seven it was more dark and ambient. Well, in Ocarina of Time, most of it is ambient, that is if you can hear it at all. In dungeons such as the inside of the Deku Tree or the Dodongo's Cavern, I don't even know if you would call that music. It's more like a series of really soft, really low bass notes. Just to intensify the dark atmosphere, I suppose.
When you get to the temples, each temple has its own music. Some of them, the Forest and Spirit Temples in particular, have what sounds like actual music in some parts, albeit the same abstract sound as before. The Forest Temple music actually sounds really cool if you ask me. But you didn't, so...
The overworld music on Ocarina of Time is a bit more upbeat by comparison, but still is mostly set as a backdrop, not an actual "theme" to what you're doing. Occasional spurts of a familiar series of notes break out, and sometimes that's all you can hear, especially if you're not hooked up to a stereo system or have your TV turned pretty far up. Overall, though, this draws you further into the atmosphere and forces you to focus more on where you are and what you're doing.
There's really tons to do in this game. To this day, I still haven't collected all the Heart Pieces, nor have I gotten that pesky fourth bottle. I have gotten pretty much everything else. There is no "blue ring" or "blue mail" in this game, but you do meet a fairy who doubles your defense. It just sucks that you always have to get the best defense when you only have a half hour left to play through and enjoy it, ya know what I mean? In this case, you even have to go a little ways into Ganon's Castle itself before you even get the item you need to meet that fairy. Then you have to go back out of the castle to get to her!
Like I say in the pros, this game really draws you into it. You live it, you dream it. Pick one of your favorite spots in this game, and when you are trying to fall asleep, imagine that your bed is right there somewhere sitting out in that place. If you're not asleep in five minutes, return the game and the bed and we will give you a full refund.
Other random thoughts about Ocarina of Time...
1. Getting off of Epona can be a pain in the butt since you can only do it when she comes to a complete stop, but sometimes she likes to walk backwards four or five steps before she stops.
2. Malon and Saria are hotter than Zelda. Malon in the future is the hottest of them all.
3. Link's voice sound effects can get annoying after a while, oh but especially when you're fighting that boss inside Jabu-Jabu's belly and he keeps electrocuting you. AHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHH! OH MY GOD!
4. The aiming for the slingshot and arrows takes a lot of getting used to, and doing it while you're riding Epona, it always seems to go way off.
5. The Song of Storms is the coolest song.
6. I always think Impa is about to blow a kiss into the air when she teaches you Zelda's Lullaby, but she's actually whistling through her fingers.
7. Don't bother finding 100 Skulltula's, all you get for it is 200 Rupees.
8. They say you can use that "seeing eye" thing to follow the flags in the desert, but it's never worked for me. I always play the Song of Storms and when the lightning strikes, I follow the silhouette of the next flag. It looks really awesome, too.
9. That Deku Tree's poetic vocabulary is so big, it sounds way "out there" sometimes. Thy slumber these past moons must have been restless...
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