Let me start off by saying that I was thrilled when this first came out. Legend of Zelda has always been my second favorite game series (right behind Final Fantasy, and right before Ultima), and the thought of it in 3-D graphics, well...

I first played the game at my cousins' house, and then saved up for a secondhand N64 and a copy of it for myself. Since this was the first N64 game I'd played, it took me a while to get used to the differences in the controls from the SNES I was used to. Thankfully, there are many safe places to just wander around and practice moving when you first start the game. In fact, the whole first town you're in is full of characters who will tell you what buttons to press to do certain things.

There are also a lot of little side-games and mini-quests along with the greater storyline of the game. My personal favorite is the gold skulltullas. These are 100 special spiders hidden throughout the game. You're supposed to squish them... of course. For each spider squished you get a token. There's a house you go to in Kakariko village where you will be rewarded based on the number of spiders you've managed to find and squish. There's even a section on the status screen showing how many of them you've eliminated. Some of them are very hard to find and reach, but there are numerous cheat-sheets out there for anyone who's too impatient to hunt.

A few of the graphics could have used some fine tuning. My biggest pet peeve is with the bottles. While they look fine on the status screen, up close or in used they look like some sort of plastic sacks... or maybe Hyrule's version of a freezer bag, one that closes with a cork instead of a plastic 'zipper'. A secondary pet peeve is that little Navi, the fairie, will not shut up... but since she's occasionally useful and is of course no doubt helpful to younger gamers, I try not to be too bothered by that.

There are also a few slow parts, but overall this is a game you shouldn't miss, especially if you liked any of the earlier ones in the series.

Recommended: Yes