Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Time to write about Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time again. It might be one of my favorite games to play, but I don’t really like to write about it. Much like its predecessor, I just end up gushing without any insight. Plus, I’ve already done this once. Everyone knows that this game is great; I don’t have much to add.

OoT is one of the first great 3D games. It was the first games to have a real, believable world. Mario 64 was great series of playgrounds, but that’s all they are: playgrounds. OoT’s Hyrule feels like a real place. It is all connected. If you follow the river out of one area, you will still be near it in the next area. While there are still individual areas. There is a forest area, a mountain and a desert, but they flow fairly well from one to the other. Sure, you can argue that the central Hyrule plain is empty, but it is mostly just a hub. There is just enough there to keep you busy until you get Epona or the means to bypass it.

Ocarina of Time is the game that made me choose an N64 over a PS1 and the game that helped me convince myself it wasn’t a mistake for a long time. Sure, good games on the N64 were never abundant, but Ocarina of Time was so much better than anything else it was ridiculous. Despite my love of the Zelda series, I haven’t played most of them more than once or twice. Mostly just due to time. I tried to play through the whole series last year, but ran out of gas about halfway through when I hit Majora’s Mask (which as far as Zelda games go I rank near the bottom) and the then unplayable outside of emulation Oracle games. It takes a long time to play a Zelda game. They aren’t really for dabblers. However, I’ve beaten Ocarina of Time more than a half dozen times. It is just so easy to get caught up in.

It is the generic Zelda game. All the tropes and hallmarks of the series are there. Ocarina of Time is generally the best example of these things. It has the definitive Volcano Dungeon, the definitive Water Dungeon, and the definitive versions of Link, Zelda and Gannondorf. All of the games since it are defined by how they are different than Ocarina of Time. It is possibly the best game ever made, and is definitely belongs in my top 10.