Experiencing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Remake): Interesting story saddled with tedium

It is well understood that anyone who skipped the Nintendo 64 (raises hand) won't have an affinity for this game.

If Earthbound 64 had released as they said it would, maybe history would be different; but alas, it was not meant to be.

Switch Online gave us a second chance to try the game - unfortunately, unlike with some of the games, Nintendo did not add QoL features to the Switch Online version to remove the tedium.

You'll notice that most of the people who really praise Ocarina of Time Remake are the ones who played and enjoyed the original. There's nothing wrong with that (we call it nostalgiticulitis, a very dangerous disease), but we need some alternate perspectives.

We definitely tried, multiple times, because obviously Ocarina of Time is quite important to the overall timelines that would then show up later.

I've played

The Legend of Zelda (good but not great)
Adventures of Link (great but not amazing)
A Link to the Past (decent but not great)
Wind Waker (ugh...)
Twilight Princess (good but not great)
Skyward Sword - both the original and HD (decent but not great)
Breath of the Wild (ugh...)
Tears of the Kingdom (ugh...)
Echoes of Wisdom (decent but not great)
Age of Calamity (ugh...)
Age of Imprisonment (decent but not great)

And now Ocarina of Time, for the first time. And you're looking at the responses above thinking, "why bother?"

Because Zelda games always have a good story, and a good story is always appealing. It's never the story that's the issue (except for Age of Calamity). It's the gameplay.

Adventures of Link was amazing because it didn't play like the others, but also because it felt like everything you did actually meant something within the self-contained context. It did arguably the best job at telling its story: the princess was put to sleep and you need to wake her up with the Triforce. It didn't try too hard to weave a convoluted narrative, and the battle engine was as simple and accessible as it got.

All of the other Zelda games other than the first feel like they're trying too hard to be 'advanced' and in the process they're losing the spirit of simple and fun gaming. That's how it felt with Ocarina of Time, both the first time I tried it on Switch Online and with the Remake. Remake is clearly better, but the underlying game is still a tedious experience.

What I Liked

✅ Voiced cutscenes help bring you into the world more than dead silence.

✅ Graphically the game looks quite impressive all around. It also runs at a very smooth framerate.

✅ The sounds and music are rich and surround you like a quilt.

✅ Multiple QoL features added to make basic things more tolerable, like the iron boots or the addition of a jump button (which the original didn't have, feeling clunky as a result).

✅ It's accessible enough that anyone can just jump right in and enjoy it.

What I Didn't Like

👎 Child Link is unfun. Completely unfun. Ironically, Sheik even says at a point that "more people need" Adult Link vs. Child Link, almost acknowledging how pointless the Child version is.

👎 The developers said they had a warp function but removed it. I really wish they hadn't. Running around the map is some of the worst - exploration is not hindered by the presence of a warp mechanic.

👎 The amount of voice acting is about 30% of what it really should be.

👎 The dungeons. Oh my. The one thing so many people enjoy is the thing that most annoyed about the game. None of the dungeons are any fun at all. Puzzles that aren't "hard", just dry and involving too much excessive backtracking. Boss battles that are relatively a joke after being annoyed with said dungeons. They don't respect the player's time at all.

👎 An insufficient amount of rupees (and no, we had no issue buying things, but the amount of rupees is still a joke).

👎 Charging for Great Fairy upgrades - which makes the rupees issue worse.

Summary

All of the above could be forgiven except the dungeons. Those alone are two letter grades off, they're just that bad.

Say what you will about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom; their dungeons weren't fun either, but you were given tools to basically handle anything without having to worry about rupees. There's currency, but it wasn't hard to come by like it is here. And exploration was actually enjoyable due to the size of the world; but you still had a warp mechanic on top of that.

Ocarina of Time isn't a trash game. But we need to reign in these claims of "GREATEST GAME EVARR". It's far from that.

If you like Zelda, you'll enjoy it.

If it were half of its price, I would say it was well worth the price of admission.