4.5/5 ★ – EthanTheHuman's review of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Ocarina Of Time is a beautiful, revolutionary, ahead-of-its time game that hasn't aged perfectly but is still great nontheless. Ship Of Harkinian has been out for a while now but I opted to play the game on Nintendo Switch Online using the Switch Online N64 controller for the most authentic experience I could get. There's so much to love about the game. The characters and world are so charming and really elevate the puzzle and exploration gameplay. The combat is simple, and sets the foundation for 3D combat in games like this for pretty much forever. The foundations are so perfect, but this is where the game's biggest drawbacks come in. Link controls... kinda bad. He can only move in 8 directions, and the camera controls basically don't exist. The N64 controller is also quite inprecise, so what this leads to is some really dodgy movement. I've fallen off of countless platforms because frankly it's difficult getting Link to walk in a straight line LOL. This surely is better in the 3DS and PC versions, and it's obviously better in newer Zelda games too, but it was probably the biggest drawback for me playing through this game. The second biggest drawback for me was the puzzles. Don't get me wrong, they are incredibly well-designed, but they are quite hard to figure out sometimes, with some things being very easy to miss. And the puzzles are solved with finite resources too, so you're not really encouraged to try every option either. Some areas are better than others. Obviously the water temple is infamous for a reason. But it is quite frustrating sometimes. A particular standout is the lost woods, where I swear I tried every possible combination to get to the forest temple to no avail so I had to look up a guide. I had to use a guide quite frequently because it gets quite cryptic figuring out where to go sometimes or what to do. The game is a lot shorter and more linear than I expected but I think that's a good thing. It's a tight narrative. Get these 3 gems. Now Ganondorf is doing things, get these 6 things and fight the final boss. It's simple, and if you want to explore there are things to discover like the gold skultulas, some side quests, and even some weapons like the elemental arrows. It's pretty neat how you have the freedom to do that, or just to play the game as linear as you can. But yeah, apart from those gripes, I can see why people praise this game so much. Especially with the context of it being one of the earlier 3D action games, it really raised the bar for sure. Can we talk about how cool Zelda is for a second? Not gonna lie, I always assumed she would just be some damsel in distress but between this game and BOTW, she's a badass and probably stronger than Link?? It does make it a lil frustrating that you always have to save her, and while Echoes of Wisdom doesn't seem like my cup of tea I'm actually really looking forward to Age Of Imprisonment with Zelda as the main character, and fighting with a cool magic weapon instead of something weird. Sheik is awesome too! This game has definitely made me a full-on Zelda fan, I'm excited to try out Majora's Mask and the other games for sure.