All My Friends Are Fictional Characters

Oh yes. This game. We are going to be reviewing what is considered the Final Fantasy VII of the Zelda franchise, in that it brought in a bunch of people who had never before played a game in the series. Also, to some people this was their first game period. I can’t really don an introduction that would do justice to this game but I’ll try I suppose. Ocarina was made to be the first 3d Zelda game in the franchise and they pulled out all the stops to make it as impressive as possible. So let’s not waste any time then.

The plot of Ocarina of Time starts with a young Link awakening from a nightmare through the help of a fairy Navi (no the jokes against her won’t happen. I’m better than that).  Link awakens and the story begins with him first visiting the Great Deku Tree, guardian of the Kokiri Tribe. The Tree tells the young Link that his is cursed and that Link must break this curse to save him. And blah blah blah obtain the three jewels of the tribes blah blah blah temple of time blah blah blah elemental temples blah blah blah releasing sages blah blah blah Ganondorf blah. Some of you may be asking why I just did that. Well the reason is that there is really just too much plot to explain in a simple paragraph, also summarizing this game feels like an insult. It just strikes me as not doing the fantastic story of this game justice. So yeah, you want to know it? Play the game.

Let’s get into the actual gameplay then. Ocarina of Time is a very classical action-adventure style game. You wander around completing your journey to rescue the land of Hyrule from the evil Ganondorf. To do this you must obtain various different seals and jewels and to obtain these you must complete dungeons. The dungeons in this game are truly amazing. Each of them offers an amazingly different experience with head-scratching puzzles and intense action (much the games before it in the series). Some of these have become infamous for their ridiculous nature (you at one point end up inside the stomach of a giant whale) or outright stupid difficulty (the. F*#KING. water. temple) but all of them are original and exceptionally interesting. In these dungeons you find the classic weapons of the Zelda series but with new additions of course. All the weapons are well executed and exactly what you would expect in a Zelda game.

As far as graphics and sound design go, this game is an interesting case. The graphics have, in this reviewer’s opinion, not aged very well. The polygons are clearly visible and it generally does not look that amazing. It’s not horrible but it’s certainly not something that can still be held up today. As far as when it was released though, these were generally considered fantastic graphics. The sound design on the other hand is a completely different story. The music is amazing. There’s really nothing more to say. It’s a Zelda game, it’s bound to have the best music you can possibly manage out of the N64′s sound chip. The creatures sounds are, once again, well made and sound what you might imagine them to sound like. The scenes of Link learning the songs on the Ocarina are utterly amazing and playing them sounds fantastic. Considering what a huge part music plays in this game it just makes sense that the sound design had to be absolutely perfect.

What else is there to say? It’s a game that defined a generation of gamers. If you were to walk up to someone who plays games and ask them if they’ve played Ocarina of Time, I would bet good money they’d say that they have. It’s a brilliantly made, incredibly interesting and entertaining game. There really are no flaws to nitpick, I’m not even kidding. The only thing I can think of is Navi but I read an interesting article on The Escapist while doing some extra research and saw someone calling Navi the best sidekick of all time. Why? Well because she…no. Read the article. It’s better. Anyway, there is nothing to nitpick here, if you haven’t played it go play it. Play the 3ds variant or the original or some other version I don’t know about that somehow makes it a virtual reality game. Just go out and play. Oh…you want a score? It’s a 5 out of 5. Now leave me be. I’ve got articles to catch up on.