Ocarina of Time is... Kinda overated.

Don't taze me bro

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I don't really understand why you're expecting a ~15 year old game to still blow you away. The genres have all evolved over that time. 15 years ago, it was a masterpiece and I was blown away. It's still definitely 'good', but this is why I believe that most old games should often be left as pleasant memories through rose tinted glasses.

Did you play the 3DS release, or the N64/ Gamecube release versions?
 

Dr. Cakey

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"Ocarina of Time is the best game ever because of how influential it was when it came out."

Um, no. That makes it an influential game, not a good game. That would make Pong the actual best game ever, I think. It's a clunkier version of the Zelda games that proceed it, and it looks like an N64 game - which is to say it makes the NES look pretty. And yet...

...the simple graphical polish supplied by the 3DS all by itself does wonders for the game, and lets someone who never played the game when they were impressionable (AKA me) notice the things Ocarina still does better than those that follow:

1. The Ocarina. It plays five notes and I don't have to play in time. I can mess around and make my own songs like it was an actual instrument or something.

2. The Ocarina (again). There are also a lot more ocarina songs than Wind Waker melodies or whatever it was I did when I was a wolf. Sure most of them are teleports, but I like using the item the game is named for every once in a while.

3. Ganondorf. Despite having a stupid nose, Ganondorf does stuff in this game (a little). He sits in his castle for half the game instead of the entire game. The final battle is also super-climactic. The collapsing castle might have felt like busywork, but it was also a fake-out to make you think Ganondorf was really beaten (cuz there's like those other Nintendo games that usually end with escape sequences...). And then you had to fight without your sword - very clever. Also he plays the organ.

4. Dungeons. Okay, so I go to these seven temples which for some reason have monsters in them, which is silly, but they do some cool stuff. The Forest Temple has rooms that are outside and stuff. The Spirit Temple you actually get to see the outside of - it's a freaking statue. And the Shadow Temple is just creepy.

5. Hyrule Field. So even though OoT's field is way smaller than Twilight Princess's, it actually seems like, kind of natural instead of a bunch of connected rooms. Seriously, why does Ocarina's field seem more natural than Twilight Princess's?

EDIT: For people who say "why are you expecting this game to blow you away? It's 15 years old", well, I'd expect a game to blow me away if people told me it was the best game ever made. I'd expect it to be, I dunno, better than most other games. All of them, even.
 

Scrustle

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Overusedname said:
Scrustle said:
At the time it was released OoT might have been the greatest game of all time, and it was hugely influential to future game design. But it's been a very long time since then. The fact that the game is still really fun is testament to it's quality, both then and now, but it's no surprise that it has been surpassed in 15 years.
I appreciate the fact that something may have come out that has surpassed it.

But I haven't played it. :3

I just think it's so...tight and well thought out. And I know YOU'RE is fully aware of how deep I think the game's subtext is, but I won't get into that here, less I shamelessy promote my crap more than I already have.

I'm tempted to say Okami, Bioshock and Twilight Princess are pretty close to being better, but there's just something about ocarina's pacing. The way the game builds and builds and builds to it's conclusion, giving you more and more gameplay variety as you proceed. The rewards, the world, the emotional investment, the symbolism of the environments and characters, and the dark shift from childhood to adulthood. As someone who has never been bothered by Polycounts, there's little in the game I didn't love. I think it's been surpassed in many individual ways, but as a complete package of a well paced, well designed game that works it's themes into every piece of it's narrative? Bioshock is the only rival in that regard.

Subjectively, it's not even my 5th favorite game. But I still love Ocarina to bits. I honestly don't think it's overrated, it deserves it's praise. It really did change the landscape of game design on both an artistic and gameplay level.
When I say it's surpassed I mean, like you say, in individual ways. I avoid calling it the greatest game of all time since I don't really like to number the things I enjoy like that. I enjoy different things for different reasons so I find it hard to exactly quantify and compare them. But my point is that someone who may not already be familiar with OoT, or even games of around the same age, might reasonably look at the game and fail to see how it gets it's reputation. A lot has changed since then, and we take things that OoT started just as granted.

I can kind of see their point of view since I have a bit of a weird relationship with OoT. My first Zelda game was Majora's Mask, and I never even owned OoT until a long time after. MM was also the first non-Pokemon game I ever got too. I think it may have been my 4th game ever. So I never really experienced how revolutionary OoT was for when it came out. I can appreciate that it was, but I wasn't there for it when it happened. I was just a little late to the party. When I did go back and play OoT I enjoyed it a hell of a lot and saw why it had its reputation, but I was already familiar with a lot of it because of MM. I also personally enjoyed Okami more. Shock! Heresy! But it's true!
 

DanielBrown

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So I tried this game called Tetris the other day. I don't know why people say it's fun, the graphics are awful and the gameplay is so damn repetative!

No, but seriously, it's a bit tiresome with these threads. The game was amazing back in it's time.
 

Smooth Operator

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Well this is one of those "great for it's time" moments, you see what Nintendo excel at is gameplay design, they put all their brightest eggs in a basked to make the bucket full of features all fit in their place.

And because they are the masters of gameplay others have been learning from their example and through them you have experienced all the great ideas that they made, but going back this means those ideas aren't new to you but rather standard and unimpressive.
It is also the reason why Skyward Sword doesn't impress, Nintendo forgot that we get their kind of ideas in other games now, plus others have polished their story telling but with Nintendo it feels like we are still back in 1990s.
 

dimensional

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Any game that receives a certain level of acclaim will end up being over rated its inevitable these things always escalate. I played OOT when it first came out and thought it was rubbish to be honest same with Mario 64 I just could not for the life of me see what was so good about it in my mind it had all been done better before and quite recently as well with the SNES Link to the Past and Super Mario World respectively I also remember thinking the characters looked stunted due to the graphics.

Years later I did actually retry both games Mario was still bad to me but I actually enjoyed OOT enough to finish it a lot of it was quite fun so maybe my tastes had changed that said I enjoyed Windwaker and especially Twilight Princess a lot more. The best two Zeldas I have played though are Link to the past and four swords adventures with 4 players despite them not being my favourite.
 

Naeras

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OoT got the basic gameplay formula right, and had some amazing level design, very nice graphics and amazing use of sounds/music. It was an incredible game for its time, and it's still a good game today. I'm dead sick of it after 6 or 7 playthroughs, but it's still better than a lot of similar games released today.

However, later games of the series have improved upon that formula, both by having better combat and gameplay mechanics, but also as a result of far superior writing. The characters and the world in both Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess were far more interesting than they were in Ocarina of Time, which is ultimately why I like those games better than OoT.
 

Myndnix

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Ocarina of Time, for 1998, was an exceptional game and pretty groundbreaking.
But it's not 1998 anymore, and the game has aged quite badly.
It's also been surpassed by it's own franchise, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword being the prime examples.
 

Sixties Spidey

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There's no denying that Ocarina of Time is literally a gigantic patent office that's filled to the brim with gameplay mechanics and innovations that newer games would be lost without, and even if it does look, feel, and play like a dated 15 year old N64 game that other games have surpassed over the years with the same innovations that OoT brought to the table, so what? Anything that is seen as a "Cornerstone" in any form of media tends to get overhyped, and Ocarina of Time is that for games as Gone With the Wind is for movies.

May not be my favorite game in the series, nor of all time, but it's definitely a cornerstone for the series' transition to 3D and for gaming as an art form.

EDIT: Captcha = Ticked off. Sums up how I feel about these types of threads.
 

Olrod

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After A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, I was an obsessed Zelda fanboy. I even bought an original NES to play the first Zelda game.

Ocarina of Time quickly quashed that obsession. I began to have my doubts about the game approximately 3 seconds after turning on my Nintendo 64 and NOT being greeted by the Zelda theme tune. The Zelda series never recovered from my disappointment. I never played another Zelda game after that.
 

Palademon

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A 14 year old game that you didn't play when it came out, that was the first 3D Zelda, doesn't hold up well today for you?

I fail to see the shock.

But it's certainly a title worthy of some acclaim. It changed quite a lot in one fell swoop, and I still find it fun.
Wind Waker may be better. I love it's art style and exploration, but the thing is Wind waker didn't change very much.
 

Snotnarok

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bandman232 said:
Snotnarok said:
I don't see why a lot of people like it so much either, as in the best game evarrr. I grew up with the game myself and it's story is simple like other zeldas that's expected but when you go to hyrule you feel NO reason to save the people there. They're all idiots, all of them and I feel no drive to save them, they have no story no reason they're just random NPCs or whatever.

Twilight Princess you get character drives and motivations and you feel for the people you're saving and are given a reason to want to fight for them.

But yet people rate OoT above TP, by a lot I find and that makes no sense to me given it's practically the same game with more character plot/story/moves/areas better visuals, music and all that good stuff. And the "helper" Midna was actually a character! :|
I think a lot of people simply are biased out of sheer nostalgia. To be honest, I never get nostalgia from any game I play, I simply just have fun with it. In the end, that's what matters, right?
Honestly enjoy what you want is what I figure. But for me? OoT wasn't very impressive when it came out to me, I preferred Musashai over it honestly. I mean yeah Musashi was cheesy and over the top but it knew what it was, but the characters were there and actually had character. OoT I hated 95% of the NPCs I ran into and it was kind of demotivating.

Save the world and the princess they said. Well I never met the princess so she could be awful too, and everyone else I met weren't worth saving. So this whole epic quest got cut down really quickly. The gameplay was really fun for the 64, but c'mon the later Zeldas (minus that god damned Majoras Mask) had far better story and gameplay.

I'm going through Darksiders again (similar to zelda yadda yadda) and even that you get a feel for characters even if the world is over.

I think I repeated myself a bit but it's late so please excuse that a bit.
 

NortherWolf

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I admit, even being an avid Nintendo fanboi when it was released I never liked it.
I got stuck fishing for a bunch of hours, then turned it off and kept playing Mario 64. Zelda games usually does that for me, they're like CHristopher Nolans Batman films...I know people love them, and I try, I really do, to love them too but I always feel. "Meh, not fun."
 

Darkmantle

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The Smoking Gun said:
So I just recently had a chance to play through the entirety of Ocarina of Time (I played a bit of it when I was 8 but don't remember much and didn't get very far...ReDeads made damn sure of that) and while it is undeniably a fun game it isnt the life changing "oh ma god this is the most amazing thing since sliced bread" experience I though it would be.


Now I'm fairly new to the escapist forums so I'm not exactly sure what the overall opinion is over "the best game ever made" that everyone seems to think OoT is, but I'm gonna go ahead and risk being strung up and flayed alive and say that Wind Waker is far farrrr better.
it was pretty mind blowing when it was released man. It's like looking back and saying "pong wasn't all that great compared to halo" or something equally silly.

Also, being all hyped up places unreasonable expectations a game from the n64 era couldn't possibly hope to live up to :p
 

TwentyPercentCooler

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Call me a heretic, but I never liked any of the Zelda games, then or now. I didn't find anything particularly special about the setting or the story, and there were a couple of things that were unnecessarily obnoxious, in an "Americans Hate Tingle" sort of way.
 

Reaper195

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I wouldn't say it's overrated, it's just over hyped by those suffering nostalgia. I spent years as a kid playing the Pokemon games. And I still think those were good times. But when I try and replay them now, I can do nothing but scream at all the fucking grinding you have to do. Same with the early FF games. It's really rare you can play an old game and not only be happy through nostalgia, but it doesn't suffer from Old Game Syndrome.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

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You can't judge that game by today's standards. The impact Ocarina of Time had at the time it was released was revolutionary. It was one of the best game of it's time. For a reason. Of course it sucks compared to what we have today.

But even if we ignore all that, it's still entirely understandable that you don't like it. I don't think there's any game that is universally loved by EVERYONE. Personally, I liked Ocarina of Time. It is the only Zelda game I played. But I didn't love it. I appreciate it more for the impact it had on video game industry.
 

boyvirgo666

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At the time it was fairly amazing the same way halo was considered amazing at launch. OoT is a good game but not the best thing ever made. If they did an HD remake with new graphics and a better control scheme it would be even better
 

Lawnmooer

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Well... I don't see people claiming it's the best game ever, but it is a fairly good game even when played today.

The Smoking Gun said:
Now I'm fairly new to the escapist forums so I'm not exactly sure what the overall opinion is over "the best game ever made" that everyone seems to think OoT is, but I'm gonna go ahead and risk being strung up and flayed alive and say that Wind Waker is far farrrr better.
Meh, I didn't much like Wind Waker, travelling took way too long (At least until you learn the Cyclone song) and the dungeons were way too linear (I haven't managed a second run through that game due to getting bored of taking forever to get to a dungeon which poses no challenge)

BUT I guess this is all because of personal taste, my favourite Zelda game is OoT Master Quest whereas other people prefer others such as Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess etc.
 

TwiZtah

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Well, it has NOT aged well, the graphics are...N64 and the controls are also...N64 (which in both cases means shiiiit)

However, at the time, this game was amazing.