Recently I've been trying to finally play through the world-famous Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time. Everybody has always seemed to say that it is the best Zelda game ever and some even think that it is the best game ever. This simply isn't true because Ocarina of time is a mess. The dungeon puzzles are inconsequential, the overworld only seems like it has many exploration factors, and the combat is stale as best. Why is this. Why is there a constant battle between supporters of Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past when both of these games are only good in the grand scheme of things.
First of all, let's get started on the flaws of Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past; respectively. Ocarina of Time, like I mentioned before, is only good as it has many flaws that simply can't be overlooked. The first flaw has to be direction they took with the combat in relation to the type of world that this game takes place in. This world's infrastructure-heavy locations like Kakariko Village, Death Mountain, and Lake Hylia are all built to be explored much like you would in A Link to the Past but the camera angle in which you are seeing the world is essentially counterproductive to the exploration. By that I mean in A Link to the Past the view you had of the world only enhanced the way you viewed things like platforms and puzzles. There was a set distance you could see to the north, south, east, and west, and because of the above-camera you could even see hidden secrets on top of ledges and houses. In Ocarina of Time, however, the secrets are still there, but you had to scour the land for a vantage point or constantly fiddle with the camera in order to see exactly where you were going. This camera angle also doesn't help when combating more than one enemy. It works fantastically in a set arena with one powerful enemy, much like most of the boss fights, but outside of that the game will constantly be putting you in unfair combat scenarios where you are forced to focus on one enemy when there are plenty more also on your tail. A Link to the Past gets everything right in these aspects but also suffers from the same world building faults that Ocarina of Time does. In both of these games, I never felt like I was pushed to explore because the game would often just tell me what to do next. Because of this there was no mystery or adventure; there was simply a to-do list that the game would update me to periodically.
Though both of these games are flawed in similar ways, their spiritual successors both fixed virtually everything that the originals got wrong! First of all, Twilight Princess nailed the epic story line with real consequence that Ocarina of Time tried so hard to do. Twilight Princess also fixed the majority of the puzzle-based gripes I had with its predecessor as this Gamecube title's puzzles usually encompassed larger scaled rooms with multiple puzzles in each room that gave less of an emphasis on tight-corridor-fighting. Also, though Twilight Princess' form of Navi, named Midna still tells you what to do in the order in which to do them, she lays them out as vague hints, which not only forces you to explore a vast world but gives a whole lot of character to Midna as not even she knows exactly where to go! A Link to the Past's 'sequel' named A Link Between Worlds also vastly improved the previous formula. In A Link Between Worlds, you can explore the entire world and play any dungeon in any order you want from virtually the start of the game (at least after the first three dungeons). Though both of these games' styles are vastly different, they both feel like Zelda games now, with a strong emphasis on great dungeon layouts and world exploration!
Extra Thoughts:
I was originally going to write in Wind Waker as the successor to Ocarina of Time but I've never played Wind Waker.
You may think that this post resembles Egoraptor's Sequelitis of Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past. It does. I took a lot of inspiration from that video and agree with most of his thoughts on the matter. He repeatedly referenced Skyward Sword in his video and though I didn't get to talk about it here, I might actually write about it soon.
I was going to wait on this post until I had actually finished Ocarina of Time, but I decided to do this post now while the game is still fresh on my mind and just do a full review of it once I finish (I only have two dungeons left so it will be pretty soon!).
0 comments:
Post a Comment