So I just beat the water temple in Zelda OOT

[DudeistBelieve]

Why is this one notoriously hard? It's pretty simple if you just meticulous search every area... except getting to the boss room was kinda a cheap trick. Every other room has me using my tool kit to solve the problem, how the hell would you ever know you can just run straight up? It's almost like they forgot to put a hookshot board in there.

Also... I first played this on the N64, I remember I was blown away by this boss. The way the liquid was rendered on the N64 in a way I'd never seen before. Replaying it now on the 3DS, with better graphics actually kinda ruins it because it's just a simple boss. avoid the arms, hookshot the ball, repeat.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yeah I don't get the beef against the Water Temple. I only played the Gamecube version (which is the same as the N64 I think?) and I didn't find it too hard. It was just slow at some parts cos of using the iron boot in the water.

 

[Hades]

I don't think the problem was that the temple was hard. The problem was that it was tedious. The Iron boots weren't an item but part of your equipment so any time you had to take them on and off you had to pause the game.

 

[an annoyed writer]

Yeah, it's the tedium that makes it an ordeal, not really inherent difficulty. Plus, yeah, they did add a lot of visual hints to the update that further communicated the workings of the temple to the player in the 3DS version. replayed both recently.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

A couple others beat me to this but I'll parrot them: It wasn't really harder than the other late game temples, just tedious. It was extra tedious n the N64 version where you had to jump in and out of the menus to switch out your iron boots, and you were doing that a lot, especially if you didn't know exactly where to go. IMHO, Great Bay Temple in Majora's Mask is equally as complex as Ocarina's water dungeon, if not more, but what helped was a transformation that has the iron boot abilities built in and has a fast swimming ability as well.

Now, the Master Quest Water Temple... was actually one of the easiest dungeons in the game. I'd have to play MQ again (for the 5th time), but I think they didn't go crazy with those annoyingly hidden switches the other MQ dungeons were full of. Try out that version of the game, if you haven't already.

 

[LetalisK]

I hated Water Temple as a kid, but would always look forward to playing it just so I could fight Dark Link.

 

[DeadProxy]

I have a memory of needing a small key, and having to scour the whole dungeon, raising and lowering the water multiple times, re-equipping the boots a million times, and killing countless tektites. It was behind an explodable wall.

Add that experience to the regular raising/lowering of the water and dungeon crawling and you got yourself a bad time.

 

[feeback06]

What's the opposite of rose colored glasses? I think that's the issue. Many people (like myself) were young and remember having a tough time with it the first time we played. I agree it's not as hard now, but I still don't particularly enjoy it.

 

[Nazulu]

Yeah, never found it hard (though I was a little lost trying to find that last key), and didn't find it that tedious either (but it definitely could've been better), and I hate the 3DS version to pieces for all the changes they made.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Play Ultima 4 if you want a confusing maze of a dungeon.

 

[Souplex]

Because people weren't that smart when they were little kids?
I don't think it has a reputation for being hard so much as tedious.
Now the Shadow Temple, that's just a terribly designed dungeon.

 

[CaitSeith]

Wait a second... wasn't this same topic posted about a year ago?
Oh, well. The Water Temple was somehow tedious (submerging is slow), cryptic (the corridor hidden at the bottom of the central room is easy to miss), heavy on backtracking (you have to lower the water level twice; more if you missed a key and have to go back for it), and it has Dark Link.

 

[NeutralDrow]

It was partly the tedium of changing the water levels over and over again, and partly that one small key that's in a hidden room under a floating block in the central pillar. If you don't already know it's there, and you misinterpret the cutscene raising the water in that room, it's incredibly easy to miss and subsequently spend hours trying to find it.

And it predated GameFAQs, as I recall.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Why is this one notoriously hard?

Because we were both ten years old when it first came out.

As a ten year old I got thoroughly confused by the up/down water levels and backtracking. Nowadays not so much.

 

[LordLundar]

The temple is not hard, it's annoying. It has easily double the amount of backtracking as any other dungeon in the game and it is notoriously easy to get turned around and get lost. To add if you exit the dungeon (to say finish it up later) everything but the locked doors reset so you had to do the entire thing over. This made a single sitting run through required which was an exercise in frustration more than anything. See also the Ice temple in Link to the Past where beating dungeon 6 (Misery Mire) was recommended just so you didn't have to loop through the dungeon a second time to finish it.

I only played the game on the 3ds but supposedly they added visual hints there to help people.

It actually had a redesign to streamline it. As well, the Master Quest version for the NGC, where every other dungeon was made more difficult, actually had the water temple made easier.

 

[sXeth]

I didn't have too much trouble with it at the time, aside from tedium with the equipping/unequipping.

Wasn't there an odd way to lock yourself into an unwinnable state or something with it that caused the hatred?

 

[Fox12]

What's the opposite of rose colored glasses? I think that's the issue. Many people (like myself) were young and remember having a tough time with it the first time we played. I agree it's not as hard now, but I still don't particularly enjoy it.

Shit covered glasses?

OT: It wasn't the hardest dungeon. I played through the whole shadow temple without the mirror, and let me tell you, that was an ordeal. The fire temple was harder as well. As others have said, however, it is much more tedious and boring. It's also the absolute worst temple to come back to after a break. The others have a clear line of progression that the water temple lacks.

It's kind of like blight town in dark souls. It's not bad at all, it's just boring.

 

[kaizen2468]

Why is this one notoriously hard? It's pretty simple if you just meticulous search every area... except getting to the boss room was kinda a cheap trick. Every other room has me using my tool kit to solve the problem, how the hell would you ever know you can just run straight up? It's almost like they forgot to put a hookshot board in there.

Also... I first played this on the N64, I remember I was blown away by this boss. The way the liquid was rendered on the N64 in a way I'd never seen before. Replaying it now on the 3DS, with better graphics actually kinda ruins it because it's just a simple boss. avoid the arms, hookshot the ball, repeat.

I think the reason most people find it easy now is due to their age. I found it very difficult when I played it, but I was also around 10 when I did so. An older person would have a much easier time recognizing patterns and remembering where they'd already been and so on. I replayed it a few years ago at age 27 and I cleared it very quickly without ever getting stuck.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Why is this one notoriously hard? It's pretty simple if you just meticulous search every area... except getting to the boss room was kinda a cheap trick. Every other room has me using my tool kit to solve the problem, how the hell would you ever know you can just run straight up? It's almost like they forgot to put a hookshot board in there.

Also... I first played this on the N64, I remember I was blown away by this boss. The way the liquid was rendered on the N64 in a way I'd never seen before. Replaying it now on the 3DS, with better graphics actually kinda ruins it because it's just a simple boss. avoid the arms, hookshot the ball, repeat.

I think the reason most people find it easy now is due to their age. I found it very difficult when I played it, but I was also around 10 when I did so. An older person would have a much easier time recognizing patterns and remembering where they'd already been and so on. I replayed it a few years ago at age 27 and I cleared it very quickly without ever getting stuck.

I'm... not so sure... my first attempt playing zelda years ago, I used a Gamefaqs guide and pretty much followed it like a bible.

I'm now 27 and replaying it now, no guide... the puzzles aren't impossible, just the right amount of challenge.