The Legend of Zelda

[n01d34]

I was just having a coffee and it suddenly occurred me why I can't accept the OoT best game EvAr hype.

Okay so OoT (and all the other Zelda games I guess) is fun. Really fun. But it could be the most fun game in whole damn universe and I still wouldn't call it the greatest, because when we get down to it, it's shallow.

Yeah I know it's a classic hero tale and as one it's well executed but shouldn't the pinnacle of the gaming art be more then that? What exactly does Zelda communicate about the human condition that isn't a massive cliche? The (hypothetical) greatest game ever would be a fun emotional journey (which OoT is) but also shouldn't it make you look at things in a different light? Change the way you think about the world and about yourself.

When so many other games have tried to really say something important (Planescape Torment, Bioshock) it feels wrong to hold up something as childish and simple as OoT as the shining light of brilliance.

 

[haveyouseen_mywallet]

i really like the series and think most are really fun. but i can see where it can grind a lot of people's gears. i sometimes can't stand gameplay where everything seems spelled out, it's almost condescending.

 

[jamesworkshop]

Ah big love for OoT from me I've probably completed it more times then any other game, I even have it installed on my PC (Project64, OoT high res-texture pak, Xbox360 controller FTW!!)
In fact I can't think of a single complaint at no point during the game did anything strike me as negative IMO of course not everyone is going to feel the same way.
Loved the music and the combat and how you really did feel more powerfull when you became an adult especially loved stealthing in to Gerudo fortress and the training grounds for the Ice arrows there was just some much side stuff in the game and the fact you could jump over the gate in Gerudo vally and get all the way to the spirit temple as a kid and the game wouldn't fuck up.
It even handled first and third person perfectly.

 

[Galletea]

OOT by far has a good soundtrack, but the best sound tracks ever have been from squaresoft. Mainly FF7 and FF8.

OOT was a great game and it had its flaws. The flute playing was annoying. I agree with most of what your saying. but it's not the greatist game ever. My favs of the series were deff OOT and A link to the past.

I think the flute playing was part of the problem. Not a fan of FF7 but 8,9,and 10 were awesome, and the soundtracks were equally imaginative, where, although Zelda is very different to those games, I found very little imagination in the plot, as it was a kind of extension to the mario game standard plot, and the soundtrack was average at best.

 

[PureChaos]

That fish endboss of the water temple ;_; I couldn't figure how to kill him with Fierce Deity

whilst on the platform, look for bubbles on the surface of the water to locate him, shoot it with an arrow to stun it then change into a zora. jump into the water, swim over to him and use the electric shield to hurt him. get back on the platform and change back to human. keep doing it till he dies (should take about 4 hits)

 

[jamesworkshop]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xngAfKhaTIg#
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DF9BRi2EZdY&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=25wN7W6scdM&feature=related

The music is amazing

Edit: how could i forget this
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ZPpGdt1xQ&feature=related

 

[Galletea]

personally I don't like it. I find the repetition irritating, the 'flute' motif of the title theme is underdeveloped and the underlying theme serves no purpose.
the piano sounds are weak and dull, and i just hated the forest theme.

 

[Cyberionius]

What the heck are people talking about with a flute? I dont remember any flute. There was an Ocarina. As in the Title. Id hardly call it a flute thou.

For me, OoT was the very first game i ever played, so im kinda biased towards the series. I can say, however, That it is, in my opinion the best Zelda game ive played. and yes, i have played almost every one, with the exception of Link to the past, which i cant find anywhere.

There were a few reasons i still love this game. First off, as previously mentioned, the controls were great, especially while sword fighting in focus mode. (Z targeting) Second, The levels got progressively harder. (WATER TEMPLE FTL) Third, They hid some of the secrets ridiculously well. A trait that most modern day games fail at very badly. Fourth, They required you to go back to places you had been in order to see certain things that were important to the story. (The "under the well" mini dungeon) Also, they made it exceedingly easy to get around, Giving you songs that warped you just about anywhere you needed to be, And you only had to do these things once to get the songs, + if you just wanted to run around, you had Epona. Fifth, Every boss had some trick to beating it, and almost every one required the use of the dungeons item, making no object obsolete. (Boss of water temple, Boss of Shadow temple, Boss of Desert temple, Boss of Fire temple, Boss of Forest temple, Etc, Etc.)

I could go on, but from here on it would be repeating and they would be a stretch.

As for the other games. I only played LoZ: links awakening once, and the copy i have doesnt hold saves anymore. But i liked it when i played it. The only game i really didnt like was Majoras mask, cause i didnt like feeling like i was rushing the whole time. Phantom hourglass was overly repetative, but it was fun at times. thats about it.

 

[GuerrillaClock]

OoT's level design won me over. Absolutely flawless throughout. Excellent gameplay as has been previously mentioned was also a winner, so I can't see how it's "repetitive and annoying".
But that's my opinion.
Also, the fishing minigame was AMAZINGLY addictive.

 

[Galletea]

What the heck are people talking about with a flute? I dont remember any flute. There was an Ocarina. As in the Title. Id hardly call it a flute tho

granted i forgot the ocarina thing in my listening of the youtube video, but considering that it is not an ocarina either,merely a midi sound and i play the flute so i at least know what that sounds like. tho it probably doesn't sound much like an ocarina either.

 

[Aries_Split]

What the heck are people talking about with a flute? I dont remember any flute. There was an Ocarina. As in the Title. Id hardly call it a flute tho

granted i forgot the ocarina thing in my listening of the youtube video, but considering that it is not an ocarina either,merely a midi sound and i play the flute so i at least know what that sounds like. tho it probably doesn't sound much like an ocarina either.

 

[darrinwright]

Hated Wind Waker (good game, just COULD NOT get past the art), loved Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time. I generally like the Zelda series (wife LOVES it), but I can see how for some it wouldn't appeal to them. I think some of the criticism thrown the series' way (especially OoT's stupid water temple) is deserved, but no less or more than any other popular series (God of War, Pokemon, Halo are also revered but flawed, in some way or another)

 

[D0WNT0WN]

Ocarina of Time is the greatest game ever made.


/thread.

Care to elaborate?

I just watch the ZP from last week and you will get the jist of it.

 

[randomgoat]

I found it repetitive and annoying. I didn't like the repetitive music and I couldn't relate to the characters or the story. I found Twilight Princess to be an improvement but still couldn't get into it.

Dude, it was N64. Relating to characters was a hard thing to do on that console. What Ocarina had, was a f**king FANTASTIC story for its time. And, at the time, it was huge, immersive (probably one of the most open ended games of the 90s), the sound was brilliant (you played a damn instrument!), and you traveled through time... which was awesome!

Granted, if there were voice overs or something you might have had a change of heart on the character relations and stuff.

I hated the water temple though.

 

[Gamer137]

the game had no voice overs,

Many gamers, myself included, think voice acting would be bad for Zelda games. I think Nintendo is following that ideal. Metroid Prime 3 managed to pull it off somehow. Maybe because Samus never talks. Yet if you did the same thing to a Zelda game(Link NEVER talks to begin with, even with no voice acting), I dont know. I cant picture it working well. Something I cant put my finger on.

 

[Bronzebow]

The thing that really caught me with LoZ, as was mentioned in one of the earlier posts, was the 'hero' aspect. The first of the series I'd played was Link to the Past, which I personally hold as the pinnacle of the series. Starting as a kid racing to protect his uncle, ending as a kid battling through the light world as well as the dark, it plays right into any rise of the hero fantasies you could ever have.

Unfortunately, not all of the series had this same feeling. Ocarina of Time felt canny to me, sort of like a game thrown together for the sake of getting a game together. The heroic feeling felt like it was being forced down your throat instead of experienced.

Windwaker was pretty fun. It felt a little mechanical until about the end when, ah, events and places of the past started to become shown to you. Twilight Princess was fun, and had many truly epic and heroic feeling moments, but the game play was extremely annoying with the wolf mechanic. Having to watch that little cut scene over, and over...

Probably just a little rose colored glass in my vision, but Link to the Past is hard to beat.

 

[tobyornottoby]

Alright. First of all, along with Mario 64, it was the first to do a 3D game RIGHT. Much of the praise also comes for it's excellent Game-play. The Sword combat was top notch, as was aiming in First Person view. The fact that I can go back and play OOT, and it controls better than most modern games is a pretty big thing. The Graphics are beautiful, as is the soundtrack. I stand by the fact that OOT had the strongest soundtrack of any game, ever. And this is all technical. The game had a very cinematic presentation, and the story, while not very original, was good. The boss fights were all clever, and there were very few, if any, fights you could win by hammering the attack button.

All in all, OOT was revolutionary 10 years ago, and has withstood the test of time to remain one of the greatest games of all time.

I remember playing Descent and Quake, both full 3d games (Ocarina used a big 2d texturemap for the world in some parts of the game) which predate Ocarina by a combined five years. They both had tight, intuitive controls while I thought Ocarina's were horribly clunky and awkward (this coming from a guy who finished Tomb Raider). The graphics were absolutely hideous from the perspective of a PC gamer of the era (We had these fancy things called Voodoo Graphics). The music was merely above average and I can name several games offhand that totally smack it down in that department.

Bottom line is, if you weren't relatively new to video games in general (and the LoZ series in particular) and were there when it was released, you really didn't think it was such hot shit. I have similar feelings toward one of my first games, Starcontrol 2, even though I can recognize that the game has a few serious flaws. Ocarina worshipers don't even acknowledge that it has any.

With there being so many OoT worshippers, that might be the answer; No other game could pull people into gaming like that

 

[TheSteeleStrap]

I only played a few Zelda games. I enjoyed Ocarina, but I am certainly not one of those people who are going to get all pissed at you for not liking it.