Well that was an interesting few days. Other than yesterday when I lost an hour or two of progress from a game freeze and I needed to redo pretty much all of Gerudo valley, this went pretty smoothly. Might as well do a quick and dirty review like I do for most of the games I play.
So first of all, I love this game's look. I just love those blocky models and weird as **** misfitting textures so much. Don't give me realism I want the look the N64 had. Except Hyrule Field. That thing looked hideous.
Story was neat I suppose. Nothing to write home about these days. I don't think the time travel was used sufficiently though. I mean time is in the name. And as far as I know it is only necessary to go back twice. Once for the spirit temple and once for the bottom of the well. And while the idea for the spirit temple was neat, it's a little disappointing there wasn't a dungeon where you go back and forth between child and adult to change things. Of course that would likely be a bit annoying because of all the backtracking it would have been pretty interesting. Characters were pretty neat but I expected a little more out of a few of them like the happy mask salesman or Nabooru. But the one I was most dissapointed by was Impa. That chick has two important appearances in mainline games and gets so much praise and she has like 3 lines and does almost nothing. Dissapointing to say the least. Sheik was awesome though but again, needed to do more. I miss how colorful her design was. The fact we have yet to have SHeik make another mainline appearance is really disappointing but at least we have smash. Ganondorf being a master manipulator was cool too.
Combat was ok sometimes I suppose. The gerudo warriors were really fun, and a few one-hit-kill enemies were ok, but anything beyond that wasn't. Stalfos are extremely boring and take way too long to kill. It doesn't help almost none of them are a threat. Like dead hands or whatever they are called. They make a big deal out of them and they are so easy to fight. . .
Bosses were pretty lame too. Almost all of them were just "use the dungeon's item." Plus, they were, again, way too easy for the most part. Even the final boss was really easy.
Can't really talk about dungeons tooooo much since this is the only 3d zelda ive beat (lol) but most of them were pretty cool. Fire temple dragged on too long and Forest temple and water temple were just . . .awkward but the rest ere pretty good.
Personally loved the Great Deku tree and the Spirit Temple.
A few Side Notes
- I hate this game's love of "punishment by backtracking." It's one of my least favorite things in all of gaming and OoT just loves it. Wallmasters, falling into a pit resets the room, leaving rooms resets them (even some that have 0 reason to be reset because it is impossible to **** them up) etc etc.
- Also I had a really bad habit of going off to side-quest and accidentally going somewhere requried. Like Dampe's race, The bottom of the well, and even going to kakariko to access the shadow temple were all things I had intended as a secret but wound up being necessary.
- Zelda: "Go to death mountain and show this letter to a guard" ---->Impa: "Have fun in Death Mountain" ---->what you actually need to do. NOT GO TO DEATH MOUNTAIN BUT INSTEAD GO BACK TO KOKIRI FOREST AND GO THROUGH THE LOST WOODS AGAIN. Terrible directions, terrible bactracking. Really dumb. At least Navi tells you where to go but no one would think they would need to ask since two people just told you where (not) to go.
- Navi isn't that bad TBH. She has some HORRIBLE moments of breaking the moment (Like when you enter the forest temple's twisted hallway and instead of letting you witness it she has to say "This hallway is twisted!") but otherwise she is pretty much just the scan visor and hint system from prime so she isn't too bad. I kind of wish she had more time to talk plot wise.
Some things age poorly but it's still a pretty damn impressive game.
How did they make this game so long ago/10
