Ocarina of Time Isn’t Terrible; It’s Just Poorly Designed

GeekParty's Josh Wirtanen writes: "I recently pointed GeekParty readers to a video by Egoraptor (in the wonderful Sequelitis series) that explained how The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time wasn’t designed very well.

The exact words I used in explaining that were: “Ocarina of Time is fundamentally a poorly designed game.” And I stand by that."

[XiNarutoUzumaki]

Ocarina of time is neither poorly designed nor terrible. Please have some respect for most beloved game of my childhood.

Ocarina of time is a masterpiece.

[NewMonday]

Ofcourse if some would try it today for the first time it would seem dated, any old games would, but it was revolutionary in it's day, one of the best games ever.

[I_am_Batman]

Funny that you mention that. I've just finished the game for the first time and I liked it. I actually like playing old games though. I can imagine how revolutionary it was when it first released on the N64.

The only thing that has driven me crazy was the water temple :D

[no_more_heroes]

@I_am_Batman

Even funnier, I too played the GameCube version of OoT for the first time ever late last year. I liked it, but I was fighting the Gamecube controller the entire way through, especially when I had to target anything (which got REALLY annoying when on Epona). That was the worst camera sensitivity I've ever experienced.

To me, the water temple was the easiest dungeon out of all of them.

I definitely went in knowing about its reputation and even noted locations of which switches do what to the water level on paper for the first five minutes, but after those first five minutes, I didn't even need to do that. The only thing I really found difficult initially was fighting link's doppelganger with how he'd mimic your moves.

I can definitely understand how it confounded people when they were younger though. I'm 100% certain I would have struggled immensely if I'd played it as a kid when it first came out (the last Nintendo console I've owned was the SNES, back when parents controlled game purchases and onl bought what they knew, so I missed the boat on Zelda early on).

BTW, LET ME JUST BE 100% CLEAR. I am not dissing the game. OoT was quite awesome.

I'm just saying that I found the infamously difficult Water Temple to be quite easy.

[I_am_Batman]

@no_more_heroes: It actually wasn't the difficulty that bothered me with the water temple (I actually think that OOT and TP are fairly easy games in general once you've got enough heart containers and bottles).

It was getting all the keys and having to reset the water levels all the time. Especially when you change the water level too soon you have to cycle through the whole temple again. And then there was one place where I had to play a song and it just didn't work (after 3 tries) so I've went through the whole temple again to see if I missed something. Then I was close to looking up a guide (I never play with a guide normally) so I tried to play the song again, and again. After repositioning several times it worked. That was a very frustrating moment because it made me go through the whole temple again.

But besides that one thing I was having a great time playing through the game.

I played the gamecube version as well so I thought it might have been a port issue. Did you have any issues with the contrast and brightness of the game btw? Mine was really, really dark so I had to adjust my TV settings.

[no_more_heroes]

@I_am_Batman

Yeah, I remember having to change the settings on my tv. It was a bit dark in places.

I will agree the temple was indeed tedious, but I wouldn't say difficult.

[joab777]

Exactly. Now, obviously the original Zelda holds a special place in my heart b/c it was one of my 1st video games...and it was gold.

But my favorite zelda game is Zelda 2. I cannot begin to tell u just how amazing that game is in so many way. I want a remake so badly. U want a challenge, go back and play it...it wasn't easy. But it had everything a great game does from the overworld map to dungeons etc.

[Derekvinyard13]

Does this author realize he's losing credibility with a article like this?

[Sam Fisher]

He doesnt care, he just wants hits, like that stupid rapper/wrestler hip hop guy with false info about games just to get hits

[KingOfOldSkool]

Trust me, he's completely aware of his bandwagoning on the latest manufactured controversy. It's all a part of the same old predictable cycle that game sites like this help propagate.

[XiSasukeUchiha]

Naruto, i must disagree with you, Ocarina was a masterpiece and is one as well!

[headwing45]

As much as I like Egoraptor and that video, it was still bias. Most of the issues he pointed out in OOT weren't any better in Link to the Past, he assumed certain design choices are worse in OOT and complained about minor issues without addressing any of the good things that game accomplished. OOT is far from perfect, but I still consider it a better game then Link to the Past, I wonder why these issues bugged him so much.

[TheNewSquid]

The thing is, though, you can't throw a stone without hitting an article about OOT's greatness. The game genuinely has flaws, and hardly anyone ever talks about them. Not that it's not a great game. It's just a flawed game. And that's fine. It's just that bias on OOT swings overwhelmingly toward the positive.

[Volkama]

Once every hundred thousands years or so, when the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow, a game is born that no human must ever speak ill of.

Super Mario Bros 3
Zelda Ocarina of Time
The Last of Us

Should you speak against these game you will be subjected to an eternity of suffering. Or at least a few minutes of internet rage.

[Timesplitter14]

I too like Egoraptor a lot (especially in game grumps), but my main issue with him is that his approach to game design is too mathematical. He doesn't take into account things that just subjectively feel good, like riding around Hyrule on your horse as night is falling, and making it to the castle gates just in time as the bridge is rising and the undead are coming out of the ground.

It's things like that that make OOT feel like an adventure, where the player has freedom and can play with the world. This is what I think makes OOT better than Link to the Past.

I just don't think it makes sense to judge a game by its flaws. Games should only be judged by the general amount of fun you get out of them, regardless of how many flaws it has. Like, you can't really say Tetris has flaws, but that doesn't mean it's a better game than OOT.

It could be argued that "best designed" doesn't necessarily mean "most fun", but I don't agree with that. The goal of a game is to be fun, not to be devoid of flaws. So, to me, the best designed game is the most fun game.

[DallasTrout]

I like Egoraptor but that dude loves being a contrarian.

[jc48573]

It's a damn good flaw game if it got me to play the game multiple times. You don't get that kind of replay value with games of today.

[bluegoblin]

I dont usually comment anymore after 6 years of being a member of this site....but..but..have some respect for such a masterpiece.

[PiNkFaIrYbOi]

....he is basing it off of today's standards for gaming we take it. Useless way to do things and stuff.

[Chrono]

It has a ton of glitches that some people were able to finish it under 20 minutes.

[Deividas]

Your point? Thats what speedrunners do....they spend hundreds and hundreds of hours on a game to see if they can finish it quickly. Those kind of glitches are only found if one is looking for them intentionally.

But overall those glitches are not found if someone is playing the game for enjoyment. So for a game made in 1998, its pretty good. I played the game prob 15 times now and have yet to come across a game breaking glitch

[Summons75]

Well the sequeitius was true. OOT had a lot of flaws and things that held it back. AttP was much better and that's general consensus in the Zelda community. Its why Allp got two full fledge sequels and oot only had the One full of leftovers they couldn't use do to cartridge space.

Now I loved OOT but I have to agree AttP is a much better game.

[Dan_scruggs]

The Ocarina of Time came out in 1998. It's one thing to look at a game that came out today and poorly implement all we have learned in the past 16 years. But there was no rule book until this game laid the foundations for them. Ocarina opened the door to open world 3D and action adventure for generations to come. By today's standards it may not be much to look at (although I happen to think its still pretty damn good). But rest assured that gaming would be very different hadn't that game come along when it did.

[kevnb]

It's better than any game I've played this year

[user7402931]

top 10 best games for me

[WeAreLegion]

That's a bold statement.

[diesoft]

Weird. I mean, I have nothing but fond memories and a genuine love of that entire game but I guess my memories are wrong and I actually had a terrible time playing time according to some guy on the internet. /sarcasm

by the way, if you're going to compare the looks of older games to newer tech then why stop at Zelda? Let's belittle all mario games, donkey kong, and pac-man while you're at it. They're all inferior tech so why not make articles bashing those, too?

To sum up this article: "Old is bad" is pretty much what he decided to say. Thank GOD we have him to tell us that our memories and love of Zelda games were wrong.

[KingOfOldSkool]

Sorry, when some random asshole on the internet lazily resorts to overanalyzing a game 15+ years after its release for some click-bait, all of your memories instantly become invalidated.

[diesoft]

I've just been schooled by the KingOfOldSkool. I now understand that time + random a**hole = bad game. KNOWLEDGE GET!

[TheNewSquid]

I feel like you and I read a completely different article. The article I read didn't say anything about you specifically, and it didn't mention anything about people who loved the game being wrong. There was certainly nothing about old games all being bad. In fact, the title of the article even says the game isn't terrible.

There was this too:

"Now, I’m not saying it’s a bad game or an unimportant one. Ocarina of Time fundamentally changed a lot of things about video games as a medium, and I respect it for that. Hell, we wouldn’t have my favorite games in the series, Twilight Princess and Wind Waker (at least, not in their current forms) had it not been for the path paved by Ocarina of Time."

Or did you only read the intro text and hit the comment button?

[diesoft]

Are you kidding? Did YOU read it? It felt as if they needed to say how great it was in the way you would hear legal jargon after a radio commercial.

"Now, I'm not saying it's a bad game or an unimportant one but let me tell you why I'm going to take a dump all over this game for clickbait. I mean, it was made in the late 90's! My god, it can't hold up to graphics of today!"

The article then lists reasons the game is bad and I don't think they hold up.

"The way you’re forced through the world in a specific order is kind of heavy-handed." - Heavy handed? Any Zelda game I've ever played has progression. You don't get to every single area of the game right off the bat so how is his point valid? Zelda Theft Auto it has NEVER been even since the first one.

THREE of the points it makes about it being poorly designed are all related to one aspect of the game (the combat) and I don't remember that being terrible. Evidently he was confused being in a 3D space and didn't know how to handle Z-targeting. Hell, we STILL have a form of lock-on targeting for most games in a 3D environment. Dark Souls has it (a recent example that seems to be loved by so many today) and it boils down to dodging and hitting a lot of enemies (obviously the combat's more difficult than zelda's but locking-on-and-hitting-an-enem y is still used today is my point).

The article further mentions how he thinks most puzzles were reduced to slingshot aiming. I guess the water temple was just on my copy, huh?

Did YOU read the article at all? I see you pasted a paragraph but if you read all of the story then how can you not have seen the author using this as little more than clickbait? You can't say, “Ocarina of Time is fundamentally a poorly designed game.” and then mention how much you love it. Those things don't mesh together.

[TheNewSquid]

I love a lot of games that are poorly designed. Poorly designed doesn't mean bad; it just means poorly designed. I don't see why the two can't mesh.

[fonger08]

His opinion and of course entitled to it, but by near universal popular and professional opinions and reviews, he's definitely in minority... Like Kim Jung is awesome minority...

[Summons75]

You do realize that A Link to the Past is favored by the Zelda community and Nintendo right? Clearly he is not in the minority.

[no_more_heroes]

If Ocarina of Time is a poorly designed game, then its one of the best poorly designed games I've ever played.

I actually quite love its design and plan on using it as a blueprint for the design of my future real-time JRPG-like game that I will take over the world with!

MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[gamerfan0909]

I'm not a big Zelda fan to begin with so I never understood the hype for it. I much preferred DK 64, mario kart, starfox, and Mario 64 from that time period.

[CorndogBurglar]

Um...Ocarina of Time is one of the greatest games ever made.

Certainly on of the best Zelda games. If you ask most Zelda fans what their favorite Zelda game is, most will say this or Twilight Princess.

This guy is on mushrooms.

[WheatBread]

Desperate blogger wants hits

[Jyndal]

OoT was epic.
It was Majora's Mask that was the disappointment.

I don't understand how it was even qualified as a Zelda title. Hell, even the crap 3DO games had more legitimacy.

[monochromer]

This is a horribly stupid article that makes horribly stupid points.

[moegooner88]

Lol what, I played the game for the first time last year on my 3ds, and it has one the best designs I have experienced in a video game, and I have been gaming for 18 years.

[CorndogBurglar]

I agree. But i've been gaming for 28 years. Basically what i'm trying to say is that the force is strong with you.

[ninjahunter]

Theres a difference between good and good for its time.

[GeofferyPeterson]

Back when this game came out I played it so many times that I was literary a walking strategy guide for it. My friends would call me up and I could walk them through any part of the game they were stuck at, without even seeing it. Yeah, that's how much I loved this game.

[LightDiego]

Just another blooger or youtuber (whatever) who wants attention, nothing to see here.
Here, one comment for you.

[brich233]

Who said Ocarina of time is terrible? The game is 16 years old now.

[Summons75]

No one said it's terrible just has a lot of design flaws.

[Masterman280]

How... Dare... You!