Thursday, October 6, 2011

Ocarina of Time 3D Quest Log 4

Originally I wanted to take the classic course through the game, nicely playing the temples in order like it's your first time. Now... this is how my path looked like so far: as an adult I went to the Ice Cavern first, then I've beaten the Forest Temple. After the Forest Temple I went back in time and played the Bottom of the Well. Then, back to the future, I cleared the Gerudo Fortress and then played the Water Temple. And after that I played the Spirit Temple. Only Fire and Shadow Temple left. So, you can't really call this the classic course, but that would have been boring anyway.

It's been a while since I played the classic Ocarina of Time dungeons. In the last years I usually played Master Quest and I'm more used to the MQ dungeons. So, it sometimes feels a little bit weird. In the Spirit Temple you run into a silver Rupee floating in the air, in this boulder halfpipe room. So, for a moment I actually thought I need the Hover Boots to beat the dungeon. But luckily you can get it with a roll jump combined with a Jump Strike. And then there was a rusty switch in the large room with the Desert Colossus statue and for a moment I thought I need the Hammer to beat the dungeon. But it turned out, that this rusty switch only opens the shortcut from the entrance.



The Water Temple went really smooth. Switching the Iron Boots with a button, like in The Wind Waker or Twilight Princess, made playing the dungeon much more comfortable. The navigational lines reminded me of the water pipes in the Great Bay Temple in Majora's Mask, just not as complicated. However, there was a reason why I skipped over the Fire Temple. I've heard that Dark Link became significantly easier, so that you can beat him using your sword only. So, I avoided getting the Hammer to force myself using the sword (or Din's Fire just in case). And it's true. You can defeat him with the sword, it's a joke now. And I don't like this change. It's Dark Link we're talking about here, the final boss of Zelda II. This guy is supposed to kick your ass in a sword battle. That you had to rely on cheap tactics like pounding him with the Hammer or using Din's Fire only showed how mighty he actually was. And they took this away... they made him look weak now.

Another noticeable change are switches placed behind bars. There aren't any. In the original game you would use a Spin Attack through the bars to hit the switch. A simple puzzle, which should still work in the 3DS version. But in both the Water Temple (the room with Skulltula behind bars) and Spirit Temple (the mirror room) they put the crystal switch somewhere else. In Master Quest there were puzzles in the Fire Temple, where the crystal switches behind bars were hidden in boxes. I wonder if they destroyed this as well... I'll see.

And while going through the Water Temple something odd happened. Something that has never happened before in my Ocarina of Time... Navi called me for no reason. "Hey!", "Listen!" What the hell? She does that outside of dungeons all the time in case you're lost, but never inside dungeons. But now she tells you to visit a Sheikah Stone in case you're lost. Damn... Ocarina of Time is known as simply one of the best games ever, but if there were any complaints about the game, then it was about Navi being annoying. There's even tons of fanart making jokes about it like Link squishing Navi to death. And Grezzo seriously thought they should make her even more annoying? Come on!

And the way how they handled the Magic Arrows is stupid. I hoped you can cycle through them by pressing R, like in the Wind Waker. But you can't. Now there's a little submenu icon above the Bow icon. If you click on the submenu icon a submenu with all four Arrow types opens... This is even more inconvenient than in the original game! Why can't I switch the arrow types in real time?

But there are also some positive improvements. Like the fast text. It always annoyed me in the old version that the text was so slow. Especially if you can't skip the text. For example when talking to the carpenters imprisoned inside the Gerudo Fortress, it took forever until the fight started. And you had to listen to the same text four times, which was annoying. After Ocarina of Time all Zelda games offered the option to fasten the text or just got fast text in general, so it's nice that this improvement finally made it into Ocarina of Time.

Another nice improvement is the Shard of Agony. It reminded me of hidden grottos, which I had log forgotten. For example the one behind the carpenters' tent. Or in front of the center entrance of the Gerudo Fortress, behind some boxes. There isn't really anything to get in these grottos, which is probably the reason why I had forgotten them, but it was nice to be reminded, that they were there.

As for graphical details, I like how you can see Hyrule Field from the embrasures inside the Ghost Shop. And there are some nice reflections on the floor of the Temple of Time, though this is a fake reflection using simple shaders. And I like the design of the Biggoron's Sword, it even got its own sheath now.

Well, and the Goron Bracelet still gets lost in the menu after collecting the Silver Gauntlets. This always bugged me and I hoped that this would be fixed in Ocarina of Time 3D. But it wasn't. I mean, you don't actually lose this item, young Link still wears it. So, why does it and all information about it get lost in the menu?

Sidequest-wise I got all Pieces of Heart by now and all except 12 Golden Skulltulas, 10 in the remaining temples and two at Death Mountain. The only larger sidequest left is beating the Gerudo Training Grounds. I'll do that after getting both the Hammer and the Hoverboots.

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