Let's play like it's 1998 again, but with graphics that now look better than the world outside. In this first entry I will explore the Kokiri Forest, roam around the Lost Woods a bit, and beat the first dungeon, the Great Deku Tree.
Someone said to me this morning that they've watched an 18-hour stream and saved themselves 600€. And sure, if I weren't such a huge Zelda fan and didn't already have a Switch 2, I wouldn't buy one for just one remake of a 28-year-old game. But I also wouldn't want to miss experiencing this myself.
Watching someone play is one thing, but playing yourself just hits differently. You have to feel it. You have to be in charge of the camera and movements to appreciate how smooth everything is and how pretty everything looks. I really want to dwell in all the new details and that's what I'm going to do.
With Ocarina of Time I couldn't exactly tell you how many times I have beaten it so far over the years. Well... it was one time on NSO, four times on the Nintendo 3DS, twice with the Virtual Console versions, then some more on the GameCube and a whole lot back in the day on the Nintendo 64, which is where things get blurry. But it's probably up to twenty times in total.
And if you have played a game this often, you start to wear blinders. You grow efficient. You know what's important to beat and complete the game and everything else gets filtered. But this remake is taking off my blinders. I'm playing Ocarina of Time like I would play it for the very first time again. Talk to every person, read every sign, lift every stone, and check every corner. It all feels fresh with this remake.
Curiously, they now give you Fado's name with the text boxes, the blonde girl who resides at the end of the long bridge. But they didn't bother with naming any of the other Kokiri, besides Saria and Mido. Well, the name "Fado" was revealed by Nintendo a long time ago, so it's nice that this made it into the remake. It's also the name of the Kokiri sage in The Wind Waker, so there is some importance to it. It just sticks out a little with how this one girl gets a name, but the others don't.
One thing I'm really missing is a first person perspective, though. Especially with all these new details I want to absorb them from up close, from Link's eyes. So, not having this any longer feels like a strong omission in the remake, even if it might not serve any actual purpose. But every 3D Zelda game had some sort of first person camera, even if that was just an actual in-game camera.
In any case, I like how organic and natural everything looks in the remake. It creates a new sense of wonder and they really tried their best to design the Kokiri Forest as a proper village, one that was raised by children living in the wilderness. There was some proper thought put into everything, starting with the basics, like having little windows for all the houses. That wasn't the case on the Nintendo 64 and easily excused or ignored for the sake of it, but with this level of detail you want everything to appear real.
Now, another thing I'm going to do is testing my boundaries whenever possible. I want to see if this remake let's you still explore places early or potentially play dungeons out of order. So, one of the first things I did was running through the Lost Woods straight to the entrance of the Sacred Grove.
The only thing you can do there without a sword is getting killed by that lone Wolfos, but it's nice that you can still get this far already. Navi warns you that you shouldn't wander through the Lost Woods when the Great Deku Tree is waiting, which is new, but she doesn't stop you, or anything like that.
The little maze where you obtain the Kokiri Sword got altered a bit (which was already seen in some of the previews). It's not really about teaching you the basics of a 3D camera any longer, which makes sense, where instead this now teaches you the new manual jump. Actually, the whole training grounds now revolves around jumping, which is kind of funny. It's almost like it was made for the Ocarina of Time veterans out there, who haven't played a Zelda game since. But at least they know how to use a sword.
And the jumping feels great. This is such a simple change to the game, but at the same time it fundamentally alters how you now approach the environments. Since you can jump anywhere now, I'm also trying to climb up everywhere. Just to see how far up I can go, like a child that wants to climb on every tree it sees. Though, it can be frustrating to slide off on so many places, where it's easy to miss the free climbing from Breath of the Wild.
The automatic shielding isn't really to my taste, however. It makes sense to have and games like Twilight Princess have done it before, but I still use ZL a lot to recenter the camera, like all the time. And now it makes the sound of Link raising his shield all the time, which is a bit annoying. Plus, it may get even more annoying with the Hylian Shield crouch.
However, you can just press the right stick to do the same for you without the shield raise. Which is the button you would expect to switch things into first person perspective.
Characters now react to you when you use weaponry next to them, like they do in the newer Zelda games. So, you can finally show Mido and his new Sonia tattoos who is the boss in town.
Generally, I really like the new item system with ZR and quickly swapping them via the R-button. It is very streamlined and not having to go into the menu all the time is such a huge improvement alone. That's something the Link's Awakening remake couldn't achieve, despite all the additional buttons and pre-assigned items.
And I like how snappy the new Z-targeting is. Navi now also glows red on enemies, like she did in beta versions of Ocarina of Time. And I always would have preferred the red, because it makes it look more like danger, so it's nice to finally have it like that.
Once inside the Great Deku Tree, you will be greeted by another novelty of the remake: physics! I just had to use the giant spider web in the middle as a trampoline for a while, because it looked so freaking good and realistic. And you can just marvel in the details here, like all the mushrooms that have grown on the walls, or the thin spider webs around the ceiling, which makes encountering the Skulltulas up there even creepier.
Speaking of, you can fight Skulltulas more actively, which is fantastic. If you hit them, it will spin them around, instead of letting them swing sideways, so you can attack their weak spot right after. One of the core problems with combat in Ocarina of Time was how often just stood there waiting for the right time to strike, which never was much fun. So, it's fine that they are giving these fights some updates, even when this makes things somewhat easier.
Another change seems to revolve around timers. The original game had a lot of timers, either in the form of a sudden timer sound or a countdown on the screen. And this might be of the past now, where in the Compass room with the raised platforms it tells you what's happening entirely through environmental details. The platform start crumbling and eventually sink down slowly. Much, much better than hearing a clock out of nowhere.
The same room now has a new hidden room in its back with a new treasure chest, which had me really excited at first, but it was just a bunch of Deku Nuts... Just like the other small chest already in the same area. So, I'm not even sure why they have added this or why they haven't simply moved the one chest to that place.
At least it shows you all the treasure chests permanently on the map. The ones you've obtained get a little checkmark on them, which is also true for any Gold Skulltula location. However, there doesn't seem to be an indication whether you've found all the gold tokens or not. It now shows you the total on the map, where originally it would show you the gold token only once you've found them all.
And you can find them all now on your first time here. There is no rock wall that requires the bombs any longer, so you can kill all four Gold Skulltulas right away and you don't need to backtrack here later. Well, I'm sure a lot of people will like this change, but I personally always enjoyed it when there is new stuff to discover in a dungeon that you've already beaten. It's super rare for a Zelda game to do this anyway.
They have also simplified the room with the spiked log, because now there is no timer at all. But I can fully excuse this with this remake's functional design in mind. The switch now opens a floodgate, which let's half of the water out of the room. This floodgate could close again, sure, but the room wouldn't realistically flood again as fast as it did in the original, not with water coming out of nowhere anyway. And the timer just made this room unnecessarily stressful.
By the way, the Master Quest variant of this puzzle wouldn't be possible any longer, because you don't crouch when you shield with a Deku Stick. But they could just keep the switch that lowers the water.
You also don't run right into a Skulltula on the other end. Instead they have put it and the block into a new, separate room. This is a bit odd, but at least pushing blocks is much faster now. And that change was needed very badly.
The Gohma fight at the end was fantastic with how spooky and creepy everything looked. It now also defends its eye with its claws, instead of just closing it, which makes sense, because otherwise it technically wasn't able to see. It also doesn't seem to keep the targeting when Gohma climbs onto the ceiling, which makes the fight a bit more challenging, because you now have to manually aim. And the boss seemed to have more health overall, where I couldn't beat it quickly with Deku Sticks.
The new Heart Containers look so super shiny, like a crystal. And you now have to actively take them with the A-button, which prevents players from picking them up accidentally during a three-heart-run. That's one quality-of-like improvement people will appreciate.
When the Great Deku Tree tells you the legend of the Golden Goddesses – Din, Nayru and Farore – it's the first time we hear their names pronounced in some official media around Zelda, I think. Well, they never were mentioned in any of the Breath of the Wild era games. But I have pronounced them correctly before, except for "Din", where I tend to say her name how you would say it in German, so more like "dean". The trickiest one is Farore, where I'm proud that I had that one right.
What's even more interesting is what happens afterwards. In the original you just got blamed by Mido for killing the Great Deku Tree and that was it. Now there is a whole new scene with both Mido and Saria, where Navi and Link explain the situation.
Mido then storms off to the Deku Tree to see for himself. He is still pissed at Link, but the whole scene is a lot more nuanced. It's also how Saria learns that Link is going to leave the forest, so she won't just have an intuition to wait at the bridge for you.
You can even now tell all the other kids what happened, which is new as well. They have all witnessed how the Great Deku Tree has withered and are distraught, which again makes it all more believable and relatable. Such a remake is a great opportunity to fill in some gaps, where I'm looking forward to how they will handle the raid on Hyrule Castle in the town. The dying soldier may not be the only one any longer...
After my return to the Kokiri Forest I also noticed that the stray Rupees in the environment don't respawn any longer, like the two Blue Rupees you can find in the beautifully animated water. And that's actually huge for people like me who like to go beyond the typical 100% and clear everything. This gives me an incentive to go for all the Rupees now, like the ones that you can only reach via the Soft Soil above the shop as an adult.
By the way, I like how the Soft Soil spots now look a little bit like a termite hill. This makes it much clearer that an insect might be living in these, or might want to go inside there.
Before leaving the forest I went back into the Lost Woods one more time, to collect the "Bigger Seed Satchel" and the "Bigger Deku-Stick Bag". It's funny how the Deku Merchants now raise their arms to signal their surrender. And all the capacity items finally have a proper bag in the menu after 28 years.
You automatically obtain the Deku-Stick Bag and the Deku-Nut Bag with your first Deku Stick and Deku Nut respectively. They aren't there right away, unlike your wallet. The maximum count for these two items was never represented in such a way before, but it makes sense to treat them the same way as the Seed Satchel. So, that's a great change.
Another thing that became fully visible are all the grotto entrances. These were one of the most obscure things in the Nintendo 64 original and therefore ripe for a good redesign. The forest stage is much easier to find now:
This version doesn't have the concealing grass any longer. On the Nintendo 64 you could make an educated guess that something might be hidden there based on the butterflies, but you really had to run through the grass and hope that you would find something.
The Nintendo 3DS version then let you see through the leaves and eventually spot the grotto. But here it's not even hidden any longer. It's just there. Plus, you can actually cut all the grass now, not just bushes. So, even if it still were obscured, you could remove the bothersome plants.
And there is now a magic plant at the entrance, like the ones you can grow from Magic Beans on the aforementioned Soft Soils. So, instead of some magic beam of light that magically teleports you back outside, you will now get physically transported back by these plants, which is again a very purposeful and functional design change. Gotta respect that.
PS: I have played around one hour so far and it took me about four hours to write this first entry. There are just so many new things and details to talk about... it's amazing. See you on Hyrule Field and around Hyrule Castle!
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