I've played a lot of games in my time, including Zelda games! As a wee lad though, I never actually finished The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. As a child certain aspects of it were damn near inscrutable, from it's fairly awkward dodging, to it's (at the time), sprawling and awe-inspiring open world. As a 6 year old, it's impossible to gauge how big the world actually is and where it ends and the new world begins. Despite OOT coming out essentially when I was born, I only played it at my grandparent's house until my brother stumbled upon BOTH of the Zelda collections that came with OOT included. I poured hours and hours into both versions, my brain attempting to run through it's world like cheese through a grater, and I felt endlessly lost and desperately stupid. There was a distinct feeling of incompatability that I never was able to get past, instead putting my time into the also difficult, but more scrutable world of The Wind Waker, Devil May Cry, and other more modern games.

It wasn't until last year that I even attempted to get back into OOT, having stumbled across the 3DS version in my local game store, and decided to pop it in, quickly clearing the first dungeon and getting to Zelda, chiding my younger self at his inability to move through a virtual world in any level of elegance. I then, for some reason, put it down for nearly 8 months. Picking it up again just last week, something clicked, and in 6 short days I beat the rest of the game, dying not a single time, though definitely confused at times as to why the game handled things in the way it did.

Before this, I have played and beaten A Link To the Past, The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, a Link Between World, Breath of the Wild, Echoes of Wisdom, and Tears of the Kingdom, all of which I enjoy to varying levels. I've also spent some time with the two NES games and Majora's Mask, but bounced off of them for various reasons. All of that to say, I think I understand Zelda decently well, and would definitely rank some of these games as among my all time highs, but none among my favorites. All that to say, I am shocked that in this day and age Ocarina of Time stands head and shoulders above pretty much every game that came after it, with the possible exception of Breath of the Wild. It executes on the idea of a wider world about as well as A Link to the Past, while having a more comprehensively realized world via the 3D graphics. The sound quality alone sells the experience significantly better than the games that came before it, and even then the visuals are imaginative in a way that many games don't dare to engage with. We see this now in some of the designs even in the most recent handful of 3D Zelda's, and you can feel it pouring through the seems of OOT's designs.

The most shocking thing to me is though the game has several cutscenes spread throughout the experience, they all manage to hint at a larger world without ever pulling you out of it. Nabooru's goofy little backstory, Darunia's profoundly dumb dance showing his emotions, and Zelda's heartfelt reuinion with Link can all be felt so thoroughly despite the limited time given to each character. These scenes act as a great counterbalance to the moment to moment gameplay, with most dungeons being nice, focused periods of mechanical execution to contrast the truly silly, yet profound interactions with the wider cast. I think later games, especially Twilight Princess, fail to balance this effectively. This aspect of the game does fail in truly fleshing out the socities you encounter, which a younger me definitely filled in the gaps of, and I think that speaks to the true audience the game was meant for, rather than a failing in it's design. What do you mean that the Gerudo only have one male child every 100 years? How does any of that work? Answer: shut up.

I really do encourage anyone to sit down and at least try the first couple dungeons. The game is easy to experience now through any number of avenues, but I would wholeheartedly recommend the 3DS port if only due to the QOL in it. The visuals are upgraded, but having watched a good deal of the original's footage, either are fine.