Review: I wish the ‘Ocarina of Time’ remake took more risks

Nintendo has audaciously remade The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for a modern audience, and I love thinking about the fact that a bunch of people at Nintendo had to get together and try to nail down exactly what made the game such a monumental success.

Upon its release in 1998, Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64 was far from the first 3D action-adventure game. It didn’t invent lock-on targeting, cinematic storytelling, labyrinthine 3D level design, or any of the other features it’s often credited for. What made it special at the time, at least in my view, is that it was arguably the first game to do all of those things really well, at the same time, as part of a cohesive, unforgettable experience.

In trying to capture that magic, Nintendo chose a relatively safe approach in developing this remake. Ocarina of Time for Switch 2, which finally launches on Nov. 5, is strikingly similar to the original on an experiential level. If you’ve played through the N64 version recently, as I did about six months ago, you might find a somewhat disappointing lack of surprises here.

But I think I can live with a remake that disappoints only because it’s a little too much like the original. This is supposed to be a nostalgia trip, after all. I do have some quibbles about the new Ocarina of Time that I’ll get to shortly, but broadly speaking, this is a visually brilliant reimagining of one of the most important games ever made. What it lacks in surprise, it makes up for by faithfully and respectfully translating Ocarina into something a bit more modern without compromising what made it great.

The new Ocarina is a lot like the old Ocarina

As has been clear since Nintendo first started showing off this love letter, the remake does not rock the boat. This is Ocarina of Time, almost exactly as you remember it, but with new visuals and some small revisions along the way.

That means the story, the player’s general objectives, dungeon layouts, and boss fights are mostly recreated in a near one-to-one capacity. A few boss fights have been mildly remixed, as have some dungeon puzzles, but having played the N64 release earlier this year, there really weren’t very many moments in the remake that felt all that novel. Nintendo’s philosophy is clearly that Ocarina was not a game that needed reinvention on a design level.

As thrilling as it would be to see a Final Fantasy VII Remake-level re-interpretation, Ocarina‘s world, dungeon, and puzzle design were huge parts of what made it so awesome in the first place, so I understand wanting to (mostly) retain those elements.

It’s a respectable, if a little boring, approach.

You can let go of any lingering fears that the remake sanded down the wacky tone of the original.

When it’s different, it’s mostly in an exciting way

Sheik’s new design is very cool.
Credit: Nintendo

When playing Ocarina of Time for Switch 2, I found myself getting excited every time I encountered something Nintendo did change.

Most prominent, of course, is the visual overhaul. As I explained in a preview last month (before being backed up by an interview with the developers), this version of Ocarina was inspired by and evokes high-end puppetry. Character faces are cartoonish and stylized almost exactly as they were in the N64 original, but their hair and clothing feature extreme levels of realistic detail, as do most of the game’s environments.

It’s a really neat look that especially pops when you play it on a nice TV rather than watching it in a YouTube window. Individual character personalities, even from minor players like Ingo the ranch-hand or the creepy windmill musician guy, shine through just as much as they did in 1998. You can let go of any lingering fears that the remake sanded down the wacky tone of the original.

If anything, some of the NPCs or monsters are even creepier than before. Wait until you see the remade Happy Mask Salesman, for example. I also enjoy this remake as a demonstration of what the Switch 2 hardware is capable of. Water ripples and fog dissipate based on player actions in a believable manner, texture quality is almost scarily high, and sunlight scatters beautifully on the grass in Hyrule Field. The best part is that it all runs at a near-perfect 60 frames per second.

Threads of Time is handy, but not game-breaking.
Credit: Nintendo

Nintendo also made some thoughtful alterations to the way Ocarina plays. Namely, Link’s movement controls are much snappier and more responsive than they were on N64. The much-talked-about new jump button reduces the likelihood of accidentally launching yourself off a ledge in the wrong direction, and a sprint feature eliminates the need to somersault everywhere without being fast enough to trivialize traversal.

Combat feels juicier and more satisfying, too. The spirit of encounters hasn’t changed much; you’re still locking on and waiting for an opening before getting in a few strikes. But outstanding hit animations do a lot of work to make those hits feel more impactful.

I’m a little more mixed about how items work in this remake. In the N64 original, you could map three usable items onto the N64’s C-buttons, a controller feature that the Switch 2 does not share. Accordingly, Nintendo chose to make it more like Breath of the Wild, with the ability to map one item at a time to a universal “use item” button. The compromise here is that you can open up a quick-swap menu and switch between items fluidly, but it does make enemy encounters that require the use of more than one item in quick succession a little awkward.

The Temple of Time rocks.
Credit: Nintendo

I also appreciate the addition of Threads of Time, which functions like a quest log in a contemporary game. In the original Ocarina of Time, players had to rely more on Navi the fairy constantly telling them what to do. Now, you can just open a menu and see all main story and side activities laid out cleanly, with hints on what to do next in each thread. Notably, this does not include objective markers on the map or anything like that, so it feels to me like the information that was already there is being presented in a friendlier way, rather than the game holding the player’s hand too much.

As a nice bonus, that means Navi doesn’t interrupt exploration nearly as often as she did in the original.

Musically, Ocarina‘s wonderful score has been fully re-recorded with real instruments and a tasteful smattering of some of the same digital samples that defined the original work. Sprinting across Hyrule Field while an even more triumphant version of that legendary music hits hard, even nearly three decades later. And yes, the new version of the Gerudo Valley theme is fantastic.

But not all changes are welcome, and there could stand to be more

Love the Water Temple.
Credit: Nintendo

As you’d expect, not every alteration Nintendo made to Ocarina is for the best.

While they aren’t outright bad, necessarily, I fail to see the need for fully voice-acted cutscenes at critical junctures in the story. In practice, it makes certain sequences longer than they would be if I could button through text at my own pace. I never really felt that the voice acting brought me closer to the events on screen. If anything, because the acting is so cartoony, it took me out of the story at times.

Ocarina has never been known as a particularly difficult game to finish (let’s not forget it was designed for kids), but Nintendo redistributed some of the gameplay friction in different directions, resulting in an adventure that’s, like, 10 percent easier than it used to be. A small handful of puzzles have been slightly simplified, while enemies don’t hit that hard. I was never in danger of hitting a game over screen, but your mileage may vary if you don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of the original game like I do.

It’s just kind of a strange decision to make Ocarina easier when more recent entries like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are, by Nintendo standards, pretty mean games. I should note, though, that this isn’t exactly an across-the-board change. For instance, Great Fairies now ask for large sums of money before they’ll give Link upgrades, and since wallet enhancements are tied to finding hidden collectibles, it’s now really inadvisable to ignore those. I do like that change, FWIW.

While I greatly enjoyed most of my time with the Ocarina of Time remake, and find most of its changes refreshing in one way or another, there is no denying that just a little more novelty would’ve made it a better experience. Even just a couple of new NPCs or side quests would’ve gone a long way.

The verdict: The new Ocarina of Time is still a legendary adventure

Even with those misgivings, Nintendo’s Ocarina of Time remake for Switch 2 is a sharp and beautiful reminder of what a great game it’s always been. The word “resplendent” came to mind when exploring Hyrule.

Dungeons like the Forest Temple and Water Temple still shine as brilliant examples of early-ish 3D level design, and are just as fun to get lost in today as they were in 1998. Most boss battles still provide an excellent closing argument for each dungeon, and it is admittedly nice to play a Zelda game that revolves around using hookshots, boomerangs, and other gadgets and gizmos to complete puzzles again.

I would just recommend creating some distance between yourself and the original N64 version (or its 3DS remaster) before jumping in. The less vivid your memories are, the better a time you’ll have.