I've been really slow about finishing games lately, due to being stuck on one game in particular. Hopefully I'll be able to finish that and post about it before too much longer, but to distract from that annoyance I sat down and finally finished The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. Even though I'd finished playing through all the Zelda games (at that time anyway) more than a year and a half ago, it's taken me a while to get geared up for my second round. I was psyched to play through Ocarina 3D, as it was one of the system's launch titles and designed to show off the system's glasses-free 3D capabilities.
The glasses-free 3D is definitely enjoyable, and is even better when playing on a New 3DS (i.e. the newer model). I had enjoyed playing the original, but had admired more than loved it. Perhaps that reaction came from having played Wind Waker first, but this time around I enjoyed the game more than before. I still got stuck on the trading sequence (even with the update to this version of the game that points out the next location in the sequence) and the mask sequence, but otherwise I progressed steadily, and was able to appreciate the pacing of the game and the wholly satisfying variety of dungeons more. I only found half of the game's 100 collectibles (in this case, Gold Skulltulas), but as the rest don't give significant rewards I don't feel too annoyed about that. Even on a second time through there are so many secrets that I missed since I generally don't feel motivated to spend much time just wandering around, but, again, as most of them don't give significant benefits they weren't a big deal.
This edition has the added bonus of including the "Master Quest" version that was released separately from the original. I'll have to check that out at some point, but for now I'll just close by saying what everyone already knows, namely that this game is a classic for good reason. It's astounding to think that such a fully formed game was one of the first of its kind, and the variety of gameplay, environments, and situations is amazing. Nintendo makes all this satisfying creativity look so easy. Although I wouldn't rank it as my personal favorite game of all time, it's definitely one of the best of the best, and the 3DS version is even better, with better graphics, a faster frame rate, and a few things smoothed out here and there (such as the infamous Water Temple). I'm looking forward to revisiting more Zelda games before too long.
Glasses-free The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D links:
- The links from my first playthrough are generally still valid for this version of the game
- Iwata Asks entry (R.I.P.)
- Set of random wallpapers
- Video of someone comparing walking vs. rolling
- Entry at Metacritic
- Entry at Wikipedia
- Entertaining random speed run. The glitch that this run exploits is explained here.
- Entry at zeldawiki.org, which goes into detail on the changes from the original, and also has links to several of the official promotional videos
- Somewhat surprisingly to me, the game is the twelfth-highest selling 3DS game (Update: the 10th-highest now, apparently). I guess there are a lot more Pokemon and Mario fans than Zelda fans.