Koh -Vs- Ocarina of Time

[Zero Kirby]

To Zero

Oh my, such a lengthy post~ Here we go!

Yes, there are those in certain parts of the field, but they're usually off the beaten path. I meant placing living things in the paths of travel, so that you actually have things to look at and observe while you run across the gargantuan field.

The Deku Tree doesn't reside in the field.

I haven't played TP.

It can feel big without being empty as well.

And this is where the fun begins. It may have been a memory issue, which is understandable from a technical point of view, but that alone doesn't change the fact that trekking across the field is tedious, unappealing and boring. The trading game is one thing, but you don't really see any character interaction outside of the main story characters (tossing Malon in this again). Every NPC doesn't need to tell you how to play the game or be THAT useful, but useful in regards to a small side story or giving you vague directions to a hidden location, etc. They don't need to be Nintendo Power NPCs, just NPCs that don't only say "The weather feels nice today," and that's it. LA had plenty of item switching, but it was in very closed scenarios. You need the Feather to jump over a few pits, but after that it's smooth sailing with the Power Bracelet, or something like that. But OoT makes you swap around more than that, even with the 3 secondary item buttons.

Actually the Feather is used quite extensively throughout the game. Funny you complain about items like the Boomerang becoming useless in the second half of the game but cite the Feather being used only early on, incorrect as it is, as a boon to Link's Awakening. But I mean again, there's a lot more in LA, as I recall. Or maybe I'm just really good at loadout management in OoT. Who knows!

And yes, while the technical problems don't make up for that crossing Hyrule Field is boring sometimes, this was 1998. Imagine you were a kid in 1998, 3D games like this were still kinda new, you started your grand adventure for real, and you reached the top of that hill and saw Hyrule Castle in the distance. And you could go there.

It was kind of a big deal back then. You couldn't see how tall and looming Death Mountain was in A Link to the Past. Here you could. You could climb it, and feel like you were really climbing it.

As for the characters, you can't honestly say that every Zelda game has had nothing but engaging characters. The only reason Link's Awakening's few characters are memorable are because there were only like, five, out of the twenty-five or so that weren't tutorials or story-related, and there weren't that many characters to begin with. They were islanders. Ocarina of Time had to create no less than four bustling character-filled areas, and therefore, has a lot more characters in it. When your game is already late for release (it was delayed over a year) you have to shave off some detail somewhere, and only so many characters can say different helpful things. (Besides, "realistically" they would not all say helpful video game tips and would indeed mention how nice the weather was. Verisimilitude!) Was it to the detriment of the game? Absolutely. But for its time, it was one of the greatest and most real-feeling games ever made, and revolutionized gaming as we know it. Ocarina of Time was a pioneer in 3D game and way too many games to count owe a lot to it, so it's not a bad pick for "greatest video game of all time" based solely on that.