Koh -Vs- Ocarina of Time

[Zero Kirby]

there is no such thing as "good game for its time": that is nothing but a misguided notion. the fundamental principles related to quality, that is, things that are good or bad, are universal in the sense that they're not contingent upon genre, mode, or dimension. the only thing affected by the aforementioned factors are the specific execution of those principles... that time or era can be regarded as a factor on that level (execution) means more that the designers did not take into account their own limitations or understanding of the hardware* than anything about Good Games For The Time suddenly becoming Bad Games Overall (because thats a really silly idea: quality is constant, it is merely the perception of quality that varies).

the issue with ocarina of time is that it violates those principles, not just in execution, but in principle itself;
hyrule field is meandering filler, the duck roll serves little function other than to prevent walking from becoming monotonous (this is deceptively shallow game design), a good portion of the items serve as nothing more than keys and provide little use outside of their specific intended "locks", much of the game is essentially just a series of elongated fetch-quests... its faults are numerous and they're not contingent upon it being "early 3D" because they were misguided to begin with.


*this is assuming, of course, that with better hardware ocarina of time would have magically fixed some of its problems. i find that idea incredibly suspect, given that these issues have only become exacerbated over time, culminating in monstrosities like twilight princess.

Funnily enough I agree almost completely with this. Zelda games that weren't afraid to play with what OoT built, such as Majora's Mask and Wind Waker, are vastly superior to those that tried their hardest to be the same, like Twilight Princess.

I disagree on the "no such thing as good for its time" aspect, but that seems primarily philosophical and is well-argued, so I shan't pursue it.