The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (2011)

I can already say my decision to give up on Link to the Past, because I wasn't enjoying it and forcing myself to play, and moving on to Ocarina of Time was exactly what I needed. I sat down with this game last night after beating Fire Emblem: Three Houses and my wife had to tell me to stop playing and eat dinner because I had been playing for five hours straight. Right off the bat I'm enjoying this one way more as it's much more familiar to me being a 3D game compared to the top down 2D adventure game that I had zero experience with. I'm continually impressed with what Zelda accomplished for it's time and I can't believe something like this came out for the N64 and I'm only just now playing it so many years later. It also really puts into perspective my problems with Breath of the Wild because it definitely didn't push the boundaries of the genre in any meaningful way (I know that's probably controversial but I believe it pushed what Zelda games had done but didn't bring anything that other games haven't in the past).

I can't wait to get home from work today and put some more hours into this game.

On July 23rd, 2019, I got this strong urge to play Zelda on my 3DS but I didn't have any so I impulsively bought both Ocarina of Time 3D and Majora's Mask 3D and finally got them on the 6th of August.

These are two staple games from my childhood (like many others), ones that I still own on both the Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Gamecube. Two games I have played extensively... but have never actually beat! I have completed many Zelda games at this point but never the ones that took up so much of my teenage years.

I first put it in my 3DS on the 7th of August before bed and played for about an hour. It felt familiar, it felt good. I didn't want to stay up too late playing so I turned it off and went to bed, worried that I bought another game that I might not play or beat right away in the midst of a FFXIV addiction.

I had slept for 5 hours and woke up to go to the bathroom. As we all often fail at, I wasn't too successful in keeping myself tired in that bathroom trip and laid back down. I thought to myself "I'll turn it on for a few moments until I am sleepy again!" Well, I am writing this 6 hours later... I just beat the Dodongo Cavern and am working on going back to areas I can now access with my bomb bag.

There's a reason this is considered one of the greatest video games ever created!

OK, I well I reached the Forest Temple which I think is a good stopping place for now. I may not be committing tons of time to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time but I definitely feel like I progressed towards my goal of finishing this game today.

I double checked to see my hours played so far, according to the 3DS's Activity Log I estimate I have put in around 11 hours and some minutes into the game. It feels like I started OoT longer ago then I have! I guess it's just because I have dabbled in other games that I feel like I could be slipping into old habits, but maybe Grouvee and these updates is starting to help me with the backlog. :)

Hmm.... I failed to get Biggron's sword. I was following the steps in the walkthrough until I got to the first "Go to Death Mountain" it's asking me to ride a plant near the entrance to Dodongo's cavern, but I can't seem to find it! I think I remember planting it too. I just want to make a note here so I can go back to it, if I want to 100% this game someday...

I am getting a bit burnt out on Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I even stopped to play some other games for a bit, but I am plugging away a little more. I'm home from work sick today so it seems like a good Zelda day. Part of the trouble is that in this game you re-start at the same location if you quit the game, so it doesn't seem to be very good for gaming sessions less than an hour.

I just have some quick notetaking to do, because I noticed that this game does not have an internal time-played count. So, I must rely on the Nintendo 3DS Activity Log to track my time spent in the game.

4/2/2018 Current total playtime over all previous saves: 11 hrs 33 mins Times played: 20 Average playtime: 35 minutes. First played on 6/29/2016 Last played on (before starting this new attempt) 3/28/2017

OK, with that out of the way, here are some of my thoughts on the game so far:

The music is excellent. The characters are average but I don't think that is unusual for a Zelda game. Majora's Mask and Link Between Worlds are the only Zelda games I have completed so far.

The graphics on the 3ds version are very good. I've read a number of reviews that say the game doesn't compare to other 3ds games graphically, but it looks pretty good to me. There is some pop-in of characters in the game, but it's forgivable as the view distance is quite good otherwise. For a port of an n64 that pop-in is acceptable because the game doesn't have the fog that other games of that era had.

I am using a walkthrough for the game. I think this is spoiling a lot of the fun and challenge for me. But the flip side of that is that if I tried to play the game without a walkthrough I know that I would get lost and confused and frustrated. I am starting to struggle in my quest to finish this game... I am getting tempted as always to switch to a different one. But... I shall try my best to push forward! I mean, the music IS very enjoyable. I really do want to see where this goes.

Seré breve y conciso: El juego me ha encantado de principio a final, sigue un ritmo interesante que me ha hecho sentir como cuando jugaba al Oracle of Seasons por primera vez.

Se trata de un juego MUY completo en el que la historia al menos a mí, me ha atrapado bastante y me ha hecho continuar.

Los enemigos son variados y la cantidad de secretos que hay por descubrir es abrumadora.

Si tuviera que penalizarla en algo diría que la mecánica de los bosses es terriblemente sencilla y ninguna es un verdadero problema.