TristanH12 reviewed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D for the 3DS...

...and gave it a 7.5.

Now, I will start off by saying that I will not reveal any spoilers at all for the story as it is pretty good once it gets going and is quite compelling! But in review, the game follows the tale of a young boy as he goes on a quest to save the tree in his village and eventually the entire kingdom as the evil Ganon attempts to rule the world with the ultimate power!

This is simply a basic action adventure game littered with over 40 hours worth of gameplay including numerous sidequests, minigames, and weapons/items at your disposal. Players traverse numerous intricately well designed dungeons to access the goods within. There is limited backtracking into the dungeons fortunately. Gameplay is solid and enjoyable with some gyroscope controls implemented to say, aim arrows, and touchscreen controls for item management.

Presentation wise the game looks nice in 3D as well as in 2D. Many of the textures look decent in their retouched forms. However, character faces look primitive in their static flat designs, characters look like they need many more polygons dedicated to them, and there are jagged lines and rough edges everywhere. Some environments do look gorgeous though with water and lighting effects. Boss designs look amazing. Though more could have been done to the graphics.

The greatest flaws of the game however lie in its lack thereof of modern mechanics, such as its incompetent targeting system and its annoying camera. The game lacks save points within and around dungeons. If one saves and quits the game then they have to restart the dungeon from the very beginning even if they had saved right before the boss door. This decrease portability of this title. Furthur, there are limited in game context clues so players feel lost occasionally. Most of this led to great difficulty and constant deaths as the game doesnt exactly provide information on how to defeat some bosses or even some enemy types. Nextly, no health or magic regeneration system, means that players have to constantly search around for healing items or MUST do sidequest to get some upgrades for more health or item carrying capacity. Its pretty punishing and makes fights more difficult for those that havent played before. Lastly the music could have been done better with an orchestra and higher quality, maybe some more voice acting could have been added.

The targeting feels broken in which one needs to angle the camera in the right way for the target icon to be on the target for accuracy, and hope that the target icon doesnt just jump, which happens often. The camera is honestly terrible in that each method to control it results in some aggravation and annoyance as none are as free reign as other 3D adventure games. Rather than using the D-pad for some preset camera angles the screen must constantly be fiddled with to get Link back into the center of the displayer, or the circle pad must be used to swing the camera slowly around, or the touch screen must be pushed in order to just look around which can be slow. Its also difficult to mess with the camera while targeting. If they had enhanced this, then some of the game wouldnt feel clunky and slow.

All in all, it was an enjoyable and decent game for the 3DS but one that probably cant live up to other games in the genre this day. Fortunately, it is the only game of its type on the 3DS and for better or worst, at this point in time it is the best experience on the system.

Get the full article at GameSpot

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