Review: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake is superb, streamlined and safe

Link, the Hero of Time, grown-up and newly awoken from a magical seven-year slumber. Nintendo hide caption

Nintendo

With its tale of an idyllic world despoiled by the lust for power, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time feels as relevant today as it did in 1998. Nintendo's new remake, out Thursday on the Switch 2, enshrines its place in the gaming canon for generations to come. But despite its stupendous production values and painstaking details, the game left me feeling oddly bereft.

Perhaps I should have expected as much. Ocarina of Time weaponizes nostalgia even within its narrative, as the protagonist Link ventures to save his post-apocalyptic world as an adult after first working through it as a kid. You'll uncover old characters enduring new catastrophes. You'll try to rescue everyone you meet. You'll strive to bring things back to how they were before — no, better than they were before.

Seven years stretch between Link's childhood and adult adventures. 28 years yawn between the remake and the original's release. Both in and out of the game, Ocarina of Time makes us yearn for an idealized past.

How it plays

Decent remakes evoke how you remember a game rather than re-create dated controls and chunky graphics. In myriad small ways, Nintendo has brought Ocarina of Time up to contemporary standards while (mostly) preserving its soul.

In one of the game's most poignant scenes, kid Link answers to the call to adventure, leaving his friend Saria and the Kokiri Forest they called home. Nintendo hide caption

Nintendo

I miss the thoughtfully-composed camera angles from the original, but quickly got used to the over-the-shoulder camera the remake employs (though I was irked that it abandoned the top-down view when you sneak into Hyrule Castle). The new jump and sprint buttons made navigating the world feel more natural. Combat's smoother too, though it's still not easy to switch between targeted enemies (unlike modern third-person games like Elden Ring, where you can toggle between foes by simply flicking the right stick).

You can, thankfully, swap between items in a quick menu — the same system introduced to the series in 2023's Tears of the Kingdom and continued in 2024's Echoes of Wisdom. It's still not as fast as I'd wish (I'd have preferred a customizable wheel), but I vastly prefer it to constantly pausing to access my equipment. It made it easy to change my strategy on the fly. I'd often cast Naryu's Love and deploy Bombchus, for example, where before I'd mostly stick to the Longshot and Bow.

The villain Ganondorf, on the precipice of his initial triumph over Princess Zelda, Link, and the whole of Hyrule. Nintendo hide caption

Nintendo

If you get stuck, a new "Threads of Time" quest log can point you in the right direction (though you'll likely still need to look up a guide for the convoluted Biggoron Sword quest!). And yes, the notoriously frustrating Water Temple is much more tolerable this time around. But mind your rupees! Inflation's hit Hyrule. While wallets can now carry double the cash that they used to, Great Fairy upgrades are no longer free. They can cost up to 500 rupees!

How it feels

It's the remake's aesthetic changes that stand out most. The game's astonishingly ornate textures can jar with its cartoony proportions. Ninety-eight percent of the time the translation is a clear upgrade, but other times it leads straight into the uncanny valley (Nabooru looks bizarrely yassified with huge red lips and golden eye-shadow, for example).

Gerudo thief Nabooru, flanked by the malicious witches Kotake and Koume. Nintendo hide caption

Nintendo

The animations are much more extensive — so much so that the new cutscenes, particularly in the game's opening hours, can drag down the pacing. The game also fleshes out unspoken implications and flattens rough edges. Mido, the jerk who blocks your progress in Kokiri Forest, has been subtly rewritten from bully to overbearing but well-intentioned boss. Kaepora Gaebora, the talking owl who guides your path, won't repeat himself at the slightest provocation. Navi, your fairy companion, no longer chimes in with an incessant "Hey! Listen!"

Such changes risk eroding the game's character. Still, it ultimately stands as one of the most faithful adaptations I've seen — less than the Demon's Souls remake but far more than the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy or even the Resident Evil 4 remake. It gives me hope that Ocarina of Time's surreal sequel, Majora's Mask, could receive such treatment in the future.

Sheik, Link's ally in the fight against Ganondorf, demonstrates one of the many songs you'll play by pressing buttons or humming directly into the Switch 2's microphone. Nintendo hide caption

Nintendo

Yet this remake will never eclipse my memories of the first Ocarina of Time. Of course it couldn't — that game helped launch a new 3D era and defined the childhoods of a whole generation. Where once it innovated, now it represents the safest of safe bets.

But by lavishing such attention on an all-time classic — ahead of a Zelda movie next year — Nintendo has ensured it won't go out of style for at least another few decades. I look forward to sharing it with my nephews and, eventually, my own toddling son. As much as I detest how media giants can't seem to move past the hits of yesteryear, some harmonies are worth turning back time for.