Today, as open-world design and three-dimensional experiences realized through high-quality graphics have become mainstream in AAA games, the 3D action-adventure genre at their foundation has spent a considerable amount of time standing at the center of the industry. After all, it was the best way to translate three-dimensional terrain and structures into an immersive gameplay experience.
Tracing those roots back to the top brings us to ‘Super Mario 64’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’. ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ already possessed many of the core elements of modern 3D action-adventure and open-world games. Through its targeting system known as Z-targeting, it locked onto targets and established the fundamental grammar of camera movement, aiming, and combat lock-on. On top of this, it implemented three-dimensional terrain, the separation of overworld fields and dungeons, and a world structure that expanded as players acquired new skills, tools, and music.
A structure where exploration, combat, and puzzle-solving are all made possible within the exact same control scheme serves as the framework for today’s AAA open worlds. For that reason, ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ is a game that set countless records and deserves to be considered an essential bible for anyone who loves video games.
Yet, despite its stature, recommending people play it today was no easy task. No matter how incredible a title it is, a game released in 1998 on the Nintendo 64 is neither easily accessible nor guaranteed to resonate with modern players who must look past visuals far below today’s standards to appreciate its gameplay depth. Furthermore, titles like ‘Breath of the Wild’ and ‘Tears of the Kingdom’ on Nintendo Switch raised the benchmark for ‘The Legend of Zelda’ to another level with staggering sales figures. Handing ‘Ocarina of Time’—with what might feel like restricted freedom—to gamers introduced to the franchise through those titles raised the question of whether they could truly feel that same impact.
That is why the remake of ‘Ocarina of Time’ on Nintendo Switch 2 is so impressive. While enhanced with top-tier graphics, cinematic presentation, and overwhelming sound design on Nintendo Switch 2, the foundation of the game focuses on reproducing the original title almost entirely intact. And that framing from nearly 30 years ago, along with the game design that completes it, remains meticulous, sharp, and beautiful—even though it stays rooted nearly 30 years in the past.
This review does not even need to focus on how effectively it recreates a 1998 game. Forget past memories: even if you look at and talk about this game as a brand-new release launched today, it remains immensely valuable and genuinely magnificent.
● This review contains major spoilers for the game’s story.
A Classic Narrative Driving the Gameplay
An Intricate Rhythm Where Tools and Trials Become the Story
The remake begins with the story of young Link, before the Hero of Time—who carries the Triforce of Courage on the back of his hand—realizes his destiny. As is typical for story-focused Legend of Zelda titles, the narrative follows a classic fantasy structure. It centers on the Demon King Ganon, who seeks to obtain the Triforce—thee to protect that power
Young Link, bearing a duty he has perhaps carried since birth, sets out alongside the fairy Navi. Upon realizing the evil scheme of Ganondorf—the villain from his dreams—he gathers strength and seeks the Sages to aid him against the Demon King. At first glance, this basic story structure might appear shallow and unoriginal. However, this simplicity of narrative actually aligns seamlessly with the rhythm of experiences the player undergoes while playing, creating the ideal form to mesh with gameplay progression.
Link’s journey maintains a classic rhythm: trials, acquiring items, dungeons, bosses, awakening, and the final confrontation. Each of these moments serves as a key event from which the main narrative branch extends.
For example, before leaving the forest, the section where players learn the basics of combat in the village and master basic controls inside the Great Deku Tree does not merely serve to set up early puzzles. As an early trial, Link is teased by certain Kokiri children for not having a fairy, which blocks his path forward. Resolving this forces players to naturally learn the game’s fundamental controls and gameplay feel.
Furthermore, tools obtained by clearing dungeons or temples—such as the bow, Megaton Hammer, Hookshot, boots, and Silver Gauntlets—act as keys to the dungeons while serving as essential elements for progressing the next chapter of the story. Creating sections where story progression is impossible without a specific item could feel heavy-handed, but here it feels completely organic because the narrative fits each situation so perfectly.
Rather than relying on complex relationships or deep personal drama, the story flows around Link—who never utters a word of dialogue in the game—as if tailored directly to the player’s progress. In fact, former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata once stated in an interview that Navi the fairy was created because they developed the targeting system and didn’t want to guide players through one-sided map markers.
This seemingly pieced-together narrative structure was perhaps a natural outcome of building systems and narrative directly on top of gameplay. And because the overall story led this way advances toward a clear progression and resolution despite its simplicity, it empowers players to stay fully immersed in gameplay without being distracted by narrative friction.
In short, while these are things you naturally must do and seek out, the narrative seamlessly encourages you to pursue them without second-guessing.
A World Packed Full precisely Because It Is Empty
A Space Where Chance Steps Lead to Inevitable Rewards
And what makes this straightforward narrative feel solidly anchored rather than flimsy is the element of exploration. In this remake, the game’s regions have been rendered larger, and it is true that the original game featured an incredibly vast world for its time.
However, by modern AAA standards, the world of ‘Ocarina of Time’ is so small it barely equals a single zone of a modern game. Centered around Hyrule Field at the heart of the game, regions like Hyrule Castle, Zora’s River, Kakariko Village, and Gerudo Valley are connected. Certain delivery side quests give you a mere 2 to 3 minutes to travel between regions, which is more than enough time if you don’t make mistakes. Considering this, one can easily grasp how small the world size is compared to modern games.
Yet this world is not densely packed with quest icons. Aside from the basic objective, there are no map markers, pathfinding navigation, or remaining distance indicators. At first glance, it might feel like a small, sparse space. However, a single conversation or a passing line of dialogue transforms how deep this world feels.
NPCs completely unrelated to the main story offer dialogue that seems triothers reveal secrets hidden in the region, and a few provide clues for advancing the main story
Furthermore, collectibles scattered across the map are designed to be stumbled upon accidentally rather than guided by explicit prompts. Of course, these ‘accidents’ are intentionally crafted to naturally occur based on the player’s movement paths and behavior.
Because that initial discovery was intentional, players naturally start seeking out similar elements. Aside from things like Gold Skulltulas, you cannot even tell how many exist or how many you have collected, prompting you to search and examine every nook and cranny. Along the way, you encounter things out of reach with your current tools or skills, seamlessly redirecting the expanding scope of exploration back to the main story. The ratio between wandering about and returning to progress the main quest is crafted with brilliant intuition.
It is not a matter of clearing checklist markers by detouring toward an icon on screen while playing the main story. Instead, it prioritizes the sensation of discovering something on your own during the main journey. That focus makes the narrative feel even more powerful.
A Three-Dimensional Structure Augmented by the Axis of Time
The Hero of Time, Left Alone the More He Saves the World
And at the core of this narrative structure lies time itself.
The game starts with young Link, but after pulling the Master Sword in the Temple of Light, it follows Link after being sealed for 7 years to become an adult. People who were living happily in their respective places after a long war, contrasted with a world devastated by Ganon 7 years later.
Adding the axis of time to a small yet exploratory world effectively increases its dimension. Through this, it adds depth and contemplation to puzzle-solving. Narratively, it also allows players to view the game through Link’s perspective as a protagonist who understands both future memories and past facts, re-examining the same characters and events.
Yet at the same time, this passage of time is depicted as a poignant sorrow for Link, the Hero of Time. After finishing his journey, he ultimately returns to the past, and both his saving of the world and his bonds with others disappear. The time that passed all too quickly granted him the chance to turn back time, but it may have also left him to suffer alone with memories only he holds—a sorrow that would manifest later on.
It also brings the painful reality of knowing the future of those who must leave him as Sages to fulfill their duty, only to meet them again in the past.
And that becomes the official prelude to the Zelda timeline split—divided into the Hero Victorious timeline, the Hero Defeated timeline, and the Hero Returned to Childhood timeline. But within this work at least, rather than focusing on the implications for the broader series, the emphasis lies in making the player fully bear Link’s anguish.
Link Gains Emotion: Polished Audiovisual Direction
The Switch 2 Aesthetic Preserving Original Framing
That is precisely why the graphics—perhaps the single biggest change that might have deserved mention first—are brought up now.
In the original title, characters’ facial expressions were severely limited by hardware constraints. That created an ideal canvas for players to project themselves onto Link. While other characters compensated for limited expressions through dialogue, Link—having no dialogue to speak of—was literally a blank canvas. Because the player directly controlled him and shared his journey while his personal characterization remained faint, Link’s adventure naturally felt like the player’s own.
This remake emphasizes Link not merely as an emotionless player avatar, but as a living inhabitant of the world. The main cast, featuring unique puppet-show-inspired designs, displays exaggerated appearances and textures, and within these visual traits, Link openly expresses hesitation, fear, resolve, and courage.
Consequently, the pain Link undergoes also becomes somewhat externalized. When Link was the player, pain was something you personally felt and brushed past; now, depicted as the sorrow of another individual named Link, it grows into an external tragedy that feels heavier to endure.
Yet all of this is achieved through subtle directional changes: graphical improvements and facial expressiveness. The cinematic presentation in this remake faithfully preserves the original direction. Character movements, actions, and camera angles mostly follow the original work verbatim. On one hand, this demonstrates how timeless ‘Ocarina of Time”s cinematic direction truly is. On the other, it means players can re-experience nostalgic memories and emotions through entirely transformed graphics.
That said, the visual presentation is hardly a mere side dish to the story. The graphics in this remake go well beyond simply being ‘good.’ On hardware like Nintendo Switch 2—where AAA titles still struggle against graphical constraints—the visual execution repeatedly leaves you wondering how they managed to achieve so much.
Although realized within a relatively compact world scale, the visuals capture depth of field that blurs with distance into the horizon, while in the mist-shrouded Kokiri Forest, a hazy fog blankets the space to obscure line of sight. Rather than relying on simple visual trickery, the world adds realistic details—smoke clinging to the ground scatters along sword slashes, textures and objects boast high density, and signposts slice according to the angle of your blade. This is seamlessly woven together with character depictions intentionally rendered with a distinct, stylized contrast.
In addition, the music—which plays a vital role throughout the game for puzzle-solving, travel, and story progression Rather than catering to open-world standards, the soundtrack is unified to emphasize regional exploration and dungeon solving, just like the original. Thanks to this, music alone pulls you deeper into each location and event
Fun That Shines Brighter Because It Remained Unchanged
Engaging Gameplay Still Sharp After 30 Years
Ultimately, all of these elements converge on one question: is the game fun to play? The feel of character movement, the clever utility of tools, and the sense that you solved dungeon puzzles through your own ingenuity rather than forced mechanics—all of this is exquisitely captured.
It is not merely a question of difficulty; it is about reaching natural solutions through real contemplation. This yields a design that feels intuitive whether you are playing as Link or watching his journey unfold. In the end, just as with exploration, the game anticipates player actions and thoughts to deliver meaningful results. Or perhaps the developers themselves stepped into the player’s shoes and mapped out the process of solving it.
In this process, certain modern quality-of-life enhancements were introduced—such as clearly visualizing Hookshot targets, adding jump and dash options, enabling quick item swapping, and improving the gameplay experience in the Water Temple through visual consistency. These adjustments were not change for change’s sake, but the result of refining elements that were constrained by hardware limitations or overlooked in the past while preserving the game’s core.
And all of this comes together to make the game thoroughly entertaining, even though nearly 30 years have passed and its original spirit remains almost entirely untouched.
The Eternal Standard of 3D Action-Adventure
Why Yesterday’s Blueprint Overwhelms Today’s New Releases
Much like ‘Citizen Kane’—hailed as one of the greatest films in history for deconstructing traditional cinematic structure and visual framing—or ‘Seven Samurai,’ which captured the artistic possibilities of cinema in a single masterwork, ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ proves that a game’s greatness does not rely solely on modernized graphics or controls.
Gameplay and game direction that remain sophisticated and near textbook perfection even after decades remind us once again why ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ remains the standard for 3D action-adventures.
And the remake proves this truth by delivering the original gameplay and cinematic presentation virtually unchanged outside of visual enhancements. Furthermore, those visual updates themselves provide an experience thoroughly satisfying to enjoy today.
To games that have expanded in scale only to wander lost within their own size, the 1998 Legend of Zelda speaks once more about what truly matters in a video game.
- Game design that remains razor-sharp through the test of time
- A classic story made solid through its synergy with gameplay
- Exploration that captures the joy of discovery without markers
- Expanded world and puzzle depth created by traveling across time
- Graphics and sound that push the limits of Switch 2
- Restrained modernization that preserves the spirit of the original
- A world scale that feels small by modern standards
- Less challenging combat that some may find disappointing
- Warp points you’ll miss while running around (besides temples)
Review Platform: NSW2 (Launch Version)
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Originally written in Korean, this article was translated with AI assistance and edited by a native English-speaking editor. Every translation is reviewed by our editorial team before publication.
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