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Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Master Quest
The long awaited US release of the Master Quest is finally here in better resolution, crisper sound, and completely prepared to beat your ass. While Japanese gamers have enjoyed what they called “Ura Zelda” for years now, we Americans now enjoy it for free, as a bonus disc awarded for pre-ordering Wind Waker. Did Nintendo decide to include this disc just as an excuse to release Master Quest, to encourage people to pre-order the next Zelda title, or the most likely reason: to help make up for how bad everybody thought the next Zelda looked? Nobody knows.
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I’ll conduct this review without the usual categories because I feel the majority of the people reading have already played the original Ocarina of Time. I’ll dive right into all the hyped-up improvements Nintendo has made. First, and most obvious, is the visual qualities: Link has been upgraded to run in 640x480 resolution for some higher end TVs… like mine… and for the even higher-end TVs, Master Quest can run in progressive scan mode. These may not seem important, but almost regardless of what kind of television you have, there’s a noticeable difference. All the muddy areas of the past you caught in the skyline and textures are gone, in fact specifically those 2 areas, skyline and textures, look far better than they ever could have coming off a cartridge. My only complaint in the visuals department is that after all the revamping Nintendo did, through some research I’ve discovered that the game still only runs around 20 fps… very disappointing. All the same sound effects and orchestrated musical themes are there, sounding a little clearer than before coming off a disc, and still running in Dolby Pro Logic so you can catch those stupid flaming bats before they sneak up behind you.
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Now for the real reason everybody wants a piece of the Master Quest… the dungeons. These are the only things changed in the game, with the small exception that side quests have a tad more emphasis and that long-winded owl appears A LOT less. While the room placement and total dungeon architecture remains the same, it’s on the inside that counts. Rooms that previously required you to shoot down a few bats to open the iron bars on the doors now may have anywhere from 1 to 5 puzzles encompassed into one very unfamiliar pain in the ass. There are even switches placed randomly inside Jabu-Jabu… disguised as cow heads… that sound like cows. It took me a while to face the fact that in order to open the door in front of me I had to look to the ceiling, take out my bow, and pop that cow in the eye. Even the earliest dungeons include rooms containing up to 3 Stalfos brothers at a time, very difficult with a Kokiri sword indeed. Gamers are going to be forced to use every single weapon, technique, and random ounce of luck they can muster to survive these dungeons that do a wonderful job at showing off the re-write-able capabilities of Ocarina of Time’s engine.
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Altogether, this is more than a good enough excuse to replay the entire game, especially since you get it for free! For true die-hard Zelda fans… I have to include the fact that the infamous battle with Dark Link is in fact better than ever. The room itself looks beautiful, he’s quicker, more aggressive, but believe it or not he has less life. The overall battle time has gone down from 3 and a half days to a meager 15 minutes. Still an amazing experience over all, truly amazing indeed. Clearly this was designed for an N64 controller, but that only gets in a way when playing the ocarina itself, and sometimes the analog gets a little sticky. Back to the point and conclusion: this is entirely a really great play, taking up an estimated 30 precious hours of your time, more than the original, and worth every second of it.
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