Zelda: Ocarina of Time Review - The Best Game Ever

🌅 Introduction — The One That Changed Everything

🗡️ This review is part of our The Legend of Zelda Hub — every mainline game reviewed and rated, plus the movies and the LEGO Zelda sets, all in one place.

Let me put my cards on the table immediately: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the best game I have ever played. For the Dadnology rating I am giving it a 10, because that is the top of the scale — but if I am honest, in my heart it is an 11. In 1998, on the Nintendo 64, it did not just make a great Zelda; it invented the entire language of 3D action-adventure that the medium has spoken ever since. Almost every sprawling third-person adventure you have played in the last twenty-five years is, in some way, a grandchild of this game.

Ad

Nintendo Switch 2 (opens in a new tab)

Ocarina of Time is part of Nintendo Switch Online's N64 library — and the Switch 2 is the console to play the upcoming remake on.

The scale of the achievement is hard to overstate now, because everything it pioneered became standard. But step back to the moment it arrived: nobody knew how to make 3D combat feel good, how to make a big world navigable, how to translate Zelda’s intricate dungeon design into three dimensions. Ocarina of Time answered all of those questions at once, with such confidence that its solutions are still how we do it. And with a full remake now on the way — covered in our separate Ocarina of Time Remake news — there has never been a better time to understand why.

Z-Targeting: The Invention That Made 3D Combat Work

If you want a single example of why this game is a landmark, it is Z-targeting. Before Ocarina of Time, fighting an enemy in 3D meant wrestling with a camera and praying your sword pointed the right way. Nintendo’s solution was elegant: lock onto an enemy with a button, and Link automatically orbits and faces them, freeing you to circle, dodge, block and strike with intent. Suddenly 3D combat was not a chore to fight against but a fluid, readable dance.

That one idea — now universal, baked into countless action games as “lock-on” — was revolutionary in 1998, and you can feel why the second you pick the game up today. It made the difference between 3D being a gimmick and 3D being better. Pair it with the context-sensitive A-button, which intelligently changes function depending on what you are near — climb, open, talk, roll — and you have an interface so intuitive it taught an entire industry how to do this.

Hyrule Field, Epona and a World That Breathes

The second masterstroke is the world itself. Hyrule Field is the hub that ties everything together — a wide-open expanse you cross on foot as a boy and, later, gallop across on your horse Epona. The sense of scale was breathtaking at the time and still works now, precisely because the game makes traversal meaningful: day turns to night, Stalchildren rise from the ground after dark, and reaching a distant temple feels like a genuine journey rather than a menu choice.

Ad

Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller (opens in a new tab)

Z-targeting and bow aiming feel best on a proper pad. The ideal controller for a 3D Zelda after the kids are in bed.

Then there is the ocarina of the title, which turns music into a gameplay system. Learn a song and you can warp across the map, change the time of day, summon rain, or solve a puzzle — the instrument is woven into the fabric of the world. It is the kind of idea that could have been a gimmick and instead became one of the most beloved mechanics in gaming, the source of melodies that fans can still hum from memory a quarter of a century later. The whole of Hyrule feels alive in a way that genuinely had not been done before.

The Story: Growing Up in a Single Sword-Pull

What lifts Ocarina of Time from “brilliant design” to “best ever” is how it marries that design to a story with real emotional weight. Without spoiling it, the central conceit — pulling the Master Sword and waking seven years later as an adult, to find Hyrule fallen under Ganondorf’s shadow — is one of gaming’s great gut-punches. You return to familiar places and find them changed, darkened, mourning. It is a coming-of-age tale told through level design as much as cutscenes, and it lands.

The villains land too. Ganondorf is the definitive version of the series’ big bad, charismatic and genuinely menacing, and the final confrontation is a high point of the entire medium. The supporting cast — Saria, Sheik, Zelda herself — give the world a sense of loss and stakes that the more systemic modern Zeldas, for all their freedom, sometimes trade away. This is Zelda as authored, emotional storytelling, and it is masterful.

How It Holds Up — and the Remake on the Horizon

Time to put the “Tech-Dad mit Haltung” hat on, because honesty matters even about a favourite. Ocarina of Time is a 1998 N64 game, and it shows in places: the camera occasionally fights you, the low-poly visuals are dated, and the infamous Water Temple can still tie your brain in knots. None of it is fatal — with a little patience the design shines straight through — but a first-timer raised on 4K should know they are playing a piece of history, fog and all.

Which is exactly why the announced remake is so exciting. A faithful, modern rebuild promises to strip away those hardware-era frictions while preserving everything that made the game immortal — and to finally make it an easy sell to a new generation, including our kids. Whether you play the original on Switch Online now or wait for the remake, the underlying adventure is the same masterpiece. The technology was always just the delivery system.

The Dungeons: A Masterclass in Pacing

For all its big ideas, Ocarina of Time would not endure without great dungeons, and these are some of the finest ever designed. The journey from the humble Inside the Deku Tree as a boy to the sprawling Forest, Fire and Water Temples as an adult is a near-perfect difficulty and complexity curve. Each one teaches you a tool — the bow, the hookshot, the iron boots — and then builds a whole space around mastering it, so progression feels like genuine growth rather than a checklist.

The standouts have become legend. The Forest Temple, with its twisting corridors and rotating rooms, is a gothic delight. The Shadow Temple is a genuinely disturbing descent into a torture-themed underworld. And the climb up Ganon’s Tower at the climax, revisiting echoes of earlier challenges as the castle crumbles, is one of the great finales in gaming. Even the much-maligned Water Temple, frustrating as its water-level puzzles can be, is ambitious in a way few games dared. The pacing across all of them — tool, test, triumph — is the template every 3D adventure has tried to follow since.

Replay Value and the Master Quest

Ocarina of Time is the rare epic you happily return to, and Nintendo built in reasons to. The Master Quest — a remixed version with rearranged, tougher dungeons, originally a bonus disc and now bundled with several re-releases — effectively doubles the dungeon content for veterans who know the original inside out. It is a real second act for a game you might have assumed you had exhausted.

Beyond that, the adventure simply holds up to repeat visits in a way few story-driven games manage. Because so much of its pleasure is in traversal and atmosphere — galloping across Hyrule Field at dusk, hearing the ocarina songs, descending into a familiar temple — replaying it feels less like a chore and more like returning to a favourite place. For a dad, that matters: this is a game you can revisit across decades, and one you will eventually want to start fresh alongside your kids. Its replay value is part of why it has stayed in the cultural conversation for over twenty-five years.

Family Fit: Sharing the Best Game Ever With Your Kids

This is the game I most want to hand to my children, with one honest caveat about age. It is rated E10+: the combat is bloodless fantasy violence, but a couple of areas — the Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Temple — are properly creepy and gave a lot of us our first real video-game scare. For a sensitive young child, those moments warrant a parent on the sofa.

Played together, though, it is close to perfect. It rewards patience and curiosity over twitch reflexes, which makes it ideal for co-piloting — one of you on the controller, both of you puzzling out the next temple. It splits naturally into dungeon-sized chapters you can play across many evenings, fitting the dad schedule beautifully. And the payoff is enormous: there are few better ways to show a kid why you love this medium than walking them through the game that defined it.

Is Ocarina of Time still worth playing today?

Yes, emphatically. The camera and a few clunky moments betray its N64 age, but the design, pacing and storytelling are timeless. It remains one of the most rewarding adventures ever made — and with a remake on the way, the moment to revisit it is now.

Where can I play Ocarina of Time now?

It is included with Nintendo Switch Online’s N64 library (Expansion Pack), playable on Switch and Switch 2. Nintendo has also announced a full remake rebuilt for modern hardware — see our separate news coverage of the Ocarina of Time Remake.

Is Ocarina of Time suitable for kids?

It is rated E10+. The combat is fantasy violence with no gore, but a couple of areas — the Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Temple — are genuinely creepy and may unsettle younger children. It is a wonderful game to play alongside an older child.

Why is Ocarina of Time considered the best game ever?

It essentially invented the template for 3D action-adventure: Z-targeting for combat, context-sensitive controls, a navigable open overworld, and music as a gameplay tool. It combined all of that with a moving coming-of-age story, and almost every 3D adventure since owes it a debt.