Ocarina Of Time:

This is where the franchise goes downhill. This is probably the most hyped game of all time. A bold claim, since we all know how much hype FF7 got. However, this game got even more hype since you couldn't mention FF7 without all the fanboys standing up and saying that Zelda 64 is coming and its going to be a million times better. And for the record, FF7 is way better than this game.

To be fair, I decided to slog through this game again and tried to place myself within it. All right, so I did it because I didn't remember anything to rant on. I decided to name him Jackoff, so I shall use that name from here on out.

One morning Jackoff wakes up after having a nasty dream featuring a girl on a horse fleeing from a sinister-looking man on a horse. Three guesses who these people are. Since he doesn't know who they are, this HAS to be the first adventure, right? He gets an annoying fairy to accompany him, and he gets summoned to speak with the plain old English-speaking (I guess cause it makes him sound wiser) Deku Tree. Just outside, Jackoff's friend Saria comes running...
"Hi, Jackoff! Looks like a fairy finally came to you! You're heading for the Deku Tree, right?"
Wow, news sure travels fast around here. Indeed I am. However, I must first obtain a sword and shield. Time for some town exploring! Let's randomly enter somebody's house!
"My sister is shopping at the store with the red roof."
Uh, thanks. If I was looking for your sister, I may have found that useful. And thanks for specifying the one with the red roof, as opposed to the one with the blue roof. You know, Kokiri forest only has one shop. Although I do need to go there to buy the shield. Fortunately, we have the jumping stones just outside. "Jumping across these stones will make you happy!", it says. Hey, 5 free rupees! Nice! But let's digress for a moment... being happy in this game has no meaning. However, jumping the stones gets you money. So, basically, this says 'happy = money'. What great unconscious messages to convey to our children.

Now, time to enter the building...

"HELLO!"

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! (I'm sorry, but I find all the girls here scary.)
"Hello Jackoff! Use Z-targeting to talk with me! (Use the Z button on your controller!)"
All right...
"I'll teach you how to talk to faraway people with Z-targeting!"
Huh, I thought you just did. And do I really need to use a fairy to talk to someone 10 feet away? Just raise your voice.

Once inside the store, I decide to look over the selection of goods. The description of arrows includes "use them, and you'll run out." What helpful information.Maybe I should mention in all my overviews that firing your gun will make you run out of bullets. At any rate, I don't see how these places stay in business since you can find 99% of this crap for free anywhere else. The shield is among the remaining 1%, so no getting out of that expense.

Now, on to that Deku Tree. After traversing the dungeon, the tree gives you some story, then sends you on a mission to Hyrule Castle (and the town.) However, Kokiris can't leave the forest or they will die. I like to think its just some sniper in a tree. That would rule. Saria shows up to give a speech about being friends and presents you with her ocarina. After taking it, Jackoff simply turns and runs off. Very smooth; that's really gonna keep you on her favored list.

Once at the the town, you meet up with some girl in the market. She's named Malon, and she's the daughter of Talon, owner of Lon Lon Ranch. Marin and Tarin, anyone? Anyway...
"Oh, hi. I've never seen you before... Where are you from? Kokiri Forest?"
Whoa! I didn't say anything! Okay, calm down. You DO have a fairy following you and the tunic is a dead giveaway. She probably just took an educated guess. Later, you see her again outside the castle.
"Hey, you're that fairy boy from the forest! My dad went to deliver milk to the castle, but he hasn't come back yet. Could you look for him? Here, take this."
"Wow, a Weird Egg! I'll keep a sharp eye out now... (for a good place to beam you with this.)"

After playing a game of stealth with the castle guards, I come to a courtyard in the middle of the castle grounds. Nearby, someone is standing on a little 'bridge' over the water which simply leads to a wall with a window. Does the design actually serve a purpose except let Zelda peer through a window without standing in water? So you initiate conversation with her...
"Oh, who are you? That fairy... This is like my dream... You wouldn't happen to be from Kokiri forest and have an emblem?"
Yes/No

If you say no:
"Oh, that's strange. I thought you were... Tell me the truth..."
And she asks again until you say yes. Then,
"What's your name? Wow, Jackoff?"
"HOLY SHIT! I knew it! You're ALL freaking psychic! Get away from me!"
"Blah blah... That man is evil... My dad doesn't believe me... Do you?"
Yes/No

If you say no:
"You MUST believe me! Do you believe me?"
"Yeah, I'm just fucking with ya. I believe you."

Then she asks you to look through the window. Another Yes/No question, but if you say no, the game makes you do it anyway. Then why give me a fucking choice in the first place? I tried all the negatives, and I found that the game either: asks you again until you say yes, or makes you do it anyway. What this game is getting at seems to be "Hey kids, you have absolutely NO voice or say in what you do in this game! Get used to it, cause you don't have any in real life either! Go out and buy more Nintendo products, you little shits! Pokemon sales are going down!"

After 2 more dungeons, its time to enter the Temple of Time and get that Master Sword (I guess. Why DID we enter it?) However, the Hero of Time must be at least 18 years of age, so when you touch the sword, your spirit gets sealed until you grow up. Or something. While you are out, Ganon walks in and grabs the Triforce. Oh snap! The big bad guy used simply used us to get in! What a shocking twist!

7 years into the fuuuuutuuuuure, you get thawed out. Now you must visit 6 dungeons and then conquer Ganon's as well. But let's hold on. You fight Moblins, Peahats, Handjobs, and Stalfoes. You use items like the Master Sword, hookshot, power gauntlets, and the mirror shield. You jump between two worlds; a normal one, and one dark version where Ganon rules all. Thanks Nintendo, you have given me essentially the same damn game I played 6-7 years ago!

And so, time for some more dungeons. This next stretch of game gets pretty lame. However, interest is piqued by a mysterious person known as Sheik, who is a member of the Sheikah race (supposedly.) Great name there. You encounter this Sheik many times during your quest, getting a new ocarina song (and Jackoff looks at his instrument in amazement each time he does so.)

Finally, things pick up slightly when Kakariko village gets 'ravaged' by an evil force. Sheik goes to 'help out the villagers' while you go and stop the beast. Of course, the village looks fine immediately after the cutscene and none of the occupants seem to have noticed the events. At the end of the dungeon, you encounter the evil force of BONGO BONGO! He's some monster who gets his name from playing a gigantic bongo drum. THIS is the fearsome entity of evil which ravages Kakariko Village? The guy who thought this up should get slapped.
Next, it's off to Gerudo Valley. However, the Gerudos are woman supremacists (except for the one man born every 500 hundred years or whatever who leads them) and capture you. Looks like you're in one pretty pickle. Let's see if they overlooked any items which could help me escape. Oh, they just threw me in here with all my weapons. What follows is some Metal Gear sneaking around, and maybe some guard incapacitating. Of course, shooting a person in the head with an arrow just causes unconsciousness. Then, you have several duels with Gerudo swordswomen who run away after you slash them a few times. We can't have people dying by Jackoff's hands, can we?

Back to the Temple Of Time... Sheik appears, and reveals himself to be... Zelda! Don't know about you, but I saw that one coming a few hours ago. It was a disguise to hide from Ganon, and now that she took it off, he immediately grabs her. Of course, he doesn't grab Jackoff as well so he can come over there and kick his ass. Yay, more mini dungeons, then on to the top of the tower. Once there, we find him playing an organ (what's with all these bad guys playing organs? Does it make them more diabolical somehow?) Hey, nice triangle. I got one on the back of my hand too. Right here, buddy.

The fight unfolds to some of the crappiest music ever. After kicking his ass all over the room, he comes back for one more try. He morphs into a giant dragon thing thing with giant blades bigger than Jackoff's entire body. As he swings them, he somehow manages to just knock the M.S. out of his hands without chopping him in half. We all now how this fight ends, so let's just jump to the ending.

Now that Ganon is gone, everybody goes to party at Lon Lon Ranch. Meanwhile, Zelda gives you a good-bye.
"Go back to the seven years you lost. When I play this ocarina, you shall return."
(plays Zelda's Lullaby)

"Well, I guessing you wanted to send me to the Temple of Time, so you should probably have played the Prelude Of Light instead."
"Shut up."
Wait, I'm going back 7 years to when right after I picked up the Master Sword and Ganon entered the Sacred Realm, right? So, in 7 years, all this shit is going to happen again. This game is actually alright, and kind of cool, but there are 2 reasons why I hate it:

1: Link.

You are not given a single reason to like him, and he has as much charisma as a bucket of rusty nails. He's even called "Fairy Boy" for Christ's sake. Plus, he screams like a girl whenever he swings his sword. You'd think that you should probably be quiet if you were going to be sneaking around Ganon's fortress. No wonder he never speaks. If he actually spoke complete sentences, you would be reaching for the mute button. Funny, despite never talking, he never shuts up either. When he grows up, he becomes bearable, although he looks gayer. He loses his young frown and tries to maintain a serious look on his stupid mug. If Peter Pan and Pinnochio had sex, their offspring would probably look like him (ignoring scientific limitations.) While on that subject, I think I should also mention that I actually accidentally stumbled upon gay hentai of him. He is without a doubt my least favorite real hero (a fake hero would be Ash from Pokemon) of all time. He gets to be put above the posers, but he sits at bottom of the totem pole here. Just about the entire cast of FF games would kick his ass. Mega Man would kick his ass. Any Shinobi would kick his ass. Sonic would kick his ass. Hell, Mario would kick his ass. I can't think of anyone who couldn't kick his ass.

2: Boooooooooooring dungeon design

This game can be fun outside, but the insides bring a whole new meaning to 'dungeon crawling.' The puzzles really have not changed since the first one. Shoot an eye on the wall? Push a block? Light a torch? Done that... Like, 30 times already. And since you can only have up to 3 items equipped at once, be ready for plenty of item swapping. Not only are the puzzles repetitive, you will also probably have to redo them if you have to go through the room again (and you WILL go through many again.)

Also, who designed the guardian fairies? Aren't they supposed to be good looking? In this game they are not in the least bit attractive, and their laughter is downright scary.

Majora's Mask:

Sometime after the end of Ocarina, a young Link rides off with Epona 'on a personal quest', that's what they call it. What he was doing is never revealed. However, he get jumped along the way by some Skull Kid, gets his instrument stolen, and then turned into a Deku scrub. While in pursuit, he crosses over into some weird alternate dimension where the Skull Kid plans to destroy the world by summoning a giant rock to crash into it. Assisted by the fairy Navi... er, I mean Tatl, they embark on a new quest to stop him. At least the story is different.

Of course, you wouldn't know any of that from the opening demo that plays if you don't press anything at the title screen. What you get is quite possibly the stupidest opening I've ever seen. It basically just shows random people walking around and doing nothing, several of which just have Link sitting around. Pretty care-free considering the impending doom of the entire world. At the very end of the clip it shows the Skull Kid and the falling moon, which is the only part that has any plot relevance.

They soon confront him, but his magical powers are too much, and the end of the world is nigh. They manage to claim back the Ocarina and use the Song of Time to go back 3 days. Now, they have time on their side, and they can stop him if they can free the 4 gods or whatever within those 3 days. Hey, I have an idea: go back MORE THAN 3 DAYS and stop him before he even gets the mask. Alas, the latter is not an option.

About 2-3 hours later, I couldn't stand to play this shit anymore. I could barely manage when I first got this game. I actually got bored and stopped playing for about 3 months until I realized that I wasted over $100 on this game (60 for the game, and another 50-60 dollars for the expansion pack), and decided I should at least finish it. However, I still couldn't bear it, so I just got a walkthrough and sucked it up.

The killer of this game was the whole time thing. Great, not only am I bored, I now have only have a limited amount of time to walk around and be bored. That would be good thing, except when time runs out, the 45 minutes begin anew. Hope you complete a dungeon before then, or you gotta retry it.

But when you do that, you lose almost everything! Key items and real major events remain, but everything else resets. You lose all bombs, arrows, progress on dungeons, and all rupees unless you put them in a bank. Yeah, don't you know? Put money in a bank right now, and then go BACK in time to 1935! You'll have a fortune! Wrong way, morons. Worst of all, most anal tasks you complete will also reset and you'll have to redo them. For example, if you had to travel through a forest to meet someone, then do some task to get a superbomb to blow up a rock blocking a vital path (to a dungeon, perhaps), you have to do all that shit over again.
Here's a quick summary of the rest of the game:

Save Goron City from tragedy (again, though not the same one.)
Visit Lake Hylia... er, Great Bay and meet the Zoras.
Sneak around the Gerudo base. Oh, I meant the all-female band of pirates' base.
Protect Lon Lon Ranch... oops, did it again... Romani Ranch from ghosts and get Epona... I mean, oh wait, the horse IS Epona again. Them protect a wagon from the Ingo (or was it Gorman?) Brothers.
Discover that the Skull Kid is an imp who enjoyed playing with the 4 Gods, but then they could no longer continue to do so. He then turned evil and wanted to destroy the world. Yeah, losing friends does that to you.

In other words, this is the same damn game as Ocarina. Same old shit, new names. But of course someone will point out that this is a parallel universe where everyone has a duplicate. Well, this could just be a case of the big N being lazy asses who can't be bothered to think of something original. Or it could be the base for a cool plot.

See, there are multiple alternate dimensions with different versions of everyone. The life forces of all these clones are shared evenly amongst them. However, if one were to die, that clone's energy would then be divided among the others. Thus, if someone were to eliminate all of his alternate versions, he would gain maximum powers and become The One! Or explode. One of those. Yeah, that movie was a pile of crap, but... oh, I didn't have another point.

In order to defeat your mighty foe, you must travel through all the dimensions (of the other Zelda games.) Then you must kill your doubles to increase your power. When all are dead, you have the power to defeat your adversary. However, when you move in for the finishing blow, it is revealed that he is YOU in this dimension! Gasp!
"Wait! Killing him might cause the structure of the universe to come crashing down!"
"Or I could become a god!"
"Go for it, dude!"
"I'm doing it!"
BOOM!
At least, that is how I think it should have happened. You die, and every Link clone is dead too (but Han Solo and his posse escape.) What more could you ask for?

I may have been hard on Ocarina, but this game just sucks whichever way you look at it.

Oracle Of Seasons:

I don't really remember. Something along the lines of some king of evil kidnapping the Oracle Of Seasons. Guess what you have to do!

I don't really have anything to say here. I didn't even beat this game. I stopped playing about 2 years ago and have NO interest in continuing. I don't even know why I even bought it after the Mask tragedy. Lame.

Oracle Of Ages:

The story? See OOS, but replace Oracle Of Seasons with Oracle Of Ages. This game plays EXACTLY the same as OOS. Nuff' said. Thankfully, I didn't actually waste my money on this version.

Mysterious Tree Nut: (Rough Japanese translation)

Wondering what this game is? It was another GBC adventure made about the same time as the Oracle trash. However, it was never released outside of Japan. Maybe because it sucked so much?

And that about wraps up this article. I haven't played Wind Waker, and I don't plan on getting a Cube anytime soon, so I'll be fair and won't badmouth it without playing it. I'm sure I'll play it eventually, if only to see how much it sucks. Maybe there will be a third page in the future. Of course, I probably haven't swayed your blind loving view of this shitty series. But a few years from now, you'll think back about these games and realize I was right.
Home
All HTML/web design copyright 2004 stickghost. All rights reserved. Zelda and all related items are the property of Nintendo.