Ocarina of Time Master Quest Part 3: Enter room, use Din's Fire, shoot wall ornaments, repeat.

This is Din's Fire.
It's your new best friend.

There are pretty much only two things that you really need to know about Master Quest:

1. It will take you a while to figure out the correct way to solve the puzzles.
2. Once you do, you will complete the dungeon in less than twenty minutes, guaranteed.

It's been a while since I had a crack at Master Quest, and I'd forgotten how much easier the Water Temple is in this version than in the original. Start to finish, including the boss, it took about half an hour - if I hadn't been faffing around on the boss and stopped sucking earlier, I could have done it in less. That's because every room in the dungeon contained at least one of three puzzles:

1. Step on/hit switch. Sometimes Longshot targets will appear as a result, sometimes not. Use Longshot to quickly get across the room. This may or may not be timed.
2. Enter room. Use Din's Fire to light nearly invisible torches. Hooray, door open!



This should strike fear into your heart.
Master Quest made it boring.

3. Enter room. Hit ornamental wall decoration panel with an arrow or the Longshot. Door opens/key drops/chest appears/etc. 

The programmers have gotten equally lazy with the enemies. The Water Temple is pretty famous for those weird underwater baddies, but there was only one or two that I saw in the entire dungeon. Instead, the programmers decided to just randomly drop groups of Stalfoses (Stalfi?) or Lizalfoses on your head because they're slightly harder. I can't decide if the lack of generic enemies is due to a programming error, or deliberate - whatever the case, it severely detracts from the atmosphere of the place.

"Oh look, an unusual wall ornament!
What should I do in this room?"

Something else I've noticed is that in both the Fire and Water Temples, there were loads of rooms you didn't actually have to enter in order to finish the Temple. That might be just to punish you for doing them if you don't have to, thinking you were playing the original, but it just feels sloppy to me. Also, if you see a chest on the map, you will always have to get it. Even if you get there and it's a rupee chest, if you put on the Eye of Truth (lets you see invisible things) there will doubtlessly be a key nearby. There's no trickery, no deviousness, no real creativity in Master Quest. The Shadow Temple was nearly identical to the original, except in that they switched around the order of some of the rooms slightly.

I'm currently on the last temple in the game, the Spirit Temple, so I expect I'll have a conclusion for you in the next few days. Do yourself a favor, though - unless you're desperate, just play the original.