Ocarina of Time Master Quest Conclusion: Meh.

The entire selling point of Master Quest is the fact that the temples are re-arranged from Ocarina of Time. Those are the only changes they made from the original; everything else is left totally untouched.

Cross the Rainbow Bridge to Ganon!

Unfortunately, the dungeons suck. The new puzzles are lazy. One sad, overtired programmer for Ganon's Tower decided that his or her quota hadn't been met so he or she decided to hide a crystal switch in an ornamental torch. Any visibility from the outside? Nope. Just hoping the player would swing their sword around until they hit something and it worked. Instead, I used Din's Fire, like a boss. (Incidentally, that is how you beat this entire game.)

That is sheer, rugged brainpower, and exactly what that programmer went to university for, I'm sure.

The Spirit Temple was easier than the original. I honestly have nothing to say about it besides the fact that I finished it and pretty much moved on. 

Ganon's Tower, as previously mentioned, was just kind of stupid. My theory is that the team behind the game had three days to do the whole thing, start to finish, and Ganon's Tower was at about 4 AM on the last day and the project was due in at 8:00. (Imagine lots of little narrow ramps, invisible crap, and silver rupee collecting.) 

Rating this game is a little bit difficult for obvious reasons. For all intents and purposes, besides the dungeons, it is Ocarina of Time. As a result, I'm just going to be marking it on what is unique - Gameplay/Difficulty and Design/Graphics.


Gameplay/Difficulty: 25/50

"Okay, so there are two cows on the wall,
and the player has to hit them with a slingshot,
right..."
"I love it! I want every room to have at least three!"

The only difference in terms of gameplay between Master Quest and Ocarina of Time was that Master Quest was ported on to the Gamecube. It didn't turn out well. The thumbstick on the Gamecube controller is a lot less smooth than the N64s, which made aiming accurately really difficult. The C-Button to C-Stick change made a surprising amount of difference, especially when using assignable items. The shift from Z-Targeting to R-Targeting felt natural and intuitive, though, so I have to give marks where they're due.

In terms of difficulty, I can't honestly give you a straight answer. Sometimes it was laughably easy, sometimes it was genuinely challenging, and sometimes it was almost literally impossible to figure out without first discovering the dungeon's "gimmick" (slingshotting cows in Jabu Jabu's belly, for example, or using Din's Fire...well, pretty much everywhere.)

Design/Graphics: 10/50

"Guys, I can't think of what to do with this room!"
"Just add some flame pillars. People love flame pillars."
(image via IGN)

Nintendo, I'm sorry in advance, but please don't let your Rent-An-Intern division be in charge of level design. I don't think I've seen dungeon layouts this lazy since the NES Zeldas, and they had the benefit of being 8-bit and 2D. The one shining moment of relatively zany fun was Jabu Jabu, but if you can't make a dungeon located in a fish a bit wacky, I don't know what to say.

Master Quest was plagued by the same camera angle issues and visual glitches that the original game had, but it feels worse somehow because Nintendo had the opportunity to recognize and fix them.

Total: 35/100

Did I have fun playing this game? Yes. Kind of.

Will you have fun playing this game? Probably not, and that's because chances are good that you haven't played Ocarina of Time enough times to memorize the dungeons but can't bear to let 1998 go.

If you loved Ocarina of Time but want something more challenging, I recommend you go ahead and play Majora's Mask. If you've done that as many times as I have, then and only then would I recommend Master Quest.

I leave you with the awesome ending of Ocarina of Time.

...And also this one, which is better because it involves Dr. Emmett Brown.

Next time: Majora's Mask. Before next year. Seriously. (Probably.)