New Completion - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)

I've waited far too long to complete this often called masterpiece of a game. But as of yesterday evening, with the trusty support of my wonderful girlfriend (we were actually playing with her personal copy), this ugly red mark on my gaming record has finally been erased.

There is so much I could say about my time with this game that it's almost overwhelming. To the point where I'm actually struggling to say anything because I can't quite think of the exact words to encapsulate all the joy, frustration, intrigue, and enchantment I experienced over the last year or so of on and off sessions traversing the dungeons of Hyrule.

This is the first Zelda game I've ever played to completion. And it is, perhaps unsurprising to those that have already played it, one of the best RPGs I've ever played. Even with vastly outdated graphics and a simplistic control scheme, I was shocked with how well it held up, considering so many 64-bit games have aged rather poorly. Everything about it seems to be so polished (for the time) from the art style, to the insanely (yet consistently) entrancing soundtrack by Koji Kondo:

Gerudo Valley - by Koji Kondo

While the game admittedly has some troublesome areas (I'M LOOKING AT YOU FISHING GAME!) I actually felt all of the dungeons were fair in their design. When I failed, it was my fault, not the level's. You can't say that about many modern games, let alone games from the 64-bit era. The water temple, for instance, while confusing wasn't overtly cheap in any way. I actually felt the Shadow temple was far more challenging considering all of it's high-difficulty action sequences and platforming.

Entrance to the Shadow Temple; 10 bucks if you can open it with fire arrows ;)

In the end, I was thoroughly impressed and simultaneously bummed that I hadn't played this game back in the day when it first released. The story (which has been spoiled for me countless times thanks to playthroughs of Super Smash Bros.) wasn't as impacting as an adult as it likely would have been were I still a child of the 90s. Nor were the zombies (known as "ReDead") as frightening as apparently they still are to my girlfriend due to her traumatic experience with them as a kid.

But then again, I'm just so happy I finally got to experience it at all.

If you haven't played this game, you absolutely must. Use an emulator if you have to. No other game lives up to the title of 'classic' like Ocarina of Time. I promise.