6 good, bad, and weird changes in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Switch 2
You may have heard by now that Nintendo has remade mighty ’90s classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The reimagining of this 1998 Nintendo 64 adventure game for Switch 2 includes many major and minor changes, not all of them created equal.
With the Ocarina remake on shelves now, I wanted to highlight a handful of differences that stood out to me while playing. Some of them are fun, others are frustrating, and some defy that sort of categorization entirely. Without wasting any more time, let’s dive in.
A good change: Some boss fights are different
Credit: Nintendo
I’m not going to be too specific about this change because the game literally just came out and I don’t want to ruin the experience for folks.
That said, you should know going in that Nintendo chose to alter several of Ocarina‘s legendary boss fights with new attacks, animations, and more. It’s one of the most exciting elements of the new game for me, as it adds a sense of novelty to the adventure that is otherwise lacking, owing to the game’s status as a remake. Every time a well-known boss fight swerved and surprised me, I had a huge grin on my face.
A bad change: They nerfed the hookshot
Credit: Nintendo
One of the best puzzle-solving items in the entire Zelda series is the hookshot, a straight-shooting grapple gun that can easily zip Link between points. Ocarina was not the first game to incorporate the hookshot, but it did expand the tool’s usefulness with an extended targeting range and a wide variety of surfaces to which the hookshot can attach, such as wooden treasure chests and the rooftops of Kakariko Village.
Unfortunately, that philosophy has not been entirely maintained in the Switch 2 remake. Most grapple points remain intact, but many have been changed from natural-feeling features like tree branches to clearly marked targets. I don’t mind that change so much as I mind the fact that the hookshot can no longer grapple onto Kakariko’s rooftops. This greatly reduces Link’s ability to move around the village and just makes the game less fun for no discernible reason.
A weird change: You can’t aim in first-person anymore
In 2005, Resident Evil 4 set a template for third-person, over-the-shoulder aiming cameras that pretty much every mainstream video game nowadays deploys, including the Ocarina remake. When aiming items like the hookshot, bow, or boomerang in the new Switch 2 release, the camera sits behind Link, slightly offset so his character model doesn’t get in the way. You can also aim using gyro controls as a nice bonus.
This point of view works just fine and may be more familiar to younger Zelda fans used to the aiming functionality in 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, however, I do miss being able to zoom in with a first-person lens to examine Link’s surroundings up close. It’s kind of a bummer in the opening Kokiri Forest area, where you can no longer get a good look at the stick drawing on the trunk of Link’s treehouse.
A good change: Rupees are way more important now
Credit: Nintendo
I wouldn’t say that rupees (the currency in every Zelda game) are totally superfluous in the original Ocarina of Time. After all, you need 40 of them to bypass an early-game obstacle, and some important mini-games require small sums in order to participate. You can also use them to stock up on supplies like arrows and health potions, but frankly, the original version doled out those things generously enough to render that unnecessary.
While I would say Ocarina on Switch 2 is easier overall, the developers did add some new incentives to hoard rupees and collect Gold Skulltula tokens in order to expand the size of Link’s wallet. Specifically, the Great Fairies who provide Link with game-changing upgrades now ask for sizable monetary donations before they’ll hand over the good stuff. In the original game, the upgrades were free, but some of them cost hundreds of rupees in the remake.
I like this change because it gives players a reason to more fully engage with optional content and wring as much fun out of the reimagined game as possible.
A bad change: Cutscenes are voiced and too long
Credit: Nintendo
I talked about this in my review, so I’ll keep it brief here, but major story cutscenes in the Ocarina remake have been expanded with full voice acting for every character except for Link. The acting itself is a little cartoonish, which adequately fits the vibe, but also comes across as slightly cheesy at times.
More importantly, though, this makes some cutscenes last longer than they might have if they were broken up by text boxes, as they were in the original. Maybe someone can do a proper stopwatch comparison, but it at least felt like the Ocarina remake seized cutscene control for lengthier periods of time than the N64 version did.
A weird change: The day/night cycle works differently
Credit: Nintendo
Lastly, Nintendo has opted to lengthen the day/night cycle in the Ocarina remake. It was very short in the N64 original, as you could hardly cross Hyrule Field on foot without the sun going down and horrible skeleton monsters emerging to ruin your travels.
In the Switch 2 remake, it takes much longer for the sun to rise and set, which has benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, you get more time to enjoy each distinct atmosphere, which gives music lead and sound director Masato Ohashi an excuse to craft new, chilled out nighttime versions of some of Zelda composer Koji Kondo’s iconic area themes. Some downsides, however, are that the Hyrule Field drawbridge no longer goes up at night, and it’s somewhat more tedious to wait for certain times of day in the few situations where that’s necessary.
One last note is that the day/night cycle is now universal, rather than turning off in towns and cities like it did in the original game. That means you get to see NPCs actively move from their daytime positions to their nighttime states in real-time, which is pretty neat.
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