With its tale of an idyllic world despoiled by the lust for power, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time feels as relevant today as it did in 1998. Nintendo’s new remake, out Thursday on the Switch 2, enshrines its place in the gaming canon for generations to come. But despite its stupendous production values and painstaking details, the game left me feeling oddly bereft.

Perhaps I should have expected as much. Ocarina of Time weaponizes nostalgia even within its narrative, as the protagonist Link ventures to save his post-apocalyptic world as an adult after first working through it as a kid. You’ll uncover old characters enduring new catastrophes. You’ll try to rescue everyone you meet. You’ll strive to bring things back to how they were before — no, better than they were before.

Seven years stretch between Link’s childhood and adult adventures. 28 years yawn between the remake and the original’s release. Both in and out of the game, Ocarina of Time makes us yearn for an idealized past.

How it plays

Decent remakes evoke how you remember a game rather than re-create dated controls and chunky graphics. In myriad small ways, Nintendo has brought Ocarina of Time up to contemporary standards while (mostly) preserving its soul.

In one of the game’s most poignant scenes, kid Link answers to the call to adventure, leaving his friend Saria and the Kokiri Forest they called home.

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I miss the thoughtfully-composed camera angles from the original, but quickly got used to the over-the-shoulder camera the remake employs (though I was irked that it abandoned the top-down view when you sneak into Hyrule Castle). The new jump and sprint buttons made navigating the world feel more natural. Combat’s smoother too, though it’s still not easy to switch between targeted enemies (unlike modern third-person games like Elden Ring, where you can toggle between foes by simply flicking the right stick).

You can, thankfully, swap between items in a quick menu — the same system introduced to the series in 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom and continued in 2024’s Echoes of Wisdom. It’s still not as fast as I’d wish (I’d have preferred a customizable wheel), but I vastly prefer it to constantly pausing to access my equipment. It made it easy to change my strategy on the fly. I’d often cast Naryu’s Love and deploy Bombchus, for example, where before I’d mostly stick to the Longshot and Bow.

The villain Ganondorf, on the precipice of his initial triumph over Princess Zelda, Link, and the whole of Hyrule.

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If you get stuck, a new “Threads of Time” quest log can point you in the right direction (though you’ll likely still need to look up a guide for the convoluted Biggoron Sword quest!). And yes, the notoriously frustrating Water Temple is much more tolerable this time around. But mind your rupees! Inflation’s hit Hyrule. While wallets can now carry double the cash that they used to, Great Fairy upgrades are no longer free. They can cost up to 500 rupees!