Ocarina of Time 3D: Water Temple Detailed

Posted on May 12 2011 by Mases Hagopian

During my hands on experience with Ocarina of Time 3D, I got to play the beloved Water Temple. The Water Temple has long since been referred to as one of the most difficult and more frustrating dungeons in all of the Zelda franchise. However, there are plenty of changes to the Temple this time around to help sooth the experience and actually make it very enjoyable.

One of the new inclusions to help ease the difficulty is the addition of thick colored lines on some of the walls and doors. These colorful lines come in green, red, and blue, and are meant to guide Link towards the various locations in the Temple where Link can raise or lower the water level. There are three locations of these in total within the Water Temple and each of them raises or the lowers the water level to a particular level. Likewise, each of these three locations is allocated one of the three colors. During my playthrough, I did see these colored lines and at first I wasn’t sure what they were for. However, after following along the pathway, I did reach one of the familiar royal family symbols and after playing Zelda’s Lullaby, the water level was lowered all the way down to the ground level. If you click the screen shot to the left, you’ll get an even better idea of what this looks like within the game.

While just a very minor addition, I think this will be very helpful for gamers who are brand new to the franchise. I’m sure some of the core fans of Ocarina of Time will feel this is a feature that Nintendo has included to ‘dumb’ down the game, but it hardly seems like such. I actually like it and think that its benefits are important to newer gamers, while it has very little downside. On a random note, the color scheme of the lines and their pathways through the water based rooms almost seem like an ode to the pipes found within the Great Bay Temple of Majora’s Mask.

That wasn’t the only thing that was changed in the Water Temple. One of the biggest gripes that many fans had about the Water Temple was the need to repeatedly pause the game, go into the inventory, put on the iron boots, and then continue the quest. Having to do this dozens and dozens of times made it a very frustrating experience. Thankfully this issue has been completely remedied now that the Iron Boots are an equippable item. Much like the Hookshot or Boomerang, the Iron Boots can now be equipped to any of the item slots. Additionally, this time around there are now FOUR item slots where you can hold items, and this doesn’t even include the Ocarina which has its own slot. So really, FIVE different items can be equipped.

During my playthrough I had the Iron Boots equipped to the touch screen II button at lower-right corner of the bottom screen. This was very convenient as it was very smooth to just slide over my thumb and touch the button to equip the Iron Boots. The button is large enough and convenient enough where you do not even need to use the Nintendo 3DS Stylus at all. In fact, after a few times putting on and taking off the iron boots, I was able to do this without even having to glance at the bottom screen. It had already gotten engrained in me that I can just touch the button and the iron boots were instantly equipped.

Ocarina of Time 3DS Dark Link Overall, long time fans of Ocarina of Time are going to be greatly pleased once they experience the new inventory controls in Ocarina of Time 3D. It’s definitely going to be one of those things that once you play it on the 3DS, going back to the Nintendo 64 or GameCube inventory screens is going to seem incredibly slow. I was really shocked at how fluid the gameplay was. Really, there was absolutely no interruption at all as you never even needed to pause the game. Simple parts in the Water Temple that I found annoying back in the N64 version were now significantly easier, and in turn more fun due to the control scheme. It’s really a small detail, but it makes quite the impact on the overall experience of the Temple.

Unfortunately I didn’t play the Temple long enough to get to the mini-boss battle with Dark Link, but from what I did play, everything else was exactly as it was back 13 years ago on the Nintendo 64. I’ll have a bit more information on my experience with the graphics, the controls, the 3d effect, and other tidbits in my full hands on preview of Ocarina of Time 3D. So be sure to stay tuned! Until then, be sure to let us know what you think about these changes to the Water Temple by posting in the comments below.

UPDATE: A Hands on video of gameplay has been uploaded and it can be seen just below.