When I heard all the praises about Zelda 64, at first I didn't think any game would be as good as it was said to be. When I bought Zelda in christmas, I noticed I was wrong, Zelda did surprise me positively. Even here in Finland, where N64 isn't nearly as popular as PlayStation, Zelda 64 climbed up to the top on the MoonTV's TOP-10 chart for all formats. Zelda 64 has been in development for 3 years, with over 200 personnel Nintendo development team. Zelda is said to be the game of the decade, and I don't have anything to say against it. It's hard to find any game better than Zelda, but there's a few, at least Half-Life and Outcast on PC, which have gotten even close. The earlier Zelda games have been praised, but any other Zelda hasn't had the kind of attention as Zelda 64, the first installment on N64. I can't say much about other Zelda games, cause I've only played Zelda: Link's awakening (I'm not so sure about the name) on 8-bit Nintendo, which was a quite good but not remarkable game in my opinion. The plot isn't too original, actually it's almost the classic "Resque Princess" -style. If the plot doesn't pull your hair off, then the storyline will, or course I won't spoil your excitement by telling the story now, but let's just say it's one of the best storylines I've ever seen so far, though I haven't seen many adventure games.

At first I have to say it, Zelda is VERY addictive, no other game has kept me playing for three hours straight. More scary, for what I've heard I'm not the only one, or what do you say about IGN's reviewers, when they got their copy of Zelda 64, they stopped working and started playing Zelda, they said that the first gaming session took about 17 hours straight! Read it yourself on IGN64's site, you can also get there from my Links section. The game starts impressively indeed, the Deku tree, guardian of all Kokiri, has been cursed and summons for young Link, a Kokiri child without a fairy. Deku tree sends Navi the fairy to call Link to come by the tree and the adventure begins. I won't tell you anything else, because I don't want to be the one who spoils your gaming experience. Remember to read those other reviews with caution, cause they tend to tell you important thing about the storyline, which can be annoying and definitely spoils the idea of exploration in the game. You start your adventure as a young Kokiri child, but in one point your quest continues as an adult. When

Oh, they are so cute. With their big eyes and pointy ears, so Japanese, so brilliant.

you turn to an adult, the game becomes slightly darker and more difficult, you also get much more equipment when you're grown up. Roughly said, your mission is to collect various things from different kinds of dungeons and temples. Sometimes dungeons can get a little repetative, mostly because you always have to find certain things, for example the boss is always lurking behind a locked door, which you must open with The Boss Key. Little more room for surprises would have been nice. I think that's the biggest problem and you'll get used to it, so don't mind that too much. There's another quite big problem, that is if you're experienced gamer, those big bosses' are usually just too easy to defeat. For example the first big boss was more difficult than most of the bosses you meet as an adult. It's too easy to finish them off with the first try, and that is NOT a good thing.

The Ocarina of Time is a kind of clay flute, a flute with great magical powers, for example you can quickly warp to important places by playing the right notes. C- and A-buttons work as notes, with R and Z button you can lower and upper the notes, while you can pitch bend and add vibrations with the analog stick. It's fun just to try composing a nice song of your own. The Hyrule field is the main place where you can freely run or even ride a horse, the field itself is graphically astounding, there's no fog at all. Of course traveling would be extremely slow if the field would be in normal size, so it has been done a little smaller, but crossing it still takes at least a few minutes, the time in the field also runs faster. A bright day slowly darkens as the sun sets down, and the moon rises above the land of Hyrule. I think half the fun in adventure/RPG-games is exploring new places, in Zelda 64, you start from your own village, then you move on and find new villages and other interesting places. A slight disappointment was, that there's not enough villages to visit, and they could have been a little bigger. As Link gets older, he will learn various magical tricks, which will help him in his battle against evil powers. Magic arrows and other tricks use your mana, so you can't use them all the time. Unfortunately there's only three tricks plus the magical arrows, I would have hoped at least a few more.

Controlling Link has been done very intuitive and easy to learn, the most original idea in controls is the Z-targeting. Most of the time Z-button simply places the camera directly behind Link, this works perfectly and helps in small places. When you're looking at a monster or whatever, Navi turns yellow and flies near the enemy, then a simple press of the Z-button locks you on to the enemy. While Z-targeting, camera always shows your enemy and

Those poes just won't stop bugging you. This is the graveyard, spooky.

yourself at the same time, so you won't ever lose the enemy from your sight. Camera works very impressively throughout the game and it's very rare to find yourself beaten up because of the camera. Link's equipment are pretty cool and they are indeed very easy to use. Different weapons and other things can be placed on C-buttons, except for the upper C-button, which is used to get to 1st-person view. When you find a shield, you can use it with R-button, which handles like a dream. The B-button is mostly used to swing your sword. The game includes three different swords, one for the child and two for the adult Link. I won't teach you how to fight with the swords, but I'll tell you probably the most inportant trick with the swords. When you're locked on to an enemy, you can just point the analog stick to a direction and hit B-button at the same time, Link will swing the sword in that direction, and when you just press the action button (the A-button if you hadn't notice) and Link will jump and swing the sword with both hands causing twice as much damage. Swordfighting with a couple of big skeletons is pretty challenging, but when you master the techniques and controls, it should fairly simple task.

I've read it somewhere, that almost half of the time spent on developing Zelda 64, has gone in creating and fixing the 3D engine. When you see the Kokiri village and the Hyrule field for the first time, you'll notice that the time hasn't been wasted. Some places are simply huge and there's no fogging or even pop-up at all, truly amazing because it doesn't even support the memory expansion pak. Though it might be inevitable, that 3D-engines of such games as Perfect Dark and Donkey Kong 64, will probably even better the graphics, Zelda has one of the best graphics engine on any console (outcluding Dreamcast, of course). Of course Zelda's graphics won't beat PC games, so it may not be so breathtaking to see Zelda if you already own the newest Pentium III's. Some of the dungeons may not look too good, but the framerate is at least fluent, and that's more important. Sometimes framerate is a bit choppy,

This is Saria, Link's best friend. She will help you in many ways during your quest.

but that's very rare and it doesn't affect the gameplay at all. All the special effects are nice, except of those explosion, which are nowhere near as pretty as they were in GoldenEye. Most importantly, graphics really work, especially those big bosses are quite good-looking.

I think the greatest improvement in the sounds department is the Surround Sound, you won't need those Dolby Surround speakers or whatever, you need only headsets. Sometimes it even helps you to locate enemies, i.e. if a flying bat attacks from above, you rarely have any idea where is it, with surround sound you can easily fend off the bat or just run away. But after a while, you'll get used to it and you won't even notice it. The musics in the game are very atmospheric and really fit to the backround, alas in some dungeons the "music" is just a few hummings here and there and won't kick you off the chair with the melody. There are a few quite good melodies in the songs that you play with the ocarina, but there's at least one song that impressed me, it's kind of a mexican style of music, and would fit Zorro anytime.

It looks like I have a tendency to find every downside of any game, so if you're now thinking not to buy Zelda, you're on the wrong trails. The game takes so long to beat, even if you would be a hardcore gamer who completes every game in just a few days, you won't get this game completed in less than a week, unless you use those jerky walkthroughs. I don't get to play my Nintendo64 very often, so I've owned Zelda64 for more than half a year and I

Zelda 64 includes also pre-rendered backrounds where you can run around freely, just like in the Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark -series.

haven't still played it through. From what I've heard, Zelda takes approximately 40-100 hours to complete and I don't even doubt it. On the downside, I dont believe Zelda64 has much of replayability, because it's just can't be so exciting when you know exactly what happens next. Even though Zelda64 is the best game I've played on any console, it doesn't mean it will be the best game of the century. PlayStation games aren't the real competitors against Zelda, but as we all know, best games are made for PC, usually. Against PC games it has to compete with such great games as Half-Life, which I really do like from what I've heard and played, and most of all System Shock 2, Ultima Ascension and Outcast. And I very much doubt even Final Fantasy VIII on PSX can beat Zelda64, as the best console game of the century. If you really want to know how much would have I given to Zelda using the scale from 0 to 100, it would be about 96 points, not bad at all for a console game.

Gameplay: 5/5
Graphics: 4/5
Sounds: 4/5
Lastability: 4/5

Overall:


Reviewed by: Janne "Blizzardic" Mankila

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