(Tl;dr video companion to this article):

If one predicates themselves on Stoic philosophy, they will be all the better at steeling themselves for the days when it feels like the whole world is against them…


…cause those days are often just right around the corner

Continuing on from where we left off, we had successfully acquired the second spiritual stone, putting a wrap on Death Mountain (for the time being), and made our way to Zora’s Domain, to obtain the third and final key to the Temple of Time: the Zora’s Sapphire. Err…we eventually did that, anyways. In good Zelda fashion, we casually dinked around Hyrule Field for a bit, while then living up the night life in Hyrule Castle Town, stopping by Lon Lon Ranch for some sightseeing excursions….AND then we headed towards Zora’s Domain. It wouldn’t truly be a Zelda experience if one didn’t get detoured, distracted, and derailed almost every step of the way, and I’m not sure there is a better experience that embodies the old adage “Progress is never linear” than fucking off somewhere and doing anything but the main quest in a Zelda game: It’s an old Hyrule tradition.


These masks aren’t going to sell themselves, folks

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed my session with the Ocarina of Time Remake (OoTR) this day, most of my waking hours have carried with it sort of a down beat kind of vibe to it, so attempting to conjure up excitement and creativity at the moment is a forced effort, not going to lie. It’s so bizarre, as the days I wake up early and get a head start on everything usually seem to be the days where the second half of the day just starts totally shitting the bed mood wise. I know this doesn’t have anything to do with Zelda, I’m just writing out loud here. The rare moments I’m unable to completely focus on my deep dives into games, Active Time Event transforms into a self-help, reflective journaling exercise, which helps declutter the mind a bit, though that just puts chaos into a state of catalogued sequencing, so now everything is tamely ripping through space and time, so there’s more rationality to the insanity involved.


It’s uncertain moments like these I input my symptoms into a search engine to find out what the hell is wrong with me. Google tells me it’s mad snail disease; I’m inclined to agree

This is another part of the game where on my first play through, I think I went more than a little hog wild, in re-traversing the entirety of Hyrule, as the acquisition of bombs in any Zelda game is a big deal, as one now has access to any number of secret areas to uncover. I’ve refined my adventuring habits in the past 28 years, however, and will save my more random perusing for the 100% till after I see the credits roll, so I can retrace my steps to see what I missed in one fail swoop. With that said, and after acquiring Epona’s Song for future safekeeping, I observed that while Zora’s River looks a lot more domineering due to the ridiculously gorgeous water effects, it structurally remained the same, so the “added challenge” of said trek was more or less just an atmospheric enhancement of the rage that the river provided. My next comparison is obviously not the exact same thing, but the notion that the difficulty lies in a sleight of hand trick with the illusion of danger and failure with just one wrong move, reminds me of the chase scene from Heavy Rain, where you can fail basically every QTE with nothing but hilarious consequences that ensue, and transforms what is a serious crime thriller into a slapstick comedy routine.


This screenshot from IGN doesn’t even begin to do it justice, but this is one of the more tame moments and just gets zanier from there

Outside of the byproduct of the water in the remake looking mighty fine, Zora’s Domain definitely got the least amount of thoughtful makeover of all the locales thus far, with…nearly nothing changed, so yeah, that’s a choice I suppose. The fish you can buy from the Zora Store doesn’t cost 300 rupees anymore, which never really mattered to begin with, cause one is able to catch fish right outside the store for free, amongst a myriad of locations where they are located elsewhere, so it’s whatever either way. One obtains a fourth bottle by finding Ruto’s message that it holds, cause this game just gives out bottles as if it was sponsored by the “Big Bottle” industry, where as I feel like the bottle situation represented more of a hard to get, sought after treasure of sorts in both the original Ocarina, and other Zelda games, too. Certainly not the case here, anyways, and I feel as if the cheap regularity of how often one is able to get one makes me care progressively less about each subsequent one I easily acquire.


Here I am, checking a chest to see if it has any more fucks left to give cause I’m clean out

King Zora still moves hilariously slow, which is a weird moment of reprieve for me: after they made Kaepora less annoying by removing the “Did you get all that?” question that has the strategically fucked placement of the yes and no options, I was worried they would also deprive me of the gratuitously long Zora shuffle the King does in allowing you to reach Jabu Jabu, but it remains, in all of its absurdly long glory. Just like in the case of the Saria’s Song usage with Darunia, if one is not paying close enough attention, it’s possible an individual will stand in front of Jabu Jabu scratching their head on how to proceed, but since this ain’t our first rodeo, we drop a slimy lunker right in front of him, and get sucked into dungeon number 3,


I’d say this is going to suck, but I feel like that’s already implied…

Due to the increase in graphical fidelity, Jabu Jabu is decidedly more…juicy this time around, which fair enough, you are inside a gigantic whale thing: a damp environment makes a robust amount of sense in the grand scheme of things. Just the living, breathing, and generally more organic feel of the dungeon adds a lot of ick to the nth degree gross out factor to it on some level, so mission accomplished in going for something more unsettling. I feel as if they did a lot of work in smoothing out the rough bits of the inside of Jabu Jabu this time around, as the escort quest with Princes Ruto always seemed to go south quickly, which led to a lot of awkward repetition if one wasn’t careful. This is made further absurd that if she was dropped into deep enough water, she would vanish and respawn back where you originally got her, which like, you know…shes a Zora: the water is suppose to be her god damn thing. Someone on the dev team must have similarly realized the irony there, and now Ruto is easily able to just jump out of the water, like any properly equipped aquatic humanoid mammal should be able to.


This is the kind of moment someone you know walks in on you playing this game and starts to draw some serious conclusions about what kind of kinky shit you’re secretly into

The Giantic Octorock mini boss was nerfed, as the way he was in the original was quite mechanical visually, and they likely didn’t want to make it look that robotic, but with the change comes a massive decrease in challenge, which in terms of what the bosses need in this game, is pretty much the last thing one wants to hear. The final boss Barinade also seemed like a pushover, where as I remember a more hectic exchange in earlier incarnations? Not sure if it’s Link’s increased mobility with projectiles or not, but overall, Jabu Jabu became laughably manageable overall, which is…ehh.


I wish the entire level played as cool as it looks

With that in the bag, it is just about that time to get frozen for seven years while Ganondorf seizes a divine relic of immense wish granting power, while we freeze the only hero capable of stopping him in the equivalent of a cryogenic sleep, leaving Hyrule totally and utterly defenseless and vulnerable to the horrific might of a tyrannical warlock….

....wait, what?

~Pashford