u/Urass007

Before I say anything, I think Ocarina of Time is great. Design wise it's the quintessential 3D Zelda that the other games have failed to capture in some aspects, the plot is interesting and provides some nice world-building to Hyrule.

However is it the greatest game of all time? Not even close.

Firstly, the game has graphically aged really badly. Some textures look ugly, especially the ReDeads and in Jabu Jabu's Belly and most of them have not aged well at all. I think the lighting is decent especially in the Ganon fight and the Temple of Time but apart from those and a couple of other spots the game looks bad. It's even worse when Banjo-Kazooie, Metal Gear Solid and Crash Bandicoot all looked much better with more appealing textures. The console is capable of much more.

Secondly, while I think many sections of the game are designed very well, there's also a lot of tedious and irritating sections of the game. Water Temple and Jabu Jabu's Belly involve a lot of back and forth, item swapping and carrying that makes both dungeons rather tedious. I like the idea of Jabu Jabu's Belly and the dungeon is fine otherwise, but it had a lot of wasted potential. Water Temple is infamously bad and I agree with it being the worst dungeon in the game.

I also think the adult dungeons had a bit of wasted potential theming wise. They might have been going for a childlike adventure for the child dungeons, but that section also had quite a few intimidating and dark moments, so I'm not sure if it was the intention. Calling the adult temples by generic names like "Fire Temple" and "Water Temple" is rather boring and unimaginative, especially since the put a lot of effort into theming the child dungeons. The dungeons by themselves are mostly fine, but I don't like the inconsistencies.

There's probably more criticisms I have including item management but yeah I'm not a fan of people who blindly call Ocarina one of the greatest games of all time when I think a good few games have surpassed it in quality.

I am referring to just the N64 version. The 3DS fixes a lot of issues with the original although it is in need of a graphical upgrade. I rather see people appreciate that version over a great, but still outdated N64 version. Maybe a remake can elevate Ocarina into the GOAT status, but we'll see what happens with that.