13 years later this console masterpiece makes an almost perfect transition into a modern handheld game.
The game starts off well, you have a vast world to explore, secrets to find, things to collect (which could greatly aid you on your quest), and are pretty much left on your own except for (your fairy) Navi who will hint things throughout the main quest. The Ocarina is used a lot in this game but most places it's needed the game pretty much lets you know with visual indicators.
It's a really fun and lively world to explore, you'll be remembering things in certain places to go back to it after you've found a new item to see what use it could be, this game is definitely best played if you have a lot of times to invest as doing so will benefit your character, such as getting more heart pieces to increase your maximum health. The size of the world, whilst big 13 years ago, is now average, if not small for the type of game it is. Hyrule feels empty with just a few things to do in it, most will be done in the towns.
And the game is split into two really, kid Link and adult Link. When you're adult Link you have pretty much seen 90% of the outer world, there is only another small section to see, the rest of what is new are the dungeons and how the world changed itself, but you will spend most time going from dungeon to dungeon and little else to see. Some dungeons will leave you scratching your head, you have to play around in this to find out what you have to do, if you find the map+compass then they are okay to deal with. Once you finish a dungeon there's no reason to go back, and you have seen the world already so really you just go to the next dungeon... and there are many dungeons. I was left wanting to explore more but that took a while and it was only that 10% which was left.
However it's cool being able to do things you couldn't do when exploring as kid Link. Some parts require you to go back and fourth between time though it wasn't utilised that much.
The combat is nice and responsive, the enemies themselves are pretty easy to beat, the harder ones just take more patience rather than skill to beat. You get a lot of items in this game, which can then be used for specific circumstances, some to kill enemies, some to get around you environment, and it always feels good. However it goes back to this game being 13 years old; the was and reason for getting items doesn't make sense, and it doesn't have to, but sometimes I was just left wondering: "wait, why do I get this for doing this, what reason!?". Also some items are very dungeon specific and will go almost unused, other items feel like they should have been handled in a different way.
The music in this game is beautiful, you will be remembering many symphonies in your head, nothing bad can be said about this.
The bosses are pretty disappointing. Too easy you just have to find out a routine and that's about it, once you've worked out the routing and the weak spots you should have little problem with any of the bosses. They're not very dynamic.
All in all it's a great game which has made a great transition into a handheld game, however being a remake of an older game certain points stand out which by today's standards have improved. This game is brilliant, I would recommend it to any 3DS owner, brilliant from the beginning; I was just let down later into adult Links adventure.