The Legend of Zelda - Part 1: The Great Deku Tree

Before I review, critique, and summarize this particular game, it must preface everything with the following:  I did not like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when I first played it.  With that in mind, let me discuss why I decided to play through Ocarina of Time (OoT):

Earlier this year, I loudly denounced a good friend's choice of video games, based exclusively off of his love for Zelda.  When he asked me for a better game within the same genre, I was hard pressed to think of one.  It would be deplorable for me to maintain this position without revisiting this series.

My plan for this series of reviews, is to play through the game, briefly summarizing the plot points, and noting the good, the bad, and the ugly.

This is how I imagine many people remember Mr. Deku

The Start:
You are Link: a Kakari boy.  The Kakari are a peculiar people.  What is most odd about them is that they each have a fairy companion; each of them except Link.  Link does not have a fairy companion.  The opening sequence to the game shows this fairiless boy plagued by nightmares.

The Great Deku Tree sends Navi the fairy to fetch Link the Fairiless because only Link has the ability to stop the evil causing these nightmares.  In total, you spend about 2 minutes fairiless in the game, but what little dialog there is in Karkiri Village is used to underline "Whoa, Link has a fairy now!"  It's an effective technique, and I actually don't mind Navi incessant need to talk -- usually.

The first half hour of the game can be summarized by: here's an informal tutorial to hopefully disguise the fact that this is really just a tutorial.  You're sent to the Deku Tree.  Whoops, can't go without a sword and shield, better find those.  Unfortunately, the game does not give you so much as one hint as to where to find these things.  So, you wander around the village, talking to everyone, hoping one of them will just happen to have a spare sword you can have.  When that doesn't happen, you wrestle with the camera (which they do not tell you how to properly align until later) and eventually find your sword.  I don't mind that the game starts with a fetch quest, but the designers could have done a better job at providing some direction here.


The Deku Tree:

Me Deku Tree.  Deku Tree is sad.

And, of course, someone made one in Minecraft.  Arguably, a better looking one.

Once you're properly equipped, you can finally go meet The Deku Tree.  Oh no, it appears that Mr. Deku has had a curse placed upon him!  Being the strapping young lad you are, you're the obvious choice to enter his mouth and fight the curse.  This is where we get our first taste of battle.  This is no D&D adventure, so you can bet we're not going to be fighting any rats.  Oh, no sir -- it'll be much more dangerous than that.  You'll be fighting: 

Nobody cared about me, until I put on the mask.

That's right.  Our mighty hero - the supposed savior of the world - fighting oversized venus flytraps, and spiders.  Everyone's got to start somewhere, I suppose.  I genuinely believe that the designers spent much more time on the Deku Tree than they did with Kokiri Village.  The tree serves very well for a first dungeon.  You start at the bottom, fighting small plants and picking up sticks, but as you explore you obtain new weapons and items, and the game nicely introduces each one without overwhelming you.  While it is still a tutorial, it allows more interesting exploration than the village did, and everyone likes slashing things.  It begs the question, what was the point of wandering through the village for an hour, if they could have just as easily started you here?

Above all else, Ocarina of Time is an exploration game.  When you realize how to get through the spider web at the bottom of the tree, you do get a genuine feeling of accomplishment for figuring it out.  The game didn't hand you hints on a silver platter; you're encouraged to look around and engage with your environment.  Another good example of this are the Golden Skultantulas -- there are three (at least three that I found) hidden in the tree, and it's hinted that collecting these skulls may give you rewards later on in the game.  The reason you start in a village and given little direction is because this is as close to an open-world exploration game that 1998 could come up with.  It does it not terribly.

Gohma:
Once you fight, climb, burn, and wander your way through Mr. Deku, you eventually find the Source of the Curse: Gohma -- our first boss.


As far as boss battles goes, this one plays out the way you would expect a first one to -- it climbs about, looking menacing, and occasionally attacks you.  The game telegraphs each of Gohma's attacks, so the actual danger here is minimal.  This is okay, because this boss provides the players with one final lesson from Mr. Deku -- there is a strategy to beating bosses; don't just run up and slash them, find their weakness first.  It's an important lesson to learn.

The Lifting of the Curse:
And with that, the curse is lifted.  But wait, it turns out that it was too little, too late.  Mr. Deku literally says that the entire venture was doomed before it began -- the curse has done too much damage, and he is dying.  This is my only complaint so far -- what is the point of this plot then?  To obtain the Kokiri's Emerald?  He could have just spit it out to begin with, rather than have my wander through tree-innards to get it.

One plausible explanation would be that if I had not rid Mr. Deku of his curse, it could have spread to the rest of the forest/village, but the game provides no real justification for this -- so I'm making up my own reason, because God knows I do not want to spend 1-2 hours for absolutely nothing to have happened in the plot.  

In Summary:
So far, the game has provided a good adventuring platform, filled with dangers and secrets -- all the things you would want.  Mechanically, the camera is a bit fiddly, and jumping around is annoying at best.  However, it gets slack for those things because, let's face it, it was 1998 -- they didn't really believe in slow-walks then.  The game does earn kudos for implementing a not-terrible lock&aim system to compensate for the otherwise mediocre camera.  So, so far, so good.