// KOTAKU — GAMING
10 Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Tips For The First-Time Player
Nintendo Switch 2The Legend of ZeldaThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
A happy Zelda weekend to you all! While a lot of us are going into this latest Zelda release confident and comfortable in our ancient (or, in my case, recent) knowledge of how to play Ocarina of Time, this game is 28 whole years old and there are many, many people who have never played it, don’t remember it, or weren’t even alive when it came out. And whew, this is a very different Zelda game than some of the more recent ones!
So I put together some tips for you all. Hopefully at least a few of them help you have a smoother adventure in Hyrule this weekend. Enjoy the ride, folks, this one’s a hell of a classic:
In Kokiri Forest, when you first get control of Link, you can immediately head out of your house and down the path to the left to reach the Know-It-Alls. The characters inside the house will give you some useful tips, while the fellow outside will show you some basic combat moves including rolling and dodging. He’ll then point you in the direction of a sword, after which point you can return and learn how to do the mighty jump attack (more on that momentarily). These are (almost) all of the combat moves you’ll need to know for the whole game, so it’s good to master them early.
The jump attack is powerful, doing double the damage of a regular swing. It’s also a little tricky to execute, requiring two button inputs instead of just one…seemingly. You can actually also do this move by tilting forward on the control stick (while targeting) and just pressing A. I recommend doing the attack this way, and I recommend using this attack a lot.
Everyone in Hyrule wants you to follow the main story path. They are, in fact, very worried you’ll miss it. So you’ll constantly hear NPCs directing you: go to the Great Deku Tree! Go to Hyrule Castle! Well…maybe don’t. At least, not right away. Ocarina of Time has tons of secrets, items, and just generally stuff to do that isn’t on the main path, so don’t feel obligated to stick to it. Even in Kokiri Forest, there are extra items you can obtain early if you just wander around for a while. You also can (and should!) backtrack to areas you’ve previously visited at just about any time!
Once you reach Castle Town, you’ll start to run into minigames. Ocarina of Time has a lot of them, and many are located in shops off the square. In some Zelda games, you don’t really need to do the minigames on offer, and technically that’s true in this one. But I recommend you at least give them a whirl. Some of them have great rewards, like bigger storage bags for certain items, or empty bottles. Don’t be afraid to goof off a little on your adventure!
Which, speaking of empty bottles. these are by far your most precious resource. Get as many as you can as soon as you can. If someone’s got a bottle for you, drop everything and do what they say. Empty bottles are used to hold all sorts of things: items you need for quests and to unlock secret paths, potions to refill your health, and fairies that can revive you automatically if you die. There are a total of five empty bottles in the game: try to get them all!
It can be tempting to just hack and slash your way to victory in Ocarina of Time, but some enemies aren’t so easily taken down. If you’re struggling, it’s good to test out some of your other items on enemies and see which, if any, have an effect. You might be surprised what a well-placed hookshot or boomerang can do, or what you can accomplish with some Deku Nuts. A lot of enemies can be stunned, knocked away, or even killed from a distance, no close combat required.
I mean, really, you should just do this anyway. The writing in Ocarina of Time is often silly and worth reading on its own, but characters you speak to will also frequently give you hints about what to do next, or even about secrets you may not have found otherwise. Characters will also adjust their dialogue over time depending on what is going on in the game, so