We're only days away from the release of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time's remake, and the pressure is quietly mounting. Metacritic has just offered a first clue as to when critics will be allowed to publish their reviews, and players clearly won't have much time to read them before reaching for their wallets. The embargo should lift in the middle of next week, most likely on Wednesday 4 November — the day before the game arrives on Switch 2 on 5 November. It's a familiar pattern at Nintendo, which has already followed this schedule for several of its previous major releases.
The review aggregator didn't give a precise time, but it did invite players to keep an eye out midweek. Reviews for Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild and Echoes of Wisdom all landed the day before launch as well. So we'll have to wait a few more days to find out whether this new version of Ocarina of Time manages to win over the specialist press. The pressure is all the greater given that the original, released on Nintendo 64, holds an exceptional average of 99% on Metacritic. To this day, it remains the highest-rated game on the platform.
Matching such a score will be a particularly tall order, since Nintendo's remakes and remasters tend to end up with lower averages than their original versions. Ocarina of Time 3D, released on 3DS in 2011, picked up a solid 94 — five points below the N64 game. Link's Awakening on Switch dropped to 87%, against 90% for the Game Boy version, and Skyward Sword HD saw an even sharper fall, going from 93 to 81%. These comparisons obviously don't tell the whole story about the quality of the work done, but they give an idea of the expectations surrounding this new version.
Early impressions following the press previews have been encouraging, however, and several elements have been praised — starting with the visuals, which have been extensively reworked, with more detailed environments and lighting that gives the kingdom of Hyrule a fresh face. The controls have evolved too, since Link can now jump manually and benefit from a modernised control scheme. Nintendo has also lined up several new features around the ocarina, which will be able to respond to melodies hummed by the player or played on a real instrument. The cutscenes will also feature voice acting, a change that should add another dimension to certain iconic scenes.
In short, with a Nintendo 64 landmark in its hands, the Switch 2 can't afford to slip up. See you on 4 November, in principle, for the press's first scores. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
