Lately I have decided to play Ocarina of Time: Master Quest. Considering this game was released free alongside pre-orders of The Wind Waker, and besides that, unlockable on Ocarina of Time 3D, most have never felt like they were paying for it; nobody is going to complain about free stuff. I have no issues with Master Quest really, it’s a decent recycling of Ocarina of Time. However, to get nit-picky, that is exactly what Master Quest’s biggest problem is: it’s just Ocarina of Time recycled, it could have been a lot more.
Eventually developers got the hang of adding decent expansions to games, like adding whole new lands to explore, new dungeons, new sidequests, etc… While Master Quest was originally completed in the late 90's under the name "Ura Zelda", we didn't get it until 2002. That likely played a part in why it fell short of its potential. The changed puzzles and enemies in areas where they weren't originally is a nice change to the game, but aside from having a new challenge, there is really no point to play Master Quest. I'm ok with the story being untouched, but adding extra NPCs with new side quests or something along those lines would have been appreciated. Adding some new dungeons or a new region of the map to explore would have been awesome. The entire point of Master Quest was to add more content to Ocarina of Time - it's called an expansion for a reason, afterall. The final product is more like a re-imagining of the base game than an expansion to it. Plus the game ended up being released on the Gamecube, looking at The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, they had a lot of space they could have worked with if they had moved production over to the console.
Master Quest is still a lot of fun as is, and it's for the best that Nintendo moved to other projects like Majora's Mask and The Wind Waker. Still, it may have been interesting to see what Master Quest could've become.
So, if Master Quest was more of a proper expansion, what kind of content would you like to see?
Eventually developers got the hang of adding decent expansions to games, like adding whole new lands to explore, new dungeons, new sidequests, etc… While Master Quest was originally completed in the late 90's under the name "Ura Zelda", we didn't get it until 2002. That likely played a part in why it fell short of its potential. The changed puzzles and enemies in areas where they weren't originally is a nice change to the game, but aside from having a new challenge, there is really no point to play Master Quest. I'm ok with the story being untouched, but adding extra NPCs with new side quests or something along those lines would have been appreciated. Adding some new dungeons or a new region of the map to explore would have been awesome. The entire point of Master Quest was to add more content to Ocarina of Time - it's called an expansion for a reason, afterall. The final product is more like a re-imagining of the base game than an expansion to it. Plus the game ended up being released on the Gamecube, looking at The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, they had a lot of space they could have worked with if they had moved production over to the console.
Master Quest is still a lot of fun as is, and it's for the best that Nintendo moved to other projects like Majora's Mask and The Wind Waker. Still, it may have been interesting to see what Master Quest could've become.
So, if Master Quest was more of a proper expansion, what kind of content would you like to see?