Ocarina of Time on Switch 2: Nintendo Life, Skill Up and Digital Foundry find a safe, beautiful remake

Nintendo Life: the safe remake

Nintendo Life's video, adapted from Ollie Reynolds' written review on Nintendo Life's site, gives the game 9/10. Most of the praise is for small changes with large effects. The new jump button, the review says, gives you far more control over Link without changing where you jump, and putting the Iron Boots on the D-pad makes equipping them in the Water Temple a lot more intuitive. Voice acting in key cutscenes is, in the review's words, some of the best heard in a first-party Nintendo game in quite some time.

The deductions are specific. Keeping the game at 60fps in handheld mode costs some image quality: distant scenery looks overly smooth and there's shimmering when the camera pans. The written review notes the game allows only one manual save alongside autosaves. And the absence of Master Quest is called "a real bummer", because the remake sticks so closely to the original that veterans will "breeze through". Nintendo Life's own summary is that this is a remarkable remake but "a very safe" one.

Digital Foundry: the engine and the compromise

Digital Foundry's tech review, presented by John Linneman, goes back to the start, with a look at the N64 original's 20fps cap and the 3DS version, before arriving at the remake. The chapter list gives away the headline complaint before the video says a word about it: "Engine Technology & FSR1?!". The remake's upscaling is the weak point, set against a lighting overhaul and a frame-rate test that the video covers in detail. The description sums the whole thing up as a remake that "does not disappoint, aside from one or two minor issues".

That puts Digital Foundry and Nintendo Life on the same seam. Both like what the remake looks like up close and both flag what happens at a distance or in motion.

Skill Up: who it's for

Skill Up's review, titled "I strongly recommend", is the one that asks the more interesting question. The video's description says the game was perfect 28 years ago and "even more perfect" now, "though who it's perfect for has changed considerably". The review treats the manual jump as a fairly minor addition because the dungeons were never built around it, and it also flags visual artefacts on fine detail. Its closing argument is that the remake's real value is letting older players share the game with a younger generation.

That closing section is what Skill Up's commenters responded to most. The mood under the video is overwhelmingly warm, with many viewers saying they plan to play it with children or younger relatives. Digital Foundry's commenters mostly joked about the return of FSR1 and praised the fog effects, while Nintendo Life's audience was mostly counting down to launch and hoping Master Quest arrives in an update.

What the three reviews add up to

Put the three together and the picture is consistent. The remake changes little structurally, polishes almost everything on the surface, and pays for a steady 60fps with image quality that all three reviews flag in some form. Nintendo Life and Skill Up both suggest, in different words, that veterans are not the main audience.

My read, and it's inference rather than anything Nintendo has said, is that this shows how Nintendo now approaches remakes of its most important games: protect the design, modernise the friction, and aim the result at players meeting it for the first time. The missing Master Quest fits that reading. A hard mode is a gift to the existing audience, and this remake wasn't built for them first.

Verdict: Going by these reviews, it's the version to give a newcomer, and the one to buy if you've never finished Ocarina of Time. If you know the Water Temple by heart, Nintendo Life's "very safe" is the phrase to weigh: you'll get a beautiful, faster-moving copy of a game you've already beaten, with a soft image in handheld mode and no Master Quest yet.