In conclusion: if you're playing Ocarina of Time in current year and feel like you're spending too much time waiting for enemies to attack, try a deku nut. I know you have a full inventory of them and they're strong against practically everything. Navi will never tell you to nut but I will.

I don't think that's a bad thing, necessarily, although I think it sometimes leads to your item collection feeling weak and useless, which can become a problem in its own right.

You want the cool legendary sword to feel strong, but you also want the player to feel excited about finding new gear!

Interestingly, later Zelda games have tended to simply make the swordplay stronger! Whether it's Wind Waker's parry button (still involves waiting lmao), Twilight Princess' sword techniques. Skyward Sword has nearly its ENTIRE focus on motion plus swordplay over item use!

So this kinda boils Ocarina's combat down to two essential flaws:

1. Sword-and-shield combat, while reliable, tends to be slow

2. The game never tells you this, at least for most enemies, despite having a designated "give me a hint" mechanic

This is notable because, by contrast, part of the Zelda power fantasy is "being a cool swordsman adventurer"

You WANT to fight enemies with your sword and shield because they're cool, but it turns out the sword and shield are one of your weakest options, creating a conflict of interest.

One last key difference is that the power beam: kinda sucks actually!

The charge beam gives Samus a consistent, reliable weapon much like Link's sword, but it's slow and unwieldy to use and you quickly learn that it's more of a fallback for when you're out of missiles (much like in 2D)

It achieves this a few ways:
- very first thing the game makes you do is scan some locks to progress
- first boss also gets its weakness exposed by a scan
- scanning unlocks permanent logbook entries, for completion

Players learn early on that they can and should scan their surroundings often.

For one, Metroid's scans tend to give much more pertinent information; in particular they often use keywords that indicate an enemy or structure is weak to one of your weapons.

Maybe more importantly, though, the scan visor makes you WANT to use it.

The Scan Visor, at surface level, provides similar utility to Navi; it gives you info about scanned enemies and highlights interactible elements in the world around you.

It also helps provide lore and connect, since Samus tends to lack colorful NPCs to chat with on her quest.

So what's different?

A comparison I like to make, albeit maybe unfair due to a difference in console generations, is Metroid Prime. Both games are a character's first foray into 3D, both have an iconic primary weapon with an arsenal of other options, and both importantly have a built in hint system.

Trouble is... that advice is frequently "watch the enemy carefully! Attack when it drops its guard!"

Oops, so we're back to square 1. The game's own hint system is telling you that yes, you should just be patiently awaiting an opportunity, not to mention many players just avoid using Navi...

The idea of Navi is supposed to be that you can consult her when you're struggling with something, all well and good. You can use her to check any enemy and they all have a unique description; but, N64 being N64, you only have so much space, so each enemy gets a short, one-line quip.

So it's a skill issue then? "People who complain about OoT combat just don't know how to fight correctly?"

Nnnot quite. The problem becomes "why aren't these clever tricks made more clear to the player?" Which means there's kind of an elephant in the room, and she looks like this:

Easy answer is that Ocarina's enemies usually have some "trick" to them. Use the tools available to you in clever ways, suddenly fights are faster and more efficient.

"Patiently holding shield" is an ever-reliable fallback strategy, but generally slower than spending resources.

Conventional wisdom is that OoT's combat involves a lot of "targeting an enemy, holding your shield up, patiently waiting your turn to counterattack"

People who play the game a lot, like in speedruns or randomizers, might be inclined to disagree.

So obvious question is: why the disconnect?

Also: what's some of your hottest motives for vore u~u

Good answer yeah u//u