Playing Ocarina Of Time As An Adult Made Me Realize We Were Wrong About The Water Temple

Having recently replayed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Nintendo Switch Online, I realized that my impressions of the Water Temple had changed since I originally played. Back in grade school when my friends and I were first attempting to beat the Water Temple, it was notorious for being a very difficult dungeon. At the time, it even made me give up on the game for a while because I just couldn’t seem to crack it.

For years, I didn’t really question my assumption that the Water Temple was a difficult dungeon. For me and others around my age, it just seemed to be an accepted truth that the Water Temple was too hard, and I never really questioned it for a while. Revisiting the game as an adult – an adult who has also played through most of FromSoftware’s Souldborne games – I still hate the Water Temple, but I don’t think it’s as difficult as we remember.

Why Everyone Hated The Water Temple

The Temple Requires Players To Jump Through Many Hoops

There is a lot going on in the Water Temple that made players hate it when Ocarina of Time first came out. First, there was adjusting the water level. If you messed up and adjusted the water level without checking all the rooms on a specific floor, you would have to adjust it back and try again. Adjusting the water level wasn’t something you could do at will, instead, it had to be done by playing Link’s ocarina at specific points in the temple, resulting in a lot of backtracking.

Another reason players hated the Water Temple was the Iron Boots. Players needed to wear the Iron Boots to sink to the bottom of the water and walk around. However, a lot of rooms require players to switch between walking and swimming. That meant taking the boots on and off multiple times just to traverse a single room.

This wouldn’t have been too big a deal, except the Iron Boots needed to be equipped and unequipped in the start menu. This meant when trying to get through a single room, players would often have to take a few steps, open the pause menu, take off the boots, swim a few feet, then open the menu again to put the boots on. If that was exhausting to read, I promise you it is worse to do it over and over again while trying to play.

Thankfully, the 3DS Remake of Ocarina of Time changed this, so the Iron Boots could be put on and off using the same keybindings as normal items like Link’s bow or the Hookshot. Playing that version of the game makes the Water Temple much more palatable, and also makes going back to the original feel way worse. While the Water Temple in the N64 version is rightly hated, I’m not so sure it’s actually difficult.

Is The Original Water Temple Really That Hard?

The Original Water Temple Wasn’t Truly Difficult

The reason the Water Temple gained a reputation for being more difficult than the typical Zelda dungeons comes down to how solving a Zelda dungeon typically works. In any dungeon, players start out with a finite area they can explore without finding a key, or a new item to help them advance. All a player has to do is explore each room available to them thoroughly, as it’s guaranteed something in those rooms will help them move forward.

The Water Temple works the same way but adds a twist. The ability to adjust the water level in the dungeon puts the onus of what areas are available on the player. Unlike other dungeons, where players can simply see which rooms they have and haven’t been to, the Water Temple requires players to revisit the same rooms at different water levels. This means if players are solving the dungeon through trial and error, it will take longer simply because there are more combinations to try.

While this certainly makes the Water Temple feel harder than other Zelda dungeons, I would argue that it isn’t actually that much more difficult. The same basic strategy for solving the dungeon works. I don’t think that the Water Temple is hard, instead, it’s just tedious.

The Water Temple Isn’t Hard, It’s Just Frustrating

The Water Temple Takes Time But Now Much Effort

I think there is a somewhat unfair conflation between games that are difficult and ones that are frustrating. The distinction I would make is that, if a game is difficult, the difficult part will eventually become easy once it has been mastered. Let me explain by way of a non-Zelda example.

The first Soulsbourne game I played from start to finish was Bloodborne. When I first started, I was dying left and right to pretty much every enemy in Central Yharnam. However, now that I’ve played the entire game a few times, Central Yharnam is a breeze. I can confidently go from the beginning area to Father Gascoigne without dying, even to the Wolf Beast that is meant to initially kill me. Although Bloodborne was difficult for me at first, it became much simpler once I had learned how to play.

In contrast, players can’t really get better at finishing the Water Temple. Sure, they can memorize the puzzles which could cut down on some of the time, but they are still going to have to raise and lower the water level and constantly take the Iron Boots on and off. The most frustrating parts of the Water Temple never go away, no matter how good players are at Ocarina of Time, because it isn’t actually difficult. The frustration comes not from a lack of skill on the player’s part but from the tedious design of the dungeon.

Zelda Games Haven’t Always Got Dungeons Right

The Water Temple Isn’t The Only Frustrating Zelda Dungeon

I love a lot of Zelda dungeons, and I’m a little disappointed that Breath of the Wild may have killed the series’ traditional approach to 3D dungeons. The thrill of traversing Twilight Princess’ City in the Sky with the Double Clawshot is one of the series’ highs for me. That said, the Water Temple isn’t unique in being frustrating and tedious. The series has occasionally stumbled in its dungeon design, leading to several frustrating Zelda dungeons similar to Ocarina of Time’s soggy hole in the ground.

A Link to the Past’s Ice Palace is notoriously frustrating as well. Players struggle to move, and attacking an enemy often sends Link shooting backward across the icy floor into a trap. Some players resort to standing still in doorways where there is no ice and just shooting ranged attacks until they hopefully clear out a room.

Right after Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask introduced another watery dungeon with a lot of backtracking: Great Bay Temple. Then there’s Skyward Sword’s Lanayru Mining Facility, which sees players solving puzzles by clearing sand away with the Gust Bellows. It felt a lot more like doing chores around the house than being on an exciting quest.

While the Water Temple definitely is tedious and frustrating, it isn’t uniquely so. Though it will likely continue to not be remembered fondly by players like me who grew up playing Ocarina of Time, I no longer look at it as a particularly difficult dungeon the way I used to. Instead, I see it as one of the franchise’s occasional stumbles into frustrating design in an otherwise great game.