Ocean's Heart Review
There's no hiding the fact that Ocean's Heart was designed as a nod to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The stylings and gameplay design overall mimic the classic adventure game with laser accuracy. Unfortunately though, this leads Ocean's Heart down a path that leads to a significant challenge. Nostalgia. Designing a contemporary game based on a classic is often difficult to appear as anything more than clone of that game. A large part of this is the rose colored glasses that people have for the media and experiences from their childhood. You're not just competing with those older games how they are today. No, you're going to fight the comparison battle on their home court. We remember the games of our childhood given the times they were created, and a game like Link the Past was made in the early 90's when similar games were completely unheard of. This means that to create a game nodding to the past you also need to meet the standard it's design set, but exceed it in almost every way. Many of the creature comforts we've come to expect in our games will need to be brought in for the game to feel as anything more than a shadow of the classic.



Ocean's Heart does partially accomplish this. With some fairly modern features and a soundtrack and aesthetic style the do nod to past while still improving on it, Ocean's Heart gets a number of elements correct. The critical flaw however is the overall gameplay, and specifically the combat. A Link to the Past's combat was never spectacular, but by today's standard it is very lackluster. Ocean's Heart somehow managed to not even meet the standard A Link to the Past set in this key element and that shows throughout the game. Though this issue does get somewhat better as you progress through the game, the issue persists in various forms throughout.

This doesn't mean the Ocean's Heart is a bad game. Not by any means. In fact, I had a fairly good time. The issue is that mimicking an old game sets an extremely high bar, and unfortunately Ocean's Heart comes off as a game that lands by saying "Hey, you remember Link the Past?" rather than saying "You're not going to remember Link to the Past".