The thing that most people struggle with in the water temple is finding one of the keys. There's one key that requires you to step on an elevator but get off of it before it moves which reveals a hidden area underneath the elevator. Anyone familiar with the Soulsborne series of games will always know to check under an elevator, but of course Ocarina of Time came out way before that.
If it never occurs to you to check under the elevator, you'll get stuck and wander around for hours trying to find the last key you need which is why, I think, most people hate it.
It shows you the passage too. Albeit for maybe one second, which was just not terribly smart design. But it does show you or mention it somewhere - a lot of OoT is like that.
I don't think it's difficult, but I do think it's tedious because you have to go back and forth through the same area multiple times. Progressing through it feels more like a chore than an adventure.
It was the last "hard" puzzle before everyone was able to just Google it if they got stuck
It didn't stick out as hard to me, but when I went to school everyone was bitching about it. I ended up having people bring me their games so I could beat Water Temple for them so they could keep playing.
I feel like the only kid on the block that didn't have trouble with the water temple.
What ruined my life in OOT was Shigeru trolling and vaguely hinting that the rumors of a triforce you can obtain in the game actually existing so I wasted years looking for it.
I miss this tyoebof game. Anyone know any good Zelda OOT like games?
Mostly linear.
Where there's a main story. The main quest which leads into smaller quests (you helped Ruto).
Every dungeon is a small story.
The water temple has the problem of being too self-similar, the main body of which being a three story tall donut shaped room with doors in the four cardinal directions, so it's difficult to keep track of which series of unremarkable rooms are in which direction. The interface was kind of fucky because you had to change boots a lot in the menu, and can only use the hookshot for combat while walking underwater for some reason against those clam creatures that you have to be quite close to to get them to open, but farther away than that to hit.
There are a couple keys hidden in "why would there be a room there?" kind of places so it's a pain without the compass.
The Dark Link miniboss setpiece is very cool, but the fight itself feels too bullshit. It doesn't feel like meeting an equal in swordfighting skill and having to best him, it feels like "most normal attacks just straight up don't work, cheese it with magic and/or the hammer." Boss fight is kind of meh as well.
The core of the dungeon's puzzle aka learn how to use the water to traverse this place started off as a cool idea but...Let's face it Ocarina of Time is actually starting to age poorly and the Water Temple was the first blemish.
If you didn't like pausing the game for your boots, you're definitely not going to like having to leave the dungeon to turn into a kid, come back to the dungeon just so you can get an item, leave the dungeon to become an adult again, just to finish the dungeon.
The Spirit Temples music was good but wasn't better than the Water Temples. Nabooru is a character I liked more than Ruto, but that is completely subjective. The Water Temple had Dark Link and that boss fight easily beats out Iron Knuckle and Twinrova, and Dark Link was just a miniboss.