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Zelda OOT, Water Temple?

I never actually got too far in this game, but I'm constantly hearing rants about how the water temple in this game is just really awful? Is the water temple in OOT really that bad? Or do people exaggerate?
play far enough into the game and see for yourself.

it's not Jabu Jabu that they're talking about, by the way.

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It's not actually awful. People tend to exaggerate in order to make their points, however.

Anyway, what's so "bad" about the Water Temple is that it involves way more backtracking than perhaps any Zelda dungeon I know of due to the various ways that changing the water levels alter the layout of the place and what can be accessed at any one time. This makes for an incredibly long experience where it often feels as if you're wandering aimlessly and ignorant of what next to do. Add on top of this some painful enemies and that the underwater mechanics of OoT aren't the most enjoyable in a video game and you've got a mess that is downright unfriendly to newer players, creating a very lasting negative impression.
I vaguely remember the Water Temple, though I do remember being stuck in it for a very long time. I also remember fighting the mirror image of yourself, which was a total nightmare when I was younger. I think I just spammed Din's Fire to beat it or something.

I heard the Master Quest version was even worse too, so .. yep.
It's not bad if you do everything in a precise, specific order. If you go to a room and forget to do something and move onto another section of the temple, you're most likely to get stuck for a while since it's not exactly a normal temple that you can just backtrack a certain way to figure out what you missed. There's a center room and layers of rooms on either side all connected to each other in some way. The Zora helps in leading you to which room to go to next, but ... eh. It's still kind of frustrating when you get stuck.

Speaking of Dark Link, during my second playthrough of the game I just kept whacking him with the megaton hammer. When I first played the game, I'd randomly swing my sword and people around me would be under the impression I had a strategy as I was occasionally swinging hits on him.

"You see, the key is to just trick him so you can get a swing in."
"Oh. You're pretty good at this."

{B)
It's actually not hard per se. It's more of an inconvenience, constant water level changing, constant pausing the game to switch the iron boots on and off, stuff like that. It's actually pretty consistent though. You start from the bottom and work your way up in the main room. Once out of there, there's an alternate route you wouldn't have been able to reach normally.

In a sense, it's kind of an exaggeration because of how much you have to pause the game and such but it's not really all too hard in general.
I think a post layout goes here somewhere...
Oh god, the boot changing. That's even worse on an emulator like PJ64, because of the delay when the pause screen opens.

I don't mind the temple itself. I think people make it out to be a lot worse than it actually is. I do remember one thing as annoying, though. If you save and exit like half-way through the temple, finding out where to continue from can be difficult.
I honestly don't remember how hard it was for me to get through the Water Temple the first time, but I just assume it was a nightmare based on everyone's reactions to it. Going through it today wouldn't be so bad, but I can't really say that means much since I've beaten the game so many times.

What makes the dungeon so difficult, IMO, is that you basically run into a line of locked doors shortly into the dungeon. There are quite a few of them, and all of the keys are hidden in rooms that branch from the main room, and you need to change the Water level at least twice to get all of them. You can go through this set of locked rooms all the way to the end, and find out you're missing obscure small key #6 that was hidden under that one block in the main tower, then have to backtrack all the way through the dungeon and find it. It promoted exploration.

Also
Originally posted by S.N.N.
I heard the Master Quest version was even worse too, so .. yep.

If by even worse you mean shorter, more linear, and with a bunch of rooms from the original blocked off, then yeah, the Water Temple was terrible in Master Quest!
Water Temple in Master Quest? Difficult? Pffff, it was so much simpler than the original one.

Anyway, the Water Temple isn't difficult at all. It's not complicated or anything, but might get confusing for some people who don't remember where certain rooms were you have to do specific stuff at but you currently can't do. If there's something you can't do in a room, you go on to the next one and work your way up from the bottom to the top, like Slash Man said. If anything, it encourages exploration.

Though I agree that the constant Start-Boot changing gets really annoying.
The last time I was playing through Ocarina of Time, I noticed something about the water temple. If you explore every reachable room before you change the water level (this applies each time you change the water level), you will only need to raise the water to its highest point twice. If you found everything you can find when you raise the water to its highest point the first time, you'll be able to get to Dark Link, as well. Of course, it doesn't change the fact that switching between the regular boots and the iron boots is a pain, and if you don't know what you're doing, then knowing that the water only has to be raised to its highest point twice won't help much (The first time through, I didn't know that you could shoot an arrow through a lit torch to create a fire arrow, for example.)
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In my opinion, the Water Temple isn't bad, it's just really, really confusing. (I guess that can be associated with 'bad' in some cases.) When I was younger I got so lost in there, I just wandered around forever, and eventually just quit. Even the next time I played through the game (the first time I actually beat the game) I got lost in there a bunch, but I just said "Screw it all, I'm gonna check every room as throughout as possible until I find the way out."

I had totally forgot about how much you have to switch boots in there. Eh.
It's gonna be a fun time going through all that again on the 3DS. :>
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The dark link fight is very easy when you discover what to do, I don't remember very clear but I think that you have to alternate between different type os sword attack every attack until you hurt it, or somethink like that (although I had to die like 73 times to discover it).

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Oh God, the first time I played this it took me like 2 fucking weeks to pass the Water Temple. Now, even though I know what to do, it still takes me like 3 fucking hours! I HATE THIS TEMPLE! Then they go and make it much more difficult in Master Quest. As if it wasn't hard enough already.
Originally posted by MarioFan22
Then they go and make it much more difficult in Master Quest.

lol, the Water Temple is nothing compared to how Master Quest gets later on. I still haven't gotten past the Desert Temple and it's close to a year now since I last tried.

The Water Temple was more tedious than difficult. It was easy to go through once you knew what you're doing, but the constant changing of water levels and boots and equipment just starts to wear on you after awhile.
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Like others have said, it is systematic rather than a standard dungeon crawl. If anything, the worst temple for me is the Forest Temple. You wanna know what the worst thing about the Forest Temple is? Wallmasters. They scared me so much as a child that I never wanted to enter the temple. Facing Dark Link in the Water Temple was easy, though; just use the Megaton Hammer.
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Okay, I'm confused now. You guys repeatedly mention Master Quest? What is that? Iv never heard of it. What console is it for? I would love to try it out, considering its something new because Iv never even heard of it (well, new for me).
Master Quest comes with the Collectors Edition of Zelda: Wind Waker and the Zelda: Collectors Edition game which was included in Gamecube bundles (if I'm correct) and acquirable in Club Nintendo's shop. It's basically Ocarina of Time all over again with the exception that all dungeons are more challenging by having different layouts and more complicated puzzles.
Hmm, I'm going to try and look for a ROM of it online. Seems interesting. I also agree with HikariNoNanaki on the Forest Temple (because that's the only confusing temple Iv played). I don't remember why exactly, but that temple took me forever to get done with. I would always get lost and frustrated. Man, this whole game just seems to be complicated.
Water Temple is the reason I never completed OoT until I totally reset the game 3 years later.
Ironically the water temple on the Master Quest version was the easiest dungeon imo. In the original OoT, the fire temple is the easiest in my opinion. That completely flipped though. I loved the cows in the walls in Jabu Jabu's Belly in the Master Quest version though, that was lol.
I think a post layout goes here somewhere...