Nintendo's ground-up remake of "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" launched on Switch 2 last week to some of the strongest reviews of any game released this year, with critics largely agreeing on one thing: the 1998 original has aged into a genuinely different-looking game without losing what made it work.
Japan's Famitsu, often the first major outlet to review a big Nintendo release, gave the remake 37 out of 40 across its four-critic panel, with one reviewer awarding a perfect 10 while praising the reworked camera, controls and visuals -- though that same review called the underlying design simple by today's standards. Review aggregator Metacritic had the game sitting at 96 ahead of its November 5 launch, a score that puts it among the best-reviewed titles of 2026 on any platform. The remake is a Switch 2 exclusive, priced at $59.99 digitally and $69.99 for a physical copy.
Praise for the overhaul, caveats on the pacing
Outlets across the spectrum landed in similar territory. Siliconera's review called it a lavish remake of the original action-role-playing game, pointing to gorgeous visuals and a set of quality-of-life adjustments that smooth over some of the original's rougher edges. Tom's Guide went further, with its reviewer writing that replaying the game on Switch 2 felt even better than their childhood memory of the original.
Not every assessment was unreserved. A review distributed by NPR member stations credited the graphical and control upgrades with making the 27-year-old game worth revisiting, but warned that some character redesigns look odd next to the rest of the overhaul and that the remake's pacing can feel choppier than modern open-world design would allow. That split -- visually transformed, structurally untouched -- showed up across much of the coverage tracked by outlets following the Famitsu score ahead of launch.
The remake arrives as Nintendo leans on its back catalog to keep Switch 2 software moving between bigger new releases, and "Ocarina of Time" was widely considered one of the console's most-anticipated remasters of the year. For a game that regularly tops best-of-all-time lists in its original form, the reception suggests Nintendo's redo cleared a high bar -- even if, as several critics noted, "safe" is still the word that best describes the design choices underneath the new coat of paint.
