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.