The transition from 2D to 3D Legend of Zelda games with Ocarina of Time marked a huge step for the franchise as gamers finally got what they considered to be a grown-up Legend of Zelda game. It received numerous awards, very high praise, and is considered by many people to be the best game of the entire series. But after looking more closely at the experiences I've had playing each Zelda game on a major console, I'm feeling that the games have become easier with the transition to a 3D environment.
If you've only played Zelda games starting with Ocarina of Time, all of this may not make much sense. If you've at least played A Link to the Past on the SNES, then you'll be able to more fully comprehend where I'm coming from.
I don't feel that the switch from 2D to 3D is the exact cause of the decrease in difficulty for the Zelda series. Other games, such as Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox, have retained their difficulty level in a conversion to a 3D environment. What I feel is the cause of the decrease in difficulty is specifically the lock-on targeting.
I recall an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto speaking about Ocarina of Time and he spoke about the lock-on targeting system as a way to help the player stay focused on a specific enemy. For anyone who played Mario64 knew, losing your bearings was common as was fighting with the camera. So to have the ability to lock-on to one specific enemy or object, it seemed that it was a perfect solution to the problem.
So how could this be considered a bad thing? While I've greatly enjoyed the lock-on targeting in each console Zelda game since Ocarina of Time, I've realized that this has greatly changed the dynamics of the game compared to the 2D versions, including The Adventure of Link for the NES.
If you were to ask someone who the most difficult enemy was in the original Legend of Zelda, the name you would hear most often would be Darknut. He's simple enough. He has a sword and shield that he just holds out directly in front which only makes him deadly from the front but vulnerable from any other side. While he didn't have any projectiles or even swing the sword at you, what made him so dangerous was that his movements were completely unpredictable. He could change direction just as easily as you could. You would be running up behind him when he would instantly turn around and run right into you. While link did have a shield, it only protected him from projectile weapons, not direct contact.
A room with one Darknut was an issue. A room with five was chaos. Bombs were useful in dispatching Darknuts, but as the Darknuts would erratically change direction, bombs would frequently explode without hitting anyone.
Moving up to The Adventure of Link, the world would switch to a side-view when actually battling any enemies. Due to the side-view combat, the Darknut's erratic movement was eliminated, but it didn't make them much easier to defeat. Darknuts were now able to either stab you in the face or in the legs. You had the ability to lower your shield to protect your legs, but actually landing a hit on a Darknut was just as difficult as it was in the first game. It was very difficult to outsmart a Darknut at hand-to-hand combat. Each time you attempted to stab him in the legs he would also lower his shield for the block. Immediately going back for the face he would counter with another shield block. There were times when you would land a hit on him, as an enemy that has no weaknesses would make completing any game impossible, but Darknuts still proved to be quite challenging.
With A Link to the Past, the game returned to a completely overhead view and proved to have much of the same challenges as the first game as any time you touched an enemy you would lose health. If the enemy suddenly changed direction, you had to adjust your movement accordingly.
With the lock-on targeting of Ocarina of Time, the game play mechanic of having enemies with unpredictable movement almost became non-existent. While you would still be attacked by enemies and take dame from them if you weren't locked-on to them, I noticed that I tended to take damage much less than I did on any of the previous games. Darknuts, while still challenging to defeat, seemed to be more of a test of endurance. Because Ocarina allowed you to lock-on to one specific enemy, you were now able to use your shield to directly defend against most attacks. Unlike the shield defense tactic in The Adventure of Link, Ocarina allowed you to just press the defend/shield button which blocked most attacks regardless of which part of your body the attack was aimed.
Generally in Ocarina of Time you didn't have too many enemies in an area at the same time. When there were multiple enemies, you really didn't have to worry about being attacked by multiple enemies at the same time. When it did occur, they generally all attacked from the same direction. This allowed you to lock on to one of the enemies and your attacks would also impact the rest of the enemies as would any defensive maneuvers you made.
In Wind Waker I did appreciate the ability of the Game Cube to manage a lot more on-screen enemies at the same time. There are many instances when you're being attacked my eight or more enemies simultaneously. But even in these instances, which I felt were not common enough, the enemies didn't provide enough of a challenge as they had in previous games.
I'm not stating that I completely dislike the lock-on targeting. The combat maneuvers you gradually learned in Twilight Princess were a lot of fun to use in conjunction with the targeting and it made the combat more interesting. The ability to roll behind an enemy and instantly attack from behind added a really great depth to this type of combat that had been lacking in previous games.
While this article has primarily focused on the aspect of combat in Legend of Zelda games, it's the loss of life and frequent deaths of the 2D versions that created the main difficulty of the games. I have enjoyed the new puzzles associated with the 3D versions and have spent countless hours playing through each of the games multiple times.
After Twilight Princess was completed Shigeru Miyamoto stated that he wanted to take the Legend of Zelda Series in a new direction. As of yet, nothing more has been spoken or revealed about what the new direction will be. While I do feel that the lock-on targeting has been one way to help players navigate through a 3D console game, I see that it has also reduced the challenge of the combat system as well which has created games that don't stand up to the same level of difficulty that the original versions did.