Many are familiar with a ‘3 Heart Run’ in a Zelda game. For those that are not, you go through an entire game in the Legend of Zelda franchise without picking up 4 Heart Pieces (5 in the case of Twilight Princess) or any Heart Containers dropped from defeating bosses. This had always seemed to be strange to tackle for me, since I’m a Zelda completionist at heart, but I wanted to attempt a specific challenge I’d always intended on trying at least once.
I decided that I would not only do a 3 Heart Run in Ocarina of Time, but in addition, I would also do it with no Magic Meter upgrades, and I would force myself to use a broken Giant’s Knife the second I became an adult. To say that this was a challenge was an understatement: enemies became significantly harder to kill, not just because your damage is equivalent to the Kokiri Sword, but your attack range is even smaller than having the actual Kokiri Sword. On top of that, it’s counted as a two-handed blade, meaning you can’t put your shield up without first manually sheathing the weapon.
The number of times that I died in this game, including being revived by fairies, is frankly embarrassing. I lost so many times in particular to forced Stalfos encounters: they hit hard and almost always have their shields up. I even lost to both Ganondorf and Ganon, which had never happened before.
Speaking of which, the bosses as an adult are also total damage sponges, and since you’re only at 3 hearts, a few wrong moves and they’ll likely kill you in two or even one hit. For reference, my fight with Phantom Ganon in the Forest Temple dragged on for so long that he used an attack I’d never even seen before! In the tennis phase, if you get long enough into the fight, he’ll charge at you directly with his spear with energy surrounding him. I’ve been playing Ocarina of Time for over 20 years and I never once knew he could attack me like that.
This is definitely the hardest that this game has pushed me, even harder than the dreaded Master Quest, but the feeling I got from beating each boss and especially from completing the game was nothing short of pure bliss and excitement. Will I ever do this again? Absolutely not. But I’m glad I did it at all.
