Ocarina of Time is one of those games where if you played it at a certain age and at a certain time it really did have a special magic to it that I guess would be hard to replicate if you played it for the first time today, I'm just thankful I got to play it when I did.
What I will say that absolutely holds up about Ocarina today is the story, the way it plays out it simply "feels" like an actual fairy tale or legend and the soundtrack, without a doubt one of the all time great soundtracks to a game, it perfectly nailed the "vibe" the game was going for and I think it's one of the main reasons why the game has the legendary status it has today.
What the hell dude? Literally the moment before you posted that, that's what I was going to say myself *Twilight Zone theme*
The reason Ocarina of Time has such a legendary status is that if you played it at the right age, the atmosphere it created, of which a big part of that is the music, got your imagination going, it created such a perfectly mysterious vibe that when you were first playing it you truly didn't know what you could find and what was possible, hence all the urban legends about the game's "secrets" like find the triforce or whatever.
So it's less about the game itself and more the way it got your imagination going which "filled in the blanks" and that is a lost art in gaming today, back when the technology was cruder, games would rely on your imagination more to "fill in the blanks" and I think that's a big reason why older games have such legendary statuses and so many people say gaming just isn't as good as it was, because your imagination is a very powerful thing, sometimes it's less about what you see and what you don't see.
