Ocarina of Time Remake Reviews Are In: 96 on Metacritic, the Highest Score of 2026, and Several Critics Call It “Safe.” I Predicted 93, and I’m Happy to Be Wrong

Yesterday I wrote a number down before the scores existed. 93. Tonight the number is 96, and I have never been happier to lose a bet with myself.

Here is the short version. The Ocarina of Time remake settled at 96 on Metacritic on roughly 80 critic reviews, and Game Rant and Forbes both call it the best-reviewed game of 2026 so far. The 1998 original still owns the 99. Hardly anyone is saying the remake is bad. The argument is about whether it’s brave enough.

Plenty of sites will paste you a score table. I wanted to do three things they won’t: grade my own forecast in public, follow the one complaint that keeps showing up across the reviews, and sort out who should spend $59.99 tonight and who should wait. One note up front: I haven’t played the game. This is a close read of what critics wrote, and my opinions are labeled as mine.

The number, in plain English

If you don’t follow review sites, two quick definitions will make everything below easier. Metacritic turns every critic review into a number from 0 to 100 and averages them, giving some outlets more weight than others. It doesn’t publish the weights. OpenCritic shows a “Top Critic Average” and a “Critics Recommend” percentage, which is simply the share of critics who would tell you to buy the game. The two sites count slightly different outlets, so they rarely match to the decimal.

My 93 forecast, graded line by line

In yesterday’s story I made a handful of calls. Here is each one next to what happened.

Why my math missed

I treated four data points like a trend. The closest cousin on my own table was Link’s Awakening, a ground-up remake of a beloved classic that went from 90 to 87, a three-point drop. Three is exactly what happened here. That’s an easy thing to say with the answer in hand, and I want to own it: I averaged a true remake together with a straight HD port and let a 12-point fall do the damage.

The second mistake was emotional. A leaked NPR review set my mood, and it was one writer’s feelings about memory, about whether a remake can replace the version in your head. My opinion now is that a pool of 80 critics is mostly reviewing the game on the screen, and the game on the screen is gorgeous. Nintendo Life calls it “comfortably the most visually stunning work Nintendo has ever put out,” and Beebom’s headline went with “Best Looking Game Yet on Switch 2.”

The third lesson is the one I’ll keep: critics reward polish more than I gave them credit for. When a team makes a thing this carefully, the score follows, even when the thing is cautious.

Every critic, sorted into tiers

A ladder of bars would only repeat the number, so I sorted the scores into tiers instead. Outlets use different scales, so each score is shown the way that outlet gave it. Eurogamer’s rating appears as five stars in some roundups and 10 out of 10 in others, so I’m listing the stars.

What’s missing is as telling as what’s there. In the roundups I read, there is no 7, no 6 and nothing labeled mixed. A few critics also put it in words better than any number could:

The one complaint that keeps coming back

If you read only the scores, you’d think this was a unanimous love letter. Read the paragraphs under them and a single word keeps returning. Not “broken,” not “ugly,” not “overpriced.” Safe.

DLCompare’s roundup adds that IGN felt the streamlined dungeon design slightly dulls the special feeling of solving them. Taken together, the debate is whether a smoother, faster Hyrule gives up some of the friction that made the original’s discoveries feel earned.

Here is the detail I find most interesting. RPG Site says the remake is “designed for new players first and foremost.” VGC says it’s “the definitive way for a new generation to discover” the game. Those are nearly the same observation. One critic scored it 8 and the other gave it five stars. For one, “built for newcomers” is a feature. For the other, it’s a limit.

That’s my opinion, and it’s a defense of Nintendo, not a pass. Notebookcheck’s summary of Nintendo’s own developer interview, which I covered in yesterday’s forecast, said producer Eiji Aonuma was surprised at how little the team ended up changing. So “safe” may not be an accident. It may be the plan. Where I side with the critics is on the price of that plan: if you charge $59.99 for a faithful remake, I think you owe the veterans something to chew on.

Five smaller flags, and how much I’d care

These come straight from the reviews, with who raised them. The “how much I’d care” tag is my own call, and I haven’t played the game, so treat it as a first reaction.

Where a 96 sits in history

Forbes calls the remake the highest-scored game since Baldur’s Gate 3 in 2023. Here is my opinion on the 99 versus the 96. The original’s number came from 22 reviews, collected after the fact from magazines, because Metacritic didn’t exist in 1998. The remake’s number comes from about four times as many critics, from every corner of the modern internet, with no nostalgia-fog discount for the people writing in 2026. I think the 96 is the harder number to earn, and I think it’s the more honest one. The 99 is a legend. The 96 is a result.

It also arrives at a good moment. Grand Theft Auto VI is due on Nov. 19, and every score for the rest of the year will be measured against this one.

Who should buy it tonight, and who should wait

The game launches Nov. 5 on Nintendo Switch 2 only, at $59.99 digital or $69.99 physical, according to DLCompare. Beebom lists the start time as 12 a.m. Eastern. The $10 gap buys you a case, so I’d pick digital unless you collect boxes. Here is my answer by player type.

What nobody has told us yet

• How long it takes to finish. None of the reviews I read gave a clear number.
• Official resolution and frame-rate figures. Reviewers praise the looks, and only Nintendo Life mentions shimmering on distant textures.
• Whether Nintendo will ever add a harder mode. I found nothing on it.
• Where the Metacritic score finally settles. It moves as reviews arrive, and the count was still growing when I checked.

Quick answers