Thanks to u/[email protected] for turning me on to Ship of Harkinian. It’s my opinion after messing with it for a half hour that this is THE way to experience OoT again.
Here’s a link to their comment if you’d like to upvote it.
“Hey, Mom. Can we have OoT?”
“We already have OoT at home!”
The OoT at home:

I’ve been running Ocarina when I can. I just completed the Water Temple. All I need now are the Fire and Shadow Medallions, then I can whack Ganondorf.
I don’t even have a Switch 2, and I’m not buying it just to be sold nostalgia I can already relive with stuff I’ve had for like 20 years. That said, I am running it on Gopher64 this time around.


Nah Twilight Princess is more of a Minish Cap remake.
All 3 of those games are excellent though.
Hmm, I haven’t played Minish Cap. How is Twilight Princess similar?
When I play TP (GameCube version) it feels very much like playing OoT in style, and the world layout is very similar, but bigger (https://imgur.com/gallery/ocarina-of-time-twilight-princess-map-comparison-chateaulonlon-0DhLs3E). Dungeon design feels very similar too, just with more detail and fancier puzzles. The water temple is still a chore, with backtracking between levels being a core mechanic.
The general layout of Hyrule is never quite the same, but it’s always similar, dating back to the first Zelda game for the NES. That includes the general layout of key landmarks such as Lake Hylia, Zora’s Domain, Death Mountain, Gerudo Desert, and the Lost Woods, all of which are from the original NES title. Other key landmarks such as Hyrule Castle and Kakariko were introduced in A Link to the Past, which was the third game in the series.
The story of Twilight Princess is most similar to Minish Cap IMO:
That being said, Twilight Princess is a sequel to Ocarina of Time, including the end of Ocarina of Time as a core plot point and the Link from Ocarina of Time returning as the skeleton sword ghost.
I think a lot of what you are seeing here is just the Zelda series tropes and staples in general. However, Twilight Princess definitely is a deliberate return-to-form after the more experimental games that were Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask, but it includes some of the features, and improvements from Wind Waker, and some significant portions of Twilight Princess were built from cut content originally intended for Wind Waker.