I don’t hand out 10s like party favors. I sit on them. I argue with myself about them. And then a game like this shows up, and the argument is over before I finish the sentence.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, reborn exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2, came out November 5. Digital is $59.99. The physical edition is $69.99. This is a ground-up remake of the 1998 Nintendo 64 classic, not a coat of paint and a prayer. I’m giving it a 10. I’m also not going to invent a scene-by-scene diary like I holed up in a cabin with a leather notebook and a stopwatch. Nintendo has been unusually clear about what this version actually is. Critics have had a week with it. The score is mine. The features are theirs.

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If you somehow missed this one: you’re Link, you’re stuck with a fairy named Navi, and you’re trying to stop Ganondorf from wrecking Hyrule across two different eras. It is a standalone adventure. You do not need to have finished Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, or your homework from 1998. Nintendo has been pounding that point, and they’re right. This is still the cleanest on-ramp into what a Zelda game even is: you explore, you crawl through dungeons, you solve weird puzzles, you get a new toy, and then the world opens up a little more.

What Nintendo actually built is the part that sold me. The visuals were done over from the ground up for Switch 2. Cutscenes are fully voiced. The dialogue is expanded. The score is a full symphony. The camera and movement were reworked, and yes, there is a jump button now, which is the kind of “obvious in hindsight” change that makes the original control scheme feel like a dare. Longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma called the remake “a faithful interpretation using modern technologies.” That’s the corporate way of saying they didn’t blow up the house and start over. They fixed the doors, put in real windows, and let the place sing.

Music was always half the religion of this game, and they leaned into it. You still use the ocarina to mess with the world — turning night into day, calling your horse, Epona, all the old magic. If you’re feeling extra, the built-in Switch 2 microphone will let you hum a song you’ve learned, or play it on an actual instrument, and have Link’s ocarina answer in-game. I can already hear myself doing this in a room with other adults present, and I am not sorry.

There’s more around the edges, and it’s the good kind of more. Nintendo added a rematch hall where statues of defeated monsters live, and you can learn about them or fight them again. They’ve called it the Hall of Fallen Foes on one official page and the Hall of Fallen Heroes on another, because even Nintendo can’t pick a name. Fairy thoughts are scattered around Hyrule for little lore tidbits. Threads of Time, shown off during the 40th-anniversary stream, is a way to see where — and when — you’re supposed to be headed next. And ZELDA NOTES, sitting in the Nintendo Switch App on your phone, tracks what you got done today, throws image-based location challenges at you, lets you mess with an in-app ocarina, and has a quiz with more than 2,000 questions if you really want to embarrass yourself. You’ll need a Nintendo Account, a compatible phone, and an internet connection for that one, and some features want Nintendo Switch Online.

The new Young Link and Young Zelda amiibo, which unlock in-game masks with a retro look, do not show up until 2027. Existing Legend of Zelda amiibo still give you rewards if you tap them now. So the collector’s hook arrives fashionably late. Fine. I’ll live.

And the critics, for once, are not in a fistfight with the fans. As of November 11, the remake is sitting at a 96 on Metacritic, based on 100 critic reviews, and a 95 Top Critic Average on OpenCritic, with 100 percent of those critics recommending it. IGN and GameSpot both came in at 9/10. Eurogamer and GamesRadar went 5/5. Nintendo Life’s 9/10 called it comfortably the most visually stunning work Nintendo has ever put out, then dinged it for leaving Master Quest out. That last one is fair. If you wanted the complete historical boxed set, this isn’t quite it.

The other complaints are real, and they’re mostly small. This is a Switch 2 exclusive, so if you don’t have the new hardware, the conversation is over before it starts. The physical copy costs ten bucks more than the digital one. Some critics have noted the art style isn’t always consistent — Eurogamer wondered if you’d occasionally stepped into “one of a dozen third-person Unreal games,” and Polygon thought some of the new voice work takes a minute to settle in. GameSpot, which still loved it, pointed out that weaker spots from the original, like the stretch at Gerudo Fortress, are still the weaker spots. None of that moved my score. A 10 doesn’t mean I think Nintendo is incapable of leaving a fingerprint on the glass.

Here’s the part where I get sloppy and honest. I grew up with this game the same way a lot of us did: too young to understand why it mattered, old enough now to get weirdly protective about it. Remakes of sacred cows usually make me nervous. Somebody sands off the weird edges, or they “fix” a thing that was never broken, or they charge you seventy dollars to play a memory. This one doesn’t feel like that. It feels like Nintendo finally had the hardware and the nerve to rebuild the adventure that taught a generation how a 3D game could have a soul, and then they left the soul alone.

If you’ve never played it, this is the version to start with. If you have, this is the version that lets you go back without making excuses for the camera. Either way, I’m at 10/10. I don’t say that lightly. I also don’t want to hear about it when you spend an afternoon humming into a microphone like a maniac. I’ll be right there with you.

The physical edition is $69.99 on Amazon.