Majora’s Mask Review

Single-player game, played on the Nintendo 64, Wii Virtual Console, and 3DS. You start the game riding through a forest on your horse, when suddenly you are ambushed by two fairies and a masked imp. The imp steals your ocarina and horse, and when you give chase, you fall through a mysterious hole and into a world on the verge of apocalypse. With no choice but to hunt down the imp and put a stop to him, you set out to recover your ocarina, and, as usual, save the world. Took me about 30 hours to complete. 

Graphics and Tone: The world is explored in a 3-D rendering (the best Nintendo 64 could offer at the time) of Termina; with a town, ocean, swamp, and other locales to explore and rescue. Straight off the heels of its predecessor, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask is a dark turn for what was already a fairly intense game (for a 12 year old). While it uses the same graphics and people as it’s more traditional brother, Majora explores much grimmer themes. Your character, Link, is all but powerless to stop the imp from destroying the world. Your only hope is your ocarina to turn back time, but, when you do, all the people you save and monsters you slay are all returned to their original positions, waited to be saved or slayed again. The hopelessness of the situation is reflected by the characters and stories you encounter, but, as the hero, your determination to save everyone is the hope that helps cut the otherwise oppressive tone that pervades the world.   

Mechanics: In addition to the traditional Zelda mechanics of finding treasure, slaying monsters, finding the dungeon, solving puzzles, finding better treasure, slaying better monsters, and so on, Majora brings a few twists to the well worn save-the-world formula. Turning back time to avoid the end of the world undoes some of your progress, but not large discoveries like your trusty bow or your sword, which you keep after you find them. With so many people to save, there’s also a quest log included in the menus that helps you track when and where people will be in need of your help. The masks you find along the way help augment your abilities, or just open up new dialogue to complete your quest log. Some masks are much more powerful than others, fully transforming you into different forms with different abilities. Others are more goofy than anything else, allowing you to march in place, sniff out mushrooms, or start a new dance craze.

Reasons why I like this game: Despite having a relatively short main story, the world is packed with different things to discover. Treasure chests with huge rupee prizes, heart pieces to expand your health, new masks, minigames, puzzles, and new people with quests are around every corner. The best part about all those extra find are just that: they are all complimentary. You don’t have to finish a single quest after the first one, and outside of a little spending money, you can go the entire game without exploring off the beaten path. The more you do, though, the easier you make the game. More health, more rupees, and more masks can make difficult sections much more approachable. This gives new players interesting things to do if they run into a part too tough for them to handle, and more meaningful content for veteran players. Getting all the treasures and completing all the quests is quite an undertaking and rewards the player with a not only a different scene in the end credits, but a super powerful mask as well. This sort of reward in a game is rare, as not many people are expected to finish the game, so the effort to make that sort of content might be considered wasteful. Here, though, it comes off as a commitment to rewarding players that are just as committed to the game as the people who made it. 

Reasons why I don’t like it: Sadly, although there are huge amounts to do and explore outside the main story, the main story itself is a little short. Going into Majora’s Mask, the precedent was a large overworld with eight unique dungeons to explore, each with unique challenges and treasures to find. Reducing the dungeon count to four felt like being cheated out of content, a strange accusation to level at a game considered brimming with things to do. The game more than makes up for it, but feels like it ends too quickly if you’ve played others in the series. 

Things that made the game great for me: The tone of Majora’s Mask is heralded as its greatest strength, and for good reason. The tense, dark groundhog day world is solidly supported by the constantly ticking clock at the bottom of the screen, forcing the player to keep thinking about their time remaining, and thus, keeping them immersed in this tension. This, along with each quest, character, and mask, works together to reinforce the hopelessness of the impending disaster, and draws the player further into the world they are exploring. Despite being a relatively old game, this level of immersion remains a high water mark in gaming by having such a deliberate focus on its very tense core. 

Things that ruined the game for me: Do not play the 3DS version of this game. It may be the latest and easiest to get a hold of, but what it does in the name of making the game better worsens the game overall. There are several good quality of life changes, like more control over time and simplified saving, however, these changes pale when compared to the bad decisions. It changes every boss fight for the worse, limiting your attack options from an open ended lets-see-if-this-works, open ended challenge, to a simplified, hit-the-giant-eyeball-to-win snore-fest. It also turns swimming, one of the greatest movement mechanics in the game, into a slow, magic consuming mess. There are more changes to the detriment of the original release than this, listed elsewhere on the internet. It is clear that, in a noble effort to make the game easier and more accessible, their mission was accomplished. The regression of quality chafed this particular gamer a bit too much though. 

Overall: Highly recommended, with the caveat that you must play its predecessor, Ocarina of Time, in order to fully appreciate it. This is master-class of storytelling and adventure. The world you explore is bursting with things to do, and as the sound of the clock tower rings across the plains, it doesn’t let you forget that the world is going to end, it’s only a matter of time. 

That feeling: Its like if you suddenly find yourself taking a test in a room with a very loud clock, counting down one hour to your inevitable doom. There’s no teacher, and after a frantic hour of trying to get answers from other people in the classroom, the bell rings, you fail, and then suddenly you’re back in your seat, taking the test again, with one hour to go. The shock is real, but now you know a few more answers, and with all the time in the world, you know you can ace this test.