All things The Legend of Zelda

[gallo_pinto]

I don't recall any of those being in dungeons? Didn't you have to leave to find one, and that reset it? It's been a while...

You have to leave the dungeon, but the owl statues are right outside. The dungeon doesn't reset, but it can be a bit of a pain to backtrack to where you were in the dungeon itself. Playing it on the 3DS and being able to just snap it shut and reopen it made that much easier.

[seansthomas]

From the moment I saw Wind Waker, I adored its aesthetic. At the time I loved anime and was a design student, so the lure to buy a GameCube to experience it was strong. Sadly it was only when it was rereleased on Wii U that I had the income to dive in. But it was worth the wait.

Wind Waker is probably my favourite Zelda game. They all have their moments, but from start to finish I think this is undoubtedly the one I enjoyed the most, despite being the 4th Zelda game I played.

The cartoon visuals are a key part of that. Its a joy to behold in HD (and indeed SD due to the art style) and I adore the streamlined facial expressions and simplified characters. But there are other things it does better than its brethren.

The plot feels epic, yet homely - and is effectively a tale of self discovery. Starting off on a tiny island with your grandma was a lovely touch before going off on a quest to find isolated foreign islands and deep dungeons. The characters you meet all have personalities and relationships which made me care about them and seek out side missions more than I normally do in a Zelda. Interestingly I think Aonuma's style of Zelda-making is a large part of that; Skyward Sword shared a similar structure and also appealed to me.

Combat was the tightest its ever been in a Zelda title culminating in that epic final battle, the gamepad made inventory management, taking photos and navigation on the seas a joy and the story revelation 2/3s in was truly the only moment in a Zelda game where I've been caught off guard and surprised by the narrative. I don't know how much the remaster improved the end game but it certainly never outlasted its welcome for me.

Above all, what I liked most about Wind Waker was that it let me explore and figure out the world myself. At times in other 3D Zelda's, I'm literally being told what to do next and that removes any genuine sense of adventure. On this quest I felt like I had a world to discover with just a celestial boat for company - and I loved it.

[RCheeze]

Majora's Mask is probably my favorite 3D Zelda game. Ocarina of Time is the most important Zelda, Wind Waker is the most charming and Twilight Princess is the most robust and advanced of the Zelda series. But Majora's Mask, as many have said, is the most different of the bunch. The world is sinister, the characters are eccentric and the very nature of this game's three-day cycle really captivated me when I first played this game some 15-16 years ago (I was around 14-15 years old). But while I will sing the praises of Majora's Mask as a Zelda game, I can't help but feel that it is one of those games in which the idea of playing it is more appealing than playing it. I actually just completed the game just moments ago on my 3DS (this must be the first time I beat it since playing it on the N64 so many years ago). Unfortunately, I am almost relieved I am just done with it. There's something about the 3D Zelda formula that I just find very tiresome and I feel that I'll need to take a break from these robust Zelda games for a little while.

[gallo_pinto]

Oh Majora’s Mask, you weird, beautiful game. I loved Ocarina of Time so much that I was really excited for Majora’s Mask and it totally lived up to my expectations.

There were three things that stood out for me when I replayed Majora’s Mask on the 3DS. The first is that Tatl is my favorite companion character in any of the Zelda games. I didn’t mind Navi as much as most people (and I LOVED that searching for her is what kicked off the game), but Tatl is funny, mischievous and has a complete character arc. The second is that the Skull Kid is a wonderfully realized antagonist and by the end of the game I wanted him to find happiness as much as I wanted to save Termina.

And lastly, the Kafei and Anju storyline is utterly absorbing and heartbreaking. You slowly chip away at the quest over the course of the game, learning more and more details about how everything went wrong. As a kid, I remember failing the last part of the quest where you need to steal back the Sun Mask. But I had already convinced Anju not to flee the city and she was waiting for Kafei back at the inn. I felt so guilty about failing that I quickly ran back to the inn and just sat with her in her room until the moon fell because I couldn’t let her face the end of the world alone. I lost about two hours of progress because of that, but it’s still one of the most emotionally powerful moments I’ve ever had in a video game.

Three Word Review: Permanently Wearing Bunny-Hood
(Not sure if you'll accept "Bunny-Hood" as one word . If not, you can use: "Seriously, Sakon Sucks".)

[Scrustle]

Majora's Mask is probably the most important game to me that I've ever played. It was the one that solidified my love for the medium, so I might not even be here right now if it wasn't for this game. It was the first game I ever owned that wasn't part of the Pokemon franchise. And while those were instrumental in my appreciation for the medium as well, I've long since moved on from that series, yet Zelda, and Majora's Mask in particular, remain some of my favourite games of all time. MM was the game that really opened my eyes to what games could do, and turned what could have been a passing interest in a school playground craze in to something which has shaped much of my life.

The thing that most blew me away about this game when I first played it at around 10 years old was how it was able to create such a believable, living world. Somewhere so magical and imaginative that you could explore every little nook and cranny of, and find something that made it feel like it was important, and could exist even if you weren’t around to see it. It managed to pull off something that few games even do now, in that it didn’t feel like everything in the game was there only for the player. Instead you were looking through a myriad of different windows, in to the worlds of other characters and creatures.

Of course the core of this is the game’s famous three day cycle. Something that gives a great level of depth to the world, allowing it to pack so much in to any one moment of time. It’s a somewhat controversial feature, and I usually dislike being on a time limit in games too, but I don’t have a problem with it at all here. Given the cyclical nature of it, and how much you can manipulate it, it never felt particularly strict to me. It’s way less of an actual time limit, and simply more of a schedule. Having enough time to do what you want and jumping around as needed is pretty easy, and you get an infinite number of chances to try things again if you mess up. Instead it’s about keeping track of NPCs and letting you know what happens when for any particular side-quest you may be attempting.

The side-quests themselves are of course a huge highlight of the game too. There’s so many interesting stories to uncover and characters to get to know. Each all going about their business in those three days, yet all connected by a common theme. Despite the game’s cartoonish and colourful exterior, much of the game revolves around the darker themes loss and death. Many of the characters you find and help along your journey are dealing with some kind of loss, even when that means the loss of someone close to them. All of the transformation masks come from the soul of a character who has died and left behind people who cared about them; the young girl living in Ikana Canyon has to fend for herself surrounded by undead creatures after her father is turned in to one of them; and of course there’s everyone’s favourite side-quest, of the lost love between Kafei and Anju. All of this coming from the same source, which is too a tale of loss. The Skull Kid’s naïve sense of abandonment that was twisted and fed upon by Majora’s Mask itself.

This theme of loss even relates back to the mechanic of the three day cycle. With so much to do in such a limited space of time, you as the player must deal with a certain amount of loss too. You can’t help everyone. For every quest you choose to follow in any one cycle, you must damn all the other inhabitants of Termina. Only once you finally face Majora itself can you truly undo all the damage it has caused.

Even though these are the things we tend to praise Majora’s Mask for these days, back when I first played it, I was also blown away by some of the things that we usually take for granted nowadays too. Things that I still think are worth praising though. The fundamental movement and combat mechanics were amazing to me back when all the reference I had was Pokemon, and I still think they hold up really well today. Early 3D games are notorious for their clunky controls, but Majora’s Mask was immediately fluid and intuitive to me. Responsive and natural. Simply having the ability to walk around in such a wonderfully realised 3D world with such ease was a big deal to me back then, and it’s still a pleasure to me now. The different modes of transport offered by the different transformation masks added another layer to this as well. Combat too was very satisfying on a basic level, with how you could move around and act so freely. The labyrinthine dungeons were fantastic. Imposing, but fascinating. The bosses too were a great experience, and a perfect way to punctuate the end of a long dungeon. And of course I can’t fail to mention the fantastic art direction of the game. The soundtrack in particular is one of the best in the series in my opinion. These basics of Zelda may not be what make Majora’s Mask in particular special, but they are still the reasons why I love the series as a whole.

All in all, Majora’s Mask really is a special game. It’s often thought of as something of a black sheep in the series, but I think that reputation is undeserved. It’s got everything that makes Zelda great, with its expansiveness and imagination, but its quirks elevate it to something unique and all the more engrossing. Not just for the series, but in the medium as a whole.

[chase210]

It's actually taken me ages to write this post out properly, cos The Legend Of Zelda Majoras Mask is such a great game to me, it was difficult to put into words I liked, how much I like it.

First of all I should say, Majoras Mask is not a game for people to play as their first zelda game, which is weird, cos thats how I first encountered, in 2004 (ish) when I got that Zelda collectors edition disc for Gamecube, and it had 4 games, and majoras mask was the first I tried for whatever reason. And that game is weird and obtuse enough from time to time, without being an 11 year old and that particular version having a bad framerate, I hated it. Tried it twice, never tried the version of it on that disc again.

Many years later (well not that long) the version that came out on the Wii virtual console. By this time, I was much more into the Zelda series than I had been previously, having playing through wind waker, twilight princess, ocarina of time, phantom hourglass, etc. So I decided to give it another go. And well, I loved it. Loved it then, love it now, love the 3DS remake even more, I love Majoras Mask.

I think like I said, it really helps if you've played Zelda before, since Majoras Mask features virtually no tutorials or easy dungeons like the Deku Tree in ocarina of time, and throws the player in the deep end. Less than ten minutes after starting the game you've been turned from the Link we all know and love into a bizarre deku scrub who is as lost as we are in this new world. There's another thing majoras mask does to throw the player off kilter. It drops us into this new land, Termina, which is very like Hyrule, but just off enough to make us uneasy about it. Then we have to play through the first 3 day cycle with no knowledge of much, except the skull kid has stolen our ocarina, turned us into a scrub, and there's a very ominous moon in the sky with a scary face leering down at us.

And even when we retrieve our ocarina and are able to change back to our selves, we have to face the facts. We failed to save the world. We're back at the beginning, just with more knowledge and power. And to finish the game, we are going to have to fail, a lot. Thats really dark, specially for a Nintendo game. Majoras Mask is a game of failing, over and over again, until we finally have the power of the giants to succeed. And it works so well, its astonishing. What sells it so well?

Well the music for one. Its so downbeat and kind of tragic, but not in an incredibly overt way. One of my favourite pieces of music not just in this game, but video games in general, is the theme that plays when you successfully summon the giants to stop the moon. Majoras mask does that all the time, it plays those kinds of music over things we'd traditionally think of as happy moments, i.e. beating a boss, saving one of the giants for the first time, and its totally in keeping with the rest of the game, as in its a temporary victory we'll have to reverse shortly by warping back. The lands we put time into fixing and happy scenes we've seen from gorons and zoras and deku's is reversed. Eerie stuff, but utterly captivating. Its done the best I think, in the Anju and Katie side quest, where you spend an entire three day cycle to reunite a couple, to see them reunited and have only seconds before you have to wind back the clock. Weird, creepy, but it totally works.

Of course it wouldn't mean nearly as much if the gameplay didn't work, but it does. Every form of Link is useful and unique to play as. Its a shame the Deku form loses usefulness as the game goes on, but otherwise, its top. The bunny hood was the mask I ended up using most, and it was a great idea. In terms of combat I still thought traditional link was best, specially with the neat sword upgrades you could get, but goron link was cool too. I also love the designs of links wearing the marks (the compulsory masks) I think they retain just enough of link to be instantly recognisable, while being alien enough to go with the theme of the game.

Its not perfect by any means. 4 dungeons isn't much, even though it meant they were all pretty great, with a fun and challenging boss in each, I'm specially partial to the boss that requires use of the goron rolling to defeat it. The game is ludicrously obtuse at times, and without the bombers notebook it'd be next to impossible to keep up with it. And some of the side quests really are an awful lot of trial and error, with endlessly having to repeat the 3 day cycle to get things right and do the same quests. Such content of course makes up for the lack of dungeons, at least in theory, but still.

So overall, majoras mask is an incredible game I adore. It has its missteps, but its so practically flawless in other ways I fall back in love with it every time I play it. The highest point the zelda series has yet reached, far as I'm concerned.

[Manpans]

For me, comparing Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask is like comparing Alien and Aliens. Both are great stories. Both are masters of their genre. But they are tonally two very different games.
Where Ocarina is an epic hero's journey, Majora's Mask is a far more intimate character-driven adventure. The stakes are still huge, the world is still at risk, but the focus very much remains on the people that Link meets and the relationships he forms with them.

I loved almost everything about Majora's Mask. The world, despite being quite small, had so much to discover. The music was perfect in every circumstance. The characters were rich and interesting. The stories could be both heart warming and heart wrenching. And at the centre of it all was a complex villain whose motivations were very relatable and went far further than "Because evil, that's why". Sure, there were a few annoyances (the boss of the Great Bay temple, the inability to save your game at a moment's notice, Kafei and Anju's never ending quest) but the overall payoff was more than worth those.

My favourite relationship of the game would have to be Tatl and Link. Tatl remains one of my favourite companions to Link and that's not just because she has a wonderfully sarcastic personality. She also has a very clear arc and watching her relationship with Link turn from grudging tolerance to full fledged friend is very rewarding.

I was one of those teens that spent all of her part-time job money on Majora's Mask on the day of release. I even bought the hardware update needed to play the game. It was more than worth it. Sadly, many of my friends did not feel the same way saying that it was a sad copy of OoT and not worthy of a Zelda title. For quite some time, I felt alone and wondered if I was insane to love it. It's only years later that I learned others shared my opinion and I was more than willing to try it out on the 3DS.

[gildedlink]

Majora's Mask is one of my favorite games of all time. Ocarina had the promise that Link was an epic hero, but Majora is full of moments where you genuinely feel like you've made a difference in the life of each person in the small world of Termina and that is all the more fulfilling an experience. Majora's Mask is about being a hero by bringing about small differences that add up and make you see how much you've shaken the foundations of the world. You start out just about powerless to help even yourself and by the end of the game you're tracking down every last citizen of Termina and making sure they've been made whole again in whatever small way they need it.

Majora is such a compelling villain because its malicious nature isn't rooted in anything but destruction for fun. What we perceive as evil emanating from it are its origins and mild disdain for the living, but Majora is merely the archetypal Trickster figure found in folklore. It serves the role of teaching us about the nature of being a hero all over again. There is no prophecy in Majora's Mask. There is only evil, the showdown of divine forces and your character, who accepts the burdens of those caught in the crossfire and becomes an avatar for what is right. In the midst of this, a story about a town and a wider world that seems resigned to a grim fate but perpetuates its culture in the terrifying face of death that is the moon. The game is full of these nods to cultural expression. Masks, Graffiti, Dances, Stoicism, Festive Celebrations, Rationalism, the role of celestial bodies (both the moon and sun), life and death, ritual and magic, tribes and taboo, all of these themes and objects dealing with them fill Termina with an incredible vibrancy that I've struggled to find in any game since.

My favorite cultural detail though is embedded in the presentation of the game. Majora's Mask follows the structure of a traditional japanese play- specifically a full length kabuki program. I'm not sure whether this is intentional or unintentional, but there's just a few too many coincidences to write it off. The structure of a full length kabuki play is 5 acts governed by a rule called jo-ha-kyu that dictates their pacing. The first act is jo, a slow opening that introduces us to our characters and their predicament- the prologue. We're presented with Link, Epona, the Skull Kid, Tatl and finally the Mask Salesman. The next 3 acts correspond to ha- they're designed to speed things up, and we get more drama and conflict, usually with battles and sometimes tragedy. The 2nd through 4th acts in this case are the 3 day cycle, which we play over and over again, always intensifying the drama and conflict as we approach the final boss battle. The final act is kyu, which is supposed to provide a satisfying conclusion and is typically very short. The final act in Majora's mask takes place on the moon and leads to the resolution of our hero's conflict against the trickster Majora, which has finally cast its puppet aside.

The game absolutely seems to be very aware of these references to japanese historical theater. Majora's movements controlling the Skull Kid are reminiscent of Banraku puppets and the overall theme and use of masks is reminiscent of a Noh play, which use masks for many reason including to represent spirits with regrets. While I'm unable to find a source to confirm it, I also recall reading long ago about a stage technique involving lowering the stage lights and donning a mask that represents a burden or emotion. Given the transformation sequences with the Deku, Goron and Zora masks, that would fall in line with the theme as well. I'm not sure if there's a specific type of theater here meant to be the dominant one, but the inspiration overall is pretty striking and certainly led to an interesting gameplay mechanic in the use of the masks.

[chirullimaconi]

I've never played Zelda Majora's Mask before I got it on the 3ds, so I can't appreciate the magic of how it was back in 2000.
MM is a game that always intrigued me. My first Zelda game was Skyward Sword, then i gradually got on the others but my favourite one is Ocarina of Time 3d. I love it, i put more than 100 hours in it, so when I found out there was a sequel to it, i obviously wanted to play it. I knew it was very different from the usual formula, but it was still a zelda game. Then, in 2014, Nintendo announced to the general public that Majora's mask would receive the same 3d treatment as Ocarina. Maybe I had too much hype, or maybe because it wasn't as good as I expected, MM would be one of my least favourite Zelda game.
It certainly isn't a bad game, but what I think hurt it the most was the three day cycle, only four dungeons and a lot of the NPC secondary quests being to difficult to continue with.
I hate being on a timer, and i especially hate doing the same things over and over again, so the three day cycle was an agony for me, even though I think it's one of the most innovative elements I've seen in videogames, being how well Aonuma implemented it in the game world.
The four dungeons wasn't that huge of a problem, but i didn't like their designs and again i hated to do the whole dungeon again if i started back the cycle. Lastly, some questlines, especially the Anju and Kafei one, were very hard to continue as it required you to be in a precise spot or time or mask (more on those later) that you couldn't figure out easily.
Talking about the good things, I really liked the darker tones of the game and the various masks that gave you different transformations and powerups (BUNNY HOOD 4 LIFE) and really like to see how the various inhabitants of Termina coped with this ugly ass moon that could crush them any minute.
However I still think this game is worth a shot if you're a Zelda fan, but please not let this be your first Zelda game! Also, thanks to Operation Moonfall, we can play this game in a decent format rather than the little bit awful N64 graphics!
Three Word Review: Hey, no Navi!

[AndrewBrown]

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who love Majora’s Mask, and those who never found the Inverted Song of Time.

This is hyperbolic, of course, but I think it is demonstrative of how Majora’s Mask's density is both its greatest strength but also its greatest obstacle. There’s so much to do in the world of Termina, and all of it quite literally cannot be done in a single Three-Day Cycle. The Inverted Song of Time triples the amount the player is permitted in each cycle, giving them much more time to penetrate that density. But the only way they know the song exists is via a hint given by a Talking Scarecrow in the Clock Town Shop, a character the player may never speak to in a location they may never venture. Majora’s Mask reveals its secrets, wonderful and sundry, to those players willing to explore its nook and crannies rather than follow its charted path; the Inverted Song of Time is in one of these crannies, and is the best tool towards this end. So pity the poor player who never finds it, but do not condemn them, as they have been put in the bad spot of being cast into a maze without the tools to navigate it. The Inverted Song of Time is so essential to most players of Majora’s Mask, it begs the question: Why is the slowed-down speed not the default, and the 3x speed the obtusely hidden song? It wouldn’t make Majora’s Mask any better, but it would make it more accessible if such was the case. Alas, it is not, and we are left with a fantastic, but inaccessible final product.

Would that it were, because this inaccessibility exacerbates Majora’s Mask’s other big issue: Repetition. Owing to its conceit of requiring the player to experience the final three days of a doomed word over and over, this creates an intensely macabre atmosphere, but that atmosphere can be undercut if the player is forced to repeat their actions because they ran out of time before achieving a goal. Perhaps this is why Majora’s Mask’s reputation has improved over time: As its secrets have become more common knowledge to the fanbase, particularly the Inverted Song of Time, the density has become easier to penetrate, and the necessity of repeating previously-completed actions is lessened.

Even I still experience the frustration of tedium, in spite of the high regard that I hold for Majora’s Mask. In my most recent play through the game, I got hung up on the Wedding Sidequest. This is already an incredibly frustrating quest as, for whatever baffling reason, the player is required to complete it twice to get every reward from it. This would be frustrating enough, but I was forced to do it a third time when an NPC did not appear in the proper place for some arbitrary reason. I always dread doing the Wedding Sidequest; I see it as a tiny window into what the game must be like for those who don’t already know how to penetrate its density.

The other word I would use to describe Majora’s Mask is cohesive. Post-Water Temple, Ocarina of Time suffers from a sense of aimlessness, a mish-mash of half-finished ideas quickly cobbled together to create a coherent penultimate and ultimate chapter, held together by a spackle of White Rupee puzzles and dummied-out content. Majora’s Mask suffers no such problems. Probably due to the incredibly tight timetable it was to be produced on, it has only four dungeons, each of which introduce either the Hero’s Bow or an upgrade to the Hero’s Bow. Everything else in the game is consigned to the Termina overworld, creating a Zelda title whose overworld-to-dungeon ratio is skewed in the opposite direction from its siblings. As my own thesis of the series is “character development through exploration,” I don’t see this as a problem; I see it as the purest Zelda title ever produced.

I already favor character and themes over gameplay to a fault, so it should be no surprise that I consider Majora’s Mask inarguably the strongest game in the series from a thematic standpoint. That it just so happens to be one of best-playing games in the series is merely a bonus; where Wolf Link in Twilight Princess feels half-baked and underutilized, all three of Link’s alternate forms are given a chance to shine in Majora’s Mask. It’s simply the height of the series from both a storytelling and game design standpoint, and it’s all downhill from here. Whether you’re playing the Nintendo 64 original, the cursed Gamecube port, or the marvelous 3DS remake (which mitigates several of the problems I have discussed), it isn’t where I would suggest any player begin their Zelda experience, but it’s definitely where I would suggest they end it. Always go out on a high note.

[ratsoalbion]

Thanks for all your feedback. Just a heads-up though folks, we've got far more than we could ever get through in the correspondence segment of a two-hour show, so please don't be offended if your post isn't included (in full).

My hope is that I'll get time to edit them down and take some key points from each one, but unfortunately my actual job may prevent me from undertaking this before we record.

Thanks again though - it's great to read them all even if we can't squeeze everything in to the show!

[Trainofthought]

First time contribution, yay!

The year was 1999 and I was seven. My grandfather owned a Nintendo 64 with a bunch of games. This became my first taste of video games and every time my family came to visit I was glued to his TV playing Super Mario 64 during the entire visit. It didn’t take too long before my grandpa decided I had more use for the console than him and it was one of the best days of my life when I one day out of the blue got it as a gift from him. I will be forever grateful, may he rest in peace.

That first night I will never forget. Me and my father had decided to try one of the other games that I had got, Ocarina of Time. I remember us both completely confused and a bit disappointed we didn’t get anywhere, we were supposed to find a sword but couldn’t find it and got stuck, so I went to bed that night thinking that the game wasn’t anything for me. Boy, was I dead wrong (hey, I was seven after all). The next morning I found out my father had continued playing as I slept and had actually found the sword! I then realised that this game might have something in it after all and I got involved in it, deep. I’ve never looked back.

Fast forward one year or so: I'd heard of this new game in the Zelda franchise, Majora’s Mask. One of my classmates had got his hands on it already, but we weren’t very close and never went to play at each other’s houses, he, for some strange reason, borrowed out his manual for it to me though, and I was completely enthralled by the artwork and the fact that you could change masks. It all seemed so mysterious, which is something that have always appealed to me greatly.

I told my parents that Majora’s Mask was the only thing I wanted for Christmas that year. Their response: I needed to complete the Zelda I had first to “prove I could handle it”. Problem was that I was stuck in Jabu Jabu’s belly at the time. One of my uncles asked me if he could borrow my N64 for a while to play the games that I had and since I was stuck I thought “why not?” When I got it back I saw that he had completed Ocarina and had not erased his save file which started right before climbing the stairs up to the final show-off with Ganondorf. I had no idea what had led up to that point, I mean I hadn’t even got to be adult Link yet in my own playthrough (though I knew that would happen). I climbed the many, many stairs and “beat“ the game, which I then told my parents. I really thought they saw right through my bluff, but lo and behold, that Christmas I got the one thing that I had wished for. Still to this day I feel a sting of nostalgic shame for doing that, haha. Of course, I have beaten Ocarina more times than I can count since then, but I actually finished Majora before ever doing that.

From the start, this game had its grip on me. It’s essentially a story about loss and coming to terms with it. Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t. Many people have said over the years that Majora’s Mask is “too dark” or “depressing”, that’s not the case with me at all; I think it is beyond beautiful. Just thinking back now to when you’re helping Darmani or Pamela with her Gibdo-fied father gives me Goosebumps and the game is packed full with moments like these. Every time you get the chance to help somebody with the Song of Healing is magical and transcends gaming for me.

The soundtrack is without questioning the MVP in the game, these melodies are timeless. You can definitely argue that the limited sound chip in the N64 put limitations on what could be done sound quality wise and I agree to some extent, butI never had a problem with this in the Zelda titles. For me that’s just charming and gives it personality and every time I hear any kind of re-orchestration I go “yeah, that’s pretty cool, but it doesn’t feel right.”

Actually, to this day I’m actually impressed with the way it looks, even if it is technically a fairly bit lacklustre. It complements the art style so well and gives the game the exact right kind of atmosphere. This is something I feel was a bit lost with the 3DS-versions, both in Ocarina and Majora. The change of colours and some of the new character models just doesn’t sit right with me, though that might just be me blinded by nostalgia.

Being so young I don’t really understand how I managed to beat Majora’s Mask for real before Ocarina of Time since it is in my opinion quite a bit harder on the puzzles, but there was and is something about that game that just speaks to me on a fundamental level. I think it has to do with my, as previously mentioned, affection for mystery and otherworldly things. This game fully packed with personality and emotion, which Ocarina of Time lacks a little bit in my opinion, don’t get me wrong, it’s in my top ten as well, but I dare say that Majora’s Mask is my favourite game of all time. There is so much more I could say and discuss about this masterpiece, but I’ll end my already too long look-back and review here. My three-word review would of course be: Best Game Ever ☺

And yes, I love it so much I even got a tattoo from it.

[chase210]

That's a freaking sweet tattoo dude, wish I had one!

[Trainofthought]

That's a freaking sweet tattoo dude, wish I had one!

Thanks, I'm so happy with it! Always a treat when somebody recognizes it and you get to talk a bit of Zelda.

[ratsoalbion]

I'm not a tattoo guy but that is beautifully rendered (or indeed 'inked' as I believe the cool young folks say)!

[Suits]

Man, I bounce off this game so much

Twice I've prepared myself to get through it but I find it too vague and repetitive to let it get its tendrils into me.

But reading these posts makes me desperately want to get through that early few cycles so that it clicks for me.

I have it on my N3DS, which I'm lead to beleive is the stella version to have

[AndrewBrown]

I have it on my N3DS, which I'm lead to beleive is the stella version to have

The 3DS version fixes so many of the original game's idiosyncrasies it's kind of astounding. I don't want to call them "problems" because I think a lot of what makes Majora's Mask unusual from the rest of the series is one of the reasons I like it so much better.

[chase210]

All this majoras mask talk makes me wanna play through again. Such a great game, love it to bits.

[gallo_pinto]

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I decided to play Oracle of Ages and Seasons along with the podcast. I had completed these two games in high school and while I remember enjoying them quite a bit, there wasn’t anything specific that had stuck with me. So I bought both of them on my 3DS to try and shake off the fog and see what these games were about.

I played Oracle of Ages first and while I thought it was ok, I was overall a bit disappointed. It’s a totally competent 2D Zelda, but it felt overly long. Navigation on the world map is a bunch of time manipulation puzzles, and while they are fun and clever the first time through, they make backtracking for rings and heart pieces a real pain. I beat the game and decided I didn’t have it in me to play Oracle of Seasons right away, so I put it down for about a month.

But oh man! The magic took hold when I started Oracle of Seasons. The entire conceit of these games is their connectivity, but you don’t fully start experiencing that until the second game. When you boot up the game and Twinrova is there cackling, it immediately raises the stakes. Bringing your ring collection over is cool, but the real joy is when suddenly characters from the first game start visiting. Or when you have to go back to Ages to tell a character a secret and then return to Seasons with more bombs or a new sword. It was like a Telltale or Mass Effect game, but 10 years earlier! I was shocked that in 2016, this primitive seeming password system was still so cool. It genuinely felt like magic to me.

In summary, I think the games by themselves are decent top-down Zelda games that can’t compete with Link to the Past or Link Between Worlds. But the linking system is just awesome and it really elevates the games. I'm still surprised by how much I liked them.

Three Word Review: The gimmick works!

[Flabyo]

My thoughts on this one would likely contain a lot of meta-game-developer stuff, and I'm not sure if that'd be that interesting for the podcast. It's one of those very rare games where I can't disengage my 'day job' brain, and all I see are the holes and compromises. The jagged edges where it's clear (to me) that sections have been lifted out late in development. And I know that for most that stuff is hard to see, but it's really *really* glaring for me in this one and it makes it hard to see anything else.