Majora's Mask is a bit of a black sheep in the Legend of Zelda series; some absolutely love it, while others find it too cumbersome and weird to enjoy. As a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask reuses the same engine and similar gameplay elements while recycling a ton of graphical and mechanical assets from OOT, but places them all in a new world, Termina, with a central gimmick of having a three day time limit constantly ticking in the background as you work to save the world from total destruction while the moon slowly falls on a collision course towards Termina. A bit like the Harold Ramis and Bill Murray film Groundhog Day, all of Termina's NPCs follow the same scripted schedule over those three days, and you have the power to reset time to the beginning of the cycle to do things differently and change people's lives, if only temporarily, until the next reset.
With a fairly dark, depressing atmosphere, a story that has nothing to do with the usual Zelda, Ganon, and Hyrule motifs, and more demanding, sometimes obtuse gameplay, it's no surprise that Majora's Mask isn't universally loved. It's a pretty weird game, after all, and I can totally understand it not being everyone's cup of tea, but it's those uniquely weird idiosyncrasies that make it my favorite Zelda game. It is a bit of an acquired taste, though; I actually didn't like it much at first, because it felt like too much of a weird departure from Ocarina of Time, a game with which I was fanatically obsessed at the time. But over time I came to appreciate its differences, and realized that it's actually better than even the more modern Zelda games in a lot of ways. As I was playing Breath of the Wild, for instance, I couldn't help but occasionally wish I were playing Majora's Mask, instead.
With the N64 quickly becoming more and more obsolete, the Majora's Mask 3DS remake aims to bring Majora's Mask to a new audience on a platform that is both readily available and also playable, while also improving the original game's accessibility with a bunch of quality of life improvements that make it not only easier to play, but also easier to understand. I was inclined at first to say that the 3DS remake is now the definitive way to play Majora's Mask due to the superior graphical quality, technical performance, and user interface, but unfortunately Nintendo also decided to make some radical changes to things like overall difficulty, boss fights, and transformation masks, which leaves me more conflicted about whether I'd actually recommend Majora's Mask 3DS to first time players.
WHY MAJORA'S MASK IS MY FAVORITE ZELDA GAME
Before we get into my review of the 3DS remake, I want to take a moment to establish the basics of what makes Majora's Mask such a good Zelda game and why I like it so much. These following statements apply equally to the original game as well as the remake.
A rare direct sequel in the Zelda universe
The Zelda timeline is notoriously convoluted, with so many games in the series retelling the same story but in a fresh new rendition (basically a "soft reboot") or being completely unrelated to other games in the series. Even when a game seems to follow established lore from previous games, it's often so far removed, being set hundreds or thousands of years later, that it almost feels like its own entity. Majora's Mask is a rare case of a direct sequel taking place immediately after the previous game, and definitively featuring the exact same incarnation of Link. And it's not even open for debate; the intro text teases that Link is possibly beginning this adventure seeking out his former fairy companion, Navi, following the conclusion of Ocarina of Time's finale when she's seen flying off and leaving him in the Temple of Time; a flashback shows Zelda teaching Link the Song of Time as a parting gift as he leaves Hyrule; and the Skull Kid (who acts as the primary antagonist of the game) later references a specific event in Ocarina of Time, in which you play Saria's Song for him to earn a piece of heart.
This may not seem like a big deal, but it's a pretty rare occurrence in the Zelda series and adds a lot more emotional weight to the game. I feel more attachment to this Link, for instance, and more inclined to act the hero and see him through his quest because this Link and I have already been through so much in Ocarina of Time. This Link actually has a backstory that I know about and experienced first hand, unlike for instance the Link in Breath of Wild, who for all intents and purposes is the usual "blank slate hero" whose background we only learn about through random, sporadic flashbacks. Again, it's not a major selling point or even a defining feature, but it's a small touch that I really appreciate.
Recycled Ocarina of Time assets
Some may actually consider this aspect a negative, arguing that it's cheap and derivative ("these lazy game designers just reused all the stuff they already made in OOT instead of making a whole new game") but this is yet another thing that I find fascinating about Majora's Mask. I find it interesting to see alternate versions of the same characters in what is kind of a parallel universe, because it expands on the creativity and scope of the original source material when you see old faces and assets being used in brand new ways, like the bosses from the Spirit Temple now being potion-brewing business partners, or the random guy running around Hyrule Field whom you sell the bunny hood to now being the town mailman. Besides, it's fun to recognize familiar things, since so many things in this game feel like easter eggs, even if they're fairly obvious. In a way, it almost feels like a Master Quest style nostalgia trip, taking the same game we already know and love and remixing it into something completely different.
No Ganon or Zelda or Hyrule or Triforces
With most games in the Zelda series dealing with the same tired premise of having to get the Master Sword to earn the Triforce to stop Ganon and rescue Princess Zelda and save Hyrule, it's just so refreshing to play a Zelda game that doesn't have a single ounce of those same old cliches (Zelda does make an appearance, but it's for like 10 seconds in a flashback). Despite the reused assets from Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask feels like a completely unique setting with a unique antagonist and a unique goal and unique central gameplay mechanism.
It's just so weird
I think it's safe to say that Majora's Mask is easily the weirdest Zelda game ever made (though Link's Awakening might come close with its fourth-wall breaking Mario references making it sometimes feel like it's almost not a Zelda game). We've got things like the hand in the toilet, carrying the Deku Princess back to the Palace in a bottle, the general look of the giants (basically being giant heads with no bodies), aliens abducting cows, a dying zora getting up and telling you his story in the form of a guitar solo rock ballad, talking to stalchildren, sniffing someone's underwear to find mushrooms, pretty much everything about Tingle, the Elegy of Emptiness statues, and so on. A lot of things in this game feel almost out of place in a Zelda game, and are downright bizarre regardless of the context.
Darker, heavier, more mature atmosphere
Piggybacking on the overall weirdness of Majora's Mask is how relatively dark it is, not only for a Zelda game but for a game in general. Its main themes deal heavily with death and grief, and it treats these themes with a very serious tone. With the threat of the moon about to destroy the world, you see people going through various stages of panic and denial, and it makes the game's central premise feel so much more real and grave. All of Ikana Canyon reeks of death, and the little girl hiding her father-turned-gibdo in a closet may be one of the most disturbing images in any Zelda game. The moment when, on the third night, Cremia implies that she's going to get Romani drunk so that she won't have to suffer when they all die horribly is shockingly grim. When Skull Kid curses Link and turns him into a deku scrub, it feels like something out of an artistic horror movie. This is of course not to mention all of the people who die before your very eyes, or the spirits of the dead with whom you commune to try to solve their unfinished business. There's a lot of emotion here, too, which is impressive considering how relatively simple the character interactions are. With the Zelda series being mostly light-hearted, kid-friendly affairs, it's just interesting to see a Zelda game break the mold so intensely.
Shows you actual consequences for failure
In a lot of games, the main threat is merely an implication of something that might happen if you don't fulfill your role as a hero and save the day. But, in the end, these games are scripted in such a way that you literally can't fail, and so that everything will eventually turn out right no matter what you do. The repeating three day time limit in Majora's Mask, in which everything in the game continues forward on its own schedule regardless of what you do, ensures that you won't have enough time to solve everybody's problems, or even to save the world, meaning you will constantly encounter fail states for quests and characters that you just couldn't get to in time. The first time you enter Romani Ranch, for instance, will likely be on the third day before you have access to powder kegs to get there earlier, at which point the alien invasion has already happened and Romani has already been abducted, left in a permanently dazed and confused state by the time you arrive.
You see a lot of consequences for things you missed off-screen, but it's also possible for you to outright fail a lot of the game's scenarios and be stuck with those consequences until resetting the cycle and trying again. Anju and Kafei's questline, for instance, spans the entire three day cycle and requires a bunch of different actions at specific times on your part, and it's possible to screw it up in multiple different ways, each of which will have a unique outcome for those characters. If you're playing through a main dungeon and simply run out of time, then you won't get to finish it and will have to start all over again on a new cycle. If you wait for time to completely expire, or play the Oath to Order before recruiting all four of the giants, then you actually watch the world get destroyed. The fact that Majora's Mask actually allows you to fail, and shows you a variety of outcomes for those failures, gives your actions so much more of an impact.
A truly dynamic world
The world in Majora's Mask constantly changes, with or without your input. All of its NPCs go about their daily routines, which change from day to day, and world conditions will also change from day to day. You can see the construction for the Carnival of Time progress each day, as well as watch the townsfolk become progressively more concerned over the threat of the moon crashing until most of the town eventually evacuates by the third day. Interactions and quest opportunities at Romani Ranch will be completely different if you're there on the first day, or the third day. Besides that, you actually effect real change in the world as you complete quests; when you beat Snowhead Temple you end the winter and bring spring back to the mountain, which not only changes the look of everything but also opens up new gameplay possibilities. Compare this to, say, Ocarina of Time where beating the Water Temple never unfreezes Zora's Domain, or Breath of the Wild where beating the Vah Medoh dungeon does practically nothing.
So many side quests
One of my favorite things in Zelda games is exploring off the main path for optional side content, and Majora's Mask really shines in this department since most of it actually consists of optional side quests and activities. There's such a strong emphasis on side content that I honestly feel like, if you're skipping the optional content in favor of simply following the main progression through the story, then you're missing the entire point of the game and robbing yourself of the game's unique experience. The side content is plentiful, here, but it's also of great quality, with so many quests and activities tying directly in with the game's central premise, providing opportunities for lore and world-building which helps to make the world feel more real and lived-in, in addition to adding more weight and significance to the main plot. And unlike the side content in some other games, the quests and activities here are generally pretty interesting. The spider houses are all fun mini-dungeons with self-contained item collecting challenges; the Anju and Kafei questline is probably the best side quest in any Zelda game; I love collecting all the masks and finding out their unique uses; and so on.
Difficulty and challenge
Majora's Mask is more challenging than your typical Zelda game, and this, I feel, makes it more rewarding to play. Yeah, sometimes the difficulty is a little cumbersome -- the limited save system is certainly a culprit, and figuring out what to do to trigger and/or solve some side quests can be incredibly obtuse -- but I find it more satisfying to discover these things on my own in a game world that isn't going to hold my hand than when I'm being dragged by the nose through all of the game's content. There may be only four dungeons in this game, but they're all bigger and harder than typical Zelda dungeons, usually with a central gimmick (the central column in Snowhead, water flow in Great Bay, and the gravity inversion in the Stone Tower) adding extra depth and complexity to the challenge. Not to mention, collecting the 15 fairies in each dungeon and having to do it all under a time limit. Getting to 100% in this game feels like a real accomplishment.
Masks and transformations
Except for the repeating three-day time cycle, the masks and transformations are Majora's Mask's primary gimmick -- the word "mask" is even right in the title. I like the mask system because it's a collectible item system that also adds gameplay functionality to the mix, like using the bunny hood to run faster, or the bomb mask if you're out of bombs, or the stone mask to avoid detection. A lot of them are just "lock and key" puzzles where you wear a mask to earn a heart piece, basically a self-fulfilling reward for earning the mask which will then become useless, but the transformation masks are pretty exciting and add a lot of interesting mechanical variety to the gameplay, essentially quadrupling the amount of actions and maneuvers you can perform as Link. Coming from Ocarina of Time, it's such a cool concept to be able to play as a zora or goron (and even a deku, which was completely unexpected), and it's also nice how those transformations play into platforming and puzzle-solving in and out of dungeons, with each mask playing an important role in and leading up to its respective dungeon in addition to its usual versatility elsewhere.
So many hidden possibilities
With the world state having so many different variable conditions based on what day it is, what quest stages you’re on, what character interactions you’ve had previously in that cycle, and even what mask you’re wearing, there are a ton of little interactions and exchanges that you might never see if you’re not meticulously checking every possibility, or looking things up with a guide. You could, for instance, talk to the same NPC multiple times every day wearing different masks and after completing various stages of various quests and get a different reaction from them every time. Even having played the game multiple times over the years and feeling confident in knowing about every possibility, I was still surprised at little things I hadn’t seen before because I never thought to go back to talk to certain NPCs at certain times. This amount of detail just adds to the feeling of discovery and the fun of exploration.
In summary
Majora's Mask is fairly unique in the Zelda series, and I like it because of its differences. Each Zelda game has something that makes it stand out from the rest of them, but it's usually just one or two defining traits, whereas Majora's Mask feels a little more removed from the formula. This is somewhat ironic considering it shares so many similarities with Ocarina of Time, but I have to respect Nintendo's decision to do something radically different with Majora's Mask rather than just churning out another Ocarina of Time. After all, innovation is the thing that has kept this series alive and interesting for so long, and I would consider Majora's Mask to be one the most innovative and original in the entire series. I like most Zelda games, but Majora’s Mask just has a special charm, a unique personality that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the series, or in other games for that matter. I particularly love the “repeating time loop” gameplay system, because even though everything is rigidly scripted to happen the same way every time, it makes the world feel so much more dynamic and alive because things actually change as time passes and as you do things in the world.
A REVIEW OF THE MAJORA'S MASK 3DS REMAKE
For the most part, the 3DS remake remains the same Majora’s Mask as the original N64 release from 2000, but with better graphics and performance. The original was so resource-intensive that it actually required the memory expansion, but even then it still pushed the N64 to its limits; I still remember it struggling to maintain a stable framerate at times, and still having to deal with low draw distances. The remake increases the resolution, adds higher-resolution textures, and has smoother, less-polygonal models, all while also increasing the framerate. Link’s model is one of the biggest changes, with him now having a more realistic face and more details in his tunic. Wandering around Termina Field now has the pleasant change of being able to see all the way to the horizon in full detail. Water surfaces now have a ripply shimmer to them. As you would expect from the remake coming out 15 years after the original, it all looks much better than it did originally.
Unfortunately, not all of the graphical changes are for the better. The moon’s face has been redone, and its new expression just doesn’t look the same anymore. Originally, it looked like it was expressing some combination of terror, anger, and remorse, but now it looks like it’s just pissed off, or struggling really hard to pass a bowel movement. The lighting is a bit better in the 3DS version, but this has the consequence of making some areas of the game literally brighter than they used to be, which goes against the game’s literally dark atmosphere. They added an animation when Link slides on ice, causing him to flail his arms and upper torso around as he catches his balance, which seems fine enough but looks ridiculous when he does that exaggerated reaction every time he moves, even when you’re being careful to move at a slower pace. Other changes are just odd and questionable, like how Deku Link’s spin attack now causes thorny roots to come out of the tip of his hat; it makes logical sense, but it just seems unnecessary.
The best changes come in the game’s controls and user interface. The inventory screen got a major overhaul with a pair of buttons on the DS touchpad that take you directly to the mask screen, or the equipment screen -- no more having to pause the game, wait a second for the menus to show up, then cycle through animated windows to get where you want to be. If you try to equip an item onto a button that’s already bound to an equipped mask, the game will automatically unequip the mask instead of blasting you with an error sound and forcing you to close the menu and manually unequip the mask before rebinding the button. Plus, the 3DS version adds extra item buttons to the touch pad -- instead of only having the three C buttons to equip items to, you’ve now got four item buttons (X and Y, plus the I and II buttons on the touch pad) with things like the Ocarina and Photo Box permanently bound to other touch pad buttons, clearing up even more real estate for items.
This change makes swapping and managing items much more convenient than in the original Majora’s Mask, but unfortunately there’s still a fair amount of pausing the game to switch masks and items by still being limited to only four item buttons. When doing dungeons, for instance, I had the Great Fairy mask permanently bound to the top button and the dungeon’s respective transformation mask permanently bound to the bottom one, since I was using those items in practically every room, which left only two buttons for other items like the bow, hook shot, deku sticks, and so on. This gets especially problematic in the Stone Tower where you frequently have to have all three transformation masks and the hook shot equipped. It would’ve been nice to have the transformation masks permanently bound somewhere else, like on the D-Pad or elsewhere on the touch pad. I’m also not fond of how the new 3DS control scheme changes the note inputs for songs; I’m so used to using C button inputs that I have the songs memorized based on buttons, and now having all of the notes remapped to L, R, Y, X, and A meant that I had to essentially re-learn the songs all over again.
The Bomber’s Notebook has now been completely reworked to make it more like a conventional quest log in more modern games. The old interface is still available, showing you NPCs’ availability throughout their three day schedule and keeping track of when you’ve booked appointments or completed their quests, but there’s now a secondary screen that tracks individual quests with step-by-step entries, as well as a “rumors” tab that gives you hints about side quests and events that you might not ever discover short of randomly stumbling into them. These rumors are given to you by the Bomber kids as you talk to them, and they’re a nice way of guiding players towards content they might ordinarily miss, without spoiling anything or leading you right to the conclusion. They also just give you the notebook at the start of the second cycle, rather than forcing you to go through the rigmarole of finding the bomber kids again, or pre-emptively using the password that you hopefully remembered.
There’s even a new feature to set reminders and alarms with Tatl so that, if you make an appointment with someone later that day, she’ll remind you about it at whatever time you request. Probably the best change, in regards to controlling time, is that the Song of Double Time now lets you advance time directly to any hour you desire, rather than only allowing you to advance to the beginning of the next night or the next morning. One of the worst aspects of the original N64 game was how much time you’d spend simply standing around waiting for time to pass; if you had an appointment to meet someone at 4:30pm, you couldn’t play the Song of Double time because that would warp you to 6:00pm, and so you had to stand there for 10+ in-game hours doing nothing, or find some way to pass the time productively and hope you didn’t lose track of time. Now, you can skip right to 4:00 and only have to wait a minute or so of real time. Likewise, saving the game is now much easier than ever before, with the Owl Statues now allowing you to save and continue, rather than save and quit, so that you can load a save from earlier in the cycle instead of having to reset to the beginning each time, and there are now new save points littered across the map, like at the beginning of dungeons.
These kinds of features help to make the game easier to play, which seems to have been a major goal with the remake considering Nintendo even went so far as to add a Sheikah Stone to the Clock Tower, which shows fourth-wall-breaking pre-recorded gameplay footage of solutions to what you’re supposed to do next, or how you’re supposed to do things. This thing’s inclusion is boderline insulting because it’s pretty much like having an in-game video walkthrough, but fortunately its usage is at least optional, and it’s tucked away in an area you basically never have to return to after you finish the introduction sequences. Other changes to the game’s difficulty are not optional, however, as they’ve gone and forcibly made certain gameplay scenarios easier. The moving platforms in the Deku Palace that you had to land on in a platforming challenge are now completely stationary; ice arrows now only work in pre-marked hotspots so that you can only use them in the correct location; the skeleton Captain Keeta is now way slower so you can catch him more easily; the flame walls that shoot out at you if you take a wrong turn in the Deku Butler race are now just normal fences; many dungeon fairies have been moved into more obvious and more easily attainable locations; the list goes on.
I understand why they made these kinds of changes; the original game was maybe a little too obtuse in some of its solutions, and maybe a little too punishing if you made a mistake. Sneaking into the Deku Palace, for instance, would force you start the whole process over again from the beginning if you missed a single jump, and that can be a little frustrating if you made it through the whole process only to fail on the final one. So, by making the section easier they just made it less tedious for less-skilled players, but it takes away some of the rewarding feeling of beating that section now that it’s easier. As I mentioned in the previous section about why Majora’s Mask is my favorite Zelda game, part of the reason for that is because it’s generally a tougher game than other Zelda games, which tend to be a little too easy for my tastes. And it’s not like Majora’s Mask was was so brutally challenging that it was impossible to beat; I think I was about 12 years old when I played the original game for the first time and I did just fine (albeit using a guide to find some of the more obscure heart pieces).
Other changes are curiously head-scratching. It used to be that you could get a reservation at the Stock Pot Inn by talking to Anju at a certain time of day, when she was expecting a visitor who coincidentally had your exact name, but due to a quirk in his speech she misinterprets his name as being “(your name)-goro” as opposed to just “(your name).” It was an amusing little mix-up that Link stumbles into accidentally and coincidentally, but now in the 3DS version the only way to get that room is to be wearing the goron transformation mask, because Anju now knows in advance that the visitor is a goron. In a rare twist, they actually made something more difficult than in the original, since you now have to wait until after gaining the goron mask to do this, but it now means that Link has to knowingly screw over that other goron to get the room, which is a less than noble act for a supposed hero to be perpetrating. I was always kind of amused by the interaction in the N64 version when the other goron arrives and falls victim to the miscommunication about his name, but in the 3DS version I felt kind of bad for him.
They also radically altered the swimming controls for Zora Link, making him swim like a slow, boring, normal ol’ human by default unless you spend magic to enable the old dolphin-like zora controls from the original version. This change is just completely baffling to me, because they’ve put a resource limit on one of the most fun parts of the original game, effectively discouraging people from using the fun swimming controls. And it’s not like Zora Link’s moveset was over-powered or anything -- I can only presume they nerfed the moveset to make it easier to control for people who can’t keep up with the faster movement speed and the need for faster, more precise inputs -- so I don’t see why they couldn’t simply add the slower movement scheme as an optional toggle rather than forcing it on everyone. Deku Link is also not quite as fast as he used to be, with a slow start up to his movement animation halting his forward momentum a bit when he goes to jump off a small platform, like the lily pads in the Southern Swamp. Goron Link's attacks are, fortunately, faster and more fluid, rather than the clunky imprecise mess that they were in the N64 version, so although Nintendo made two of the transformations arguably worse they did at least improve one of them.
Then we’ve got the radically altered boss fights, which changes them from one-on-one duels where you have to learn their moves and simply out-damage them, using whatever tools you desire, to formulaic “pattern bosses” where you have to perform a very particular action to expose their new weakpoints -- a giant orange eyeball that pops out of nowhere. The fight with Goht is virtually unchanged, except now you have to run over and punch/stab the exposed eyeball instead of continuing to roll into him in spike form. The others, though, are almost completely different. With Odolwa, you now have to transform into Deku Link, burrow into a flower, float over his head, and drop a deku nut on him to expose the eyeball -- you do that three times and you win. With Gyorg, you now have to use the zora fins to dislodge an underwater mine while Gyorg is sucking in water to expose the eyeball -- you do that three times and you win. The Twinmold fight is actually kind of cool at first, since you have to use the light arrows to hit the weakpoints on the first one while dodging attacks from the second one, but the second phase when they randomly give you the giant’s mask just looks absurd as Link suddenly becomes a hulking monstrosity performing wrestling moves on the boss like a buffoon. I guess I appreciate that the boss battles now incorporate the transformation masks a little more prominently, but I dislike how formulaic they’ve become.
There are plenty of other, smaller changes, but these are mostly just more examples to reinforce general statements I've already made, like about the game being easier, or the graphics being better/different, and so on. I don’t have much else to say on that front -- for a full list of changes, you’ll have to consult a search engine. The only conclusion I really have for the Majora’s Mask 3DS remake is that I’m not wholly impressed with it, and it’s not really what I wanted out of a remake. I would’ve preferred that they either keep the game the exact same, and just improve the interface and graphics, or give it a Master Quest or Link’s Awakening DX treatment by giving it a bunch of brand new content, rather than arbitrarily changing things for no reason. I think the only genuinely new content we get in the 3DS remake are the two fishing holes, which add practically nothing to the game, and an extra questline with the Gorman Troupe Leader, which leads to an extra bottle. Some of the changes are fun to spot from a veteran standpoint, but while half of them made sense I found myself annoyed by the other half. All-in-all, the 3DS remake is a bit of a mixed bag for me, and if I were recommending the game to a first-time player I might be inclined to suggest the original N64 version, either on the actual N64 or by emulation on the GameCube Collector’s Edition or a Virtual Console download.
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