5/5 ★ – jdraco's review of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D.

In 1998, following the success of Ocarina of Time, game director Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to immediately create a remixed version of Ocarina, only harder and with rearranged dungeons… However the dungeon designer, Eiji Aonuma had no interest in remixing the dungeons immediately after making them, so Miyamoto offered him a new challenge To create a whole new Zelda game in 1 year, using the exact same engine and assets from Ocarina of Time The result, was Majora’s Mask… A beautiful, thoughtful, eerie and engaging adventure Now Ocarina of Time usually gets all the praises and attention because it came out first and was groundbreaking and redefined what a true adventure game could be And while I love Ocarina of Time, I truly believe that Majora’s Mask should be respected in the same regard, not for being groundbreaking, but for being innovative and trying new shit never before seen in the series This game obviously has a much darker and a more eerie and mature tone than the other Zelda games And this tone fits the game and the story it’s trying to tell perfectly The theme of impending doom lurks throughout the whole game, the townsfolk fear for their lives, they aren’t certain whether or not they’ll live, whether or not they should just try and leave Clock Town before the moon crashes down And this uncertainty helps the player break down who these characters really are The mailman wants to leave so bad, but is so dedicated to his work that he can’t until he delivers his final letter Madame Aroma is mostly oblivious to the impending doom so she decides to stay in Clock Town in the hopes that the person she sent looking for her son will come back with good news Then there’s the man in the blue vest who just stares the moon right in the fucking face all the way up until the very last second, unfazed by anything (absolute sigma) And then of course there’s the piece of shit Business Scrub who won’t let me use his deku flower to get up to the clock tower, even though the moon is crashing down and I’m trying to stop it in order to save the whole town from being wiped out, yet he still doesn’t give a single fuck and won’t move until I give him his bitch ass moon tear… But I digress… Shifting to the characters, besides the bitch ass Business Scrub, the characters are all great and you can learn so much about them just through various side quests or just talking to them around the town There’s this is shady business guy who runs a shop where you can buy and sell goods, there’s this old lady who runs a bomb shop and if you help her from getting robbed she’ll give you a bomb mask. And then there’s this really great side quest where you help the farm girl Romani and her sister, Cremia, throughout their farm. Towards the end of the side quest there’s this cutscene with Cremia we’re she talks about losing her father and what’s it been like to deal with that She also talks about going to Clock Town for a wedding that her friend Anju is having This dialogue doesn’t seem like much, but it’s genuinely so important for world building and stuff like this really makes you even more invested in the characters and their own personal stories While I’m talking about the Romani side quest, I should also bring up that the side quests in this game fucking rule They are genuinely the best part of this game and I easily spent the majority of this game just doing side quests You’ve of course got the Romani side quest with the aliens, you got the side quest where you play a song for a depressed man that gets drunk at the milk bar every night, you’ve got the wholesome side quest where you turn the man that was turned into a gibdo back into a man There’s are just so many memorable and amazing side quests in this game, and I haven’t even talked about the best one (I’ll get to that later) Now a problem that some people have with this game is the 3-day system. They don’t like that there’s a time limit, and that they don’t have time to do what they want, or whatever else And to that I say, fuck em! I absolutely love the 3-day system. It gives you the ability to plan out each day and learn every one in Clock Towns schedule so you know what time to do certain quests, what time a certain thing will appear, etc For example you could decide to go to Romani Ranch at midnight, but “oh no” it’s blocked by a big ass rock so you have to wait till tomorrow Now you could just skip forward in time to tomorrow so you can get into the ranch, or you could head north and find Kamaro dancing in the mountains, you could go to the stock pot inn and give the ghost some toilet paper, you could help the old lady getting robbed, I mean there is just so much freedom in how you’d like to plan out you’re 3 days You could spend all 3 days going for a specific heart piece, or 3 days on a specific quest You could spend the 3 days going for multiple heart pieces, 3 days just looking for masks, you could spend the 3 days looking for both heart pieces and masks You could spend all 3 days just tackling a specific dungeon, the choice of what you want to do in those 3 days is completely up to you and I love it This remake also made the genius decision of letting you skip forward in time to a specific time In the old game if you wanted to activate something at a specific time, you had to stand still and wait for like fucking two hours This made the couples side quest kind of unbearable at times (in the n64 version) Speaking of unbearable things, now I want to break down what I really don’t like that much in this game The dungeons, they are not that great. There’s some standouts, aka one standout which is the Stone Tower Temple, which utilizes the really cool concept of flipping the whole temple upside down Sadly though none of temples really match the Stone Tower Temple in terms of cool concepts, Woodfall and Snowhead temple are just kind of decent to middle of the road And I’m sorry, but Great Bay Temple is absolute dogshit, and as much as I like Stone Tower Temple, the Twinmolds bossfight is also absolute dogshit as well, I don’t remember if it was this bad in the n64 version, but it fucking sucks in this version The temples are really all I have in terms of complaints though. I suppose there are a few annoying sections with controlling the Goron and Zora, but that’s about it Now to bring this review to an end, I want to really break down why I love this game Majora’s Mask has the beautiful theme of acceptance throughout the game With some of the townsfolk saying that they’re gonna leave Clock Town throughout day 1 and 2, yet some of them still inevitably stay and accept their fate at the end of day 3 Or the couple in the side quest that finally embrace each other after all their struggles at the end of day 3 and accept that they’re gonna die together, but don’t care because they are content in just being with and loving each other in their final moments. The last words that they say to you are “we shall greet the morning together” And acceptance is especially prevalent with the song of healing and that when you play the song for all of the characters who died, they come to accept that they’re dead in these emotional little cutscenes where they reflect on themselves and again come to accept that this was their fate, ultimately finding closure and leaving you their mask The last piece of them for them to leave behind, so that they may still live on and be remembered through you and through the memories they shared with the people who’s love for them still remains… What a special game