The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D (2015)

Majora's Mask - one of the most controversial Zelda titles. Releasing after the universally acclaimed Ocarina of Time which is ubiquitously praised. After the success of OoT Majora's Mask sets out to recapture their audience while also trying to stay fresh. By reutilizing many of the assets of OoT Majora's Mask has much of the same feel in terms of control and fluidity in animation. Many of your favorite songs and sounds return helping to keep that nostalgia for OoT alive.

Where things get interesting is the differences. In order to make Majora's Mask different several gameplay elements were added to the OoT formula: Link uses masks to gain new abilities, the game has a time limit that must be reset, dungeons are in short supply but sidequests are not, whereas young link was always cheerful in OoT he is now plunged into darkness prematurely. Some of these changes are welcome and others are not. Fans of 3D Zelda will certainly see the lack of Dungeoneering and boss fights as a downer. While the time mechanic can be interesting for some side quests it detracts from the puzzle solving experience in the larger dungeons. More often than not it will be frustrating rather than interesting. The addition of the masks is both creepy and amazing. The masks serve as one of the few things I feel Majora's Mask was inventive and successful with. The sidequests can be interesting and certainly tell more of a story than we normally see in Zelda titles, but in some cases are very tedious to complete. I know they are optional - but in the end, you are getting sidequests in place of additional dungeon content.

Majora's Mask is not a bad game. In fact, it is a pretty solid game. The controls are great, the story and characters are interesting and the Mask gameplay is an interesting twist from OoT. However, the focus on sidequests, lack of dungeons and annoying timers keep it from living up to other titles in the series.

So I finally finished Majora's Mask 3D. I really enjoyed the story and what the game was trying to do, but I found the game to be really frustrating to play. The controls and camera were awkward, dungeons were extremely tedious, quests were extremely difficult to figure out without a guide, and having to redo events over again was just not fun to me. I especially didn't like how you couldn't keep the Stray Fairies when you reset, leading me to just give up on trying to find them.

I was really interested in this game and had hoped this would be the game that would get me into Zelda, but sadly I did not enjoy it. I guess Zelda just isn't for me.

My file upon completion, if anyone's curious:

I wanted to like this game but it is just lame. The whole thing is overshadowed by the time limit, which makes me much less likely to explore, see the world they created, or go on side quests, and it makes me more likely to just reach for the gamefaqs.

Phantom Hourglass did the time limit thing much better, which was actually just ticking down your health meter only in the dungeons.

Played about 4 hours so far and I still can't decide if I like it. The global time limit is a real downer and makes me much less likely to explore and enjoy the world that they have created. It also makes me much more likely to reach for gamefaqs since I don't want to spend too long on a puzzle.

Having played Phantom Hourglass previously I think they did it better by limiting the timer (life draining) to only the dungeons.

Played about 4 hours so far and I still can't decide if I like it. The global time limit is a real downer and makes me much less likely to explore and enjoy the world that they have created. It also makes me much more likely to reach for gamefaqs since I don't want to spend too long on a puzzle.

Having played Phantom Hourglass previously I think they did it better with limiting the timer (life draining) to only the dungeons.