Game Debate #152: The Legend of Zelda - Majora's Mask

[Reed Rothchild | 9,931]

[Gloves | 12,260]

My favourite game.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,931]

Hey @Gloves , feel free to put up as fanatical impassioned a defense of your baby as @AirVillain does  

[Gloves | 12,260]

Nah I don't feel like I need to justify my choices. 

It's Majora's fucking MASK, bro.

[fox | 1,768]

While OoT nailed the classic Zelda formula.  Majora's Mask really got creative with it.

The ground hog's day time travel and weirdness to the game gives it a unique favor  All of the masks, transformations, and side quests, really are a lot of fun to play with.  It isn't perfect, having to bank/unbank things when turning back time is annoying.  It feels like a lot of unneeded backtracking and busy work.

[DefaultGen | 5,724]

10/10

The most fun you can have at 15 frames per second. 

[AirVillain | 534]

57 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Hey @Gloves , feel free to put up as fanatical impassioned a defense of your baby as @AirVillain does  

 

 

54 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Nah I don't feel like I need to justify my choices. 

It's Majora's fucking MASK, bro.

Is this a sub-post? 

Just spittin' facts, my dawg!

Also.... in terms of THIS game. Majora's Mask.... probably played it for a total of 30s. Not my jam.

So it doesn't even get a number.... it gets a  "Never played it, never will." 

[JamesRobot | 6,027]

Pretty meh.  Ocarina of Time is literally the better alternative.

[Gloves | 12,260]

Just now, JamesRobot said:

Pretty meh.  Ocarina of Time is literally the better alternative.

The boring alternative.

[JamesRobot | 6,027]

Just now, Gloves said:

The boring alternative.

I thought that was Metroid.

[OptOut | 9,023]

9 out of 10.

I appreciate where MM went with the deeper and more emotionally resonant story, and the world of characters you really get to know in a way you never could in the first game.

However, due to this reliance on the story and the sidequests to make up for the relative lack of more traditional dungeons in the game, the game is also less fun to revisit compared to OoT. Repeating sidequests is less engaging than repeating dungeons IMO, and the emotional resonance of the story inevitably diminishes on repeated playthroughs.

When it first came out I rated it more highly, but over time OoT has bumped it back down to second.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,120]

The Legend of Zelda: Fetch Quest Edition.  Really this game feels to me like someone at Nintendo said, "hey guys, what if we did a Zelda title where the entire game was just scavenger hunts and mini-games and fetch quests!!!!"  And then they actually did...   And it's totally not for me...  

Edited May 2, 2023 by Dr. Morbis

[YOURTURN | 1,258]

If we are talking about the 3DS version, that version is one of my past mistakes. Meaning that I should have bought it instead of Ocarina of Time, just like how I should have bought Dragon Quest VII instead of Dragon Quest VIII. With both cases being tied to my many mistakes.

If we are talking about the N64 version... The little I had played was not to bad. What turned me off was the time limit part of the game. And the fact I did not have an N64 at that point in my life. (Again, mistakes were made.) Same with the collector pack re-release. That was the version I wanted, albeit sealed.

Which is why I give the game an 8 out of 10.

Now if we were talking about the "Ben Drowned" story version, I have to give that a 10/10. It was the reason why I debuted on NA as "YOURTURN" with some haunting results when I tried to replicate the Creepypasta story. With me literally saying that things happened when I did that. Twice.

[Brickman | 4,208]

7/10

It's good but not great, gets a bit boring and drags a lot with all the different tasks you have to do. It's definitely no OoT.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,123]

I thought Ocarina of Time was great, but I think this came out the same time the PS2 was released, so I never played it.

[Estil | 1,291]

7 hours ago, fox said:

The ground hog's day time travel and weirdness to the game gives it a unique favor  All of the masks, transformations, and side quests, really are a lot of fun to play with.  It isn't perfect, having to bank/unbank things when turning back time is annoying.  

 

[Kguillemette | 1,612]

I've tried playing it several times, but could never get into it. 5/10.

[RH | 5,212]

Yeeeaah, this is one I'm choosing to fudge and say "Never played but interested".  I managed to actually play this past the first intro-stage and get to the first town.  I never did get past the first collection quest and I can't even recall what that was for or about, and this all happened about a year ago (or whatever) when it was released on the Switch.

So, yeah.  I'm thinking this isn't probably a Zelda for me and realistically I might give it something between a 4-6, but since I couldn't get into it right away I'm going to give it another chance some day.  This title is probably right under FF VI as games I really, really need to just sit down and play through because I'm about to have my gamer card revoked for ignoring them.

[Sumez | 3,156]

I love Majora's Mask. The unique eerie atmosphere of a doomed town and all the inhabitants who are gradually either coming to terms with their own demise, or desperately trying to block out the truth, is second to none - and in a Zelda game no less.

The 3-day loop where you can follow people's going throughout the town as different events happen depending on the progression of time, and time of day, is a really interesting way to generate a believable living town, which far outclasses the typical approach of having NPCs move throughout town even randomly, via AI, or in repeated patterns.
And the Bombers' Notebook which is used to track certain relevant people and things you can do to interact with them and solve certain puzzles throughout the time loop is a stroke of genius which both helps track everything, and give a purpose to the whole structure.

I have absolutely no issue with the typical complaint of the "time limit". You learn the slowdown song very early in the game, and it gives you more than enough time to do pretty much anything you need to do, while the ability to rewind to Day 1 at any time removes any actual pressure. It's perfectly manageable with only a minimum of dedication towards figuring out how things work.

Where the game does fall short is in all the basic Zelda gameplay connecting all the good bits. The areas are kinda boring, there's only four dungeons in the entire game, and none of them are particularly memorable. The transformations are mostly one-trick gimmicks that don't really add much to the game despite trying to carry major parts of it. All that stuff is just sub-par in terms of general high "Zelda standards". But I love the game despite it. 7/10

Edited May 2, 2023 by Sumez

[Tanooki | 5,115]

Mega MEH on this one.

I've tried for 20 years to find what's fun in this one, and largely, I can't.  I would never recommend it to anyone.  I probably would go as far as pointing out as I have on forums before in person that it was the game that both broke my trust in Nintendo making quality first party games, but also broke my trust in the Zelda franchise not releasing poor titles.

Functionally the basics work and that's good, it's built off Ocarina after all.  But the hurry up and die or restart time mechanic is just grating to me, always feeling in the back of the head it's some wannabe zelda speed run or you get to redo stuff over again, far more, if you forget to bank your goodies that are lost in a time shift.  The game is ultimately at the core short too, only artificially small made longer because of a mask mechanic where a good majority of that are just fluff and fetch quests with little to no merit other than for completion sake.

Between so much manufactured ways to extend total time played and the obnoxious death clock looming to speed between places to do stuff the game became initially a chore, then a drag, then I put the controller down and eventually got rid of it.  Each time I've come across the game (64) ever since I've tried to clear my mind, start fresh, and see what happens.  3-4 N64 carts and a couple of GC emulated disc versions later, nothing different.

The only difference now I just own the cart, the nice one too, but it has a hole in the shell so I got it for $5 and I don't count it in my collection, and then I do have every Zelda on GC so it's there too.  I've played all the Zelda titles the US got, and I'd rather be forced to play the touch n' roll DS janky titles than this one given they were my only choices. 

[Hammerfestus | 4,103]

The N64 Zelda games are almost as overrated as that one SNES one.  

[Link | 2,880]

I didn't like anything about it. I finished it (thanks GameFAQs) and have no desire to play it again. I thought it was cryptic and ugly. I think it was supposed to be, but I didn't enjoy it. 

[Webhead123 | 753]

Tragically, I still haven't played past the opening five minutes of Majora. I'm convincing myself that I will play it at some point but who knows when that will happen. Up until BotW, for me it was all downhill for Zelda games after ALttP. I was as initially impressed with Ocarina as everyone else was at the time but over the years, I've come to learn that most 3D Zelda just never had the same charm or appeal to me. I was primarily focused on PC gaming around the time that Majora released and my N64 was mostly gathering dust, so I have zero nostalgia for it.

[Sumez | 3,156]

4 hours ago, Webhead123 said:

Up until BotW, for me it was all downhill for Zelda games after ALttP. I was as initially impressed with Ocarina as everyone else was at the time but over the years, I've come to learn that most 3D Zelda just never had the same charm or appeal to me.

Did you at least play Link's Awakening, and the Oracle games? Amazing games. All 2D of course.

[Webhead123 | 753]

8 hours ago, Sumez said:

Did you at least play Link's Awakening, and the Oracle games? Amazing games. All 2D of course.

Oh, absolutely! I'm still in the process of finishing the Oracle games (but I can already tell you they're great) but Link's Awakening is probably my third-favorite Zelda game after ALttP and BotW. There have been a few blips of awesomeness along the way, for sure. And a lot of my biases stem from being much more a fan of the 2D Zelda formula and aesthetic than the 3D take on it.