Majora’s Mask

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Majora’s Mask’s core Groundhog Day-like conceit is a deep puzzle in and of itself. Time is always of the essence -- the 72 hours until the world ends is constantly ticking down, and you have to tie up any loose ends you have before using the Song of Time to travel back to the start of the cycle. While certain items and knowledge carry over to next playthrough, most interactions you have with characters and the world itself are reset with each revolution. However, there’s great satisfaction in moving the goal post a bit further every time you restart a cycle.There’s a really great amount of tension in having to complete the task at hand within the time limit. Watching the minutes tick by -- in Majora’s Mask, an in-game hour takes about 45 seconds -- and having to meticulously manage your precious time provides some great experiences. Fighting the boss of a dungeon during the waning hours of the final day is stressful, but landing that final blow with only minutes to spare is fantastically satisfying.

Exploring the world is constantly interesting due to the density and multiple layers of the map and its inhabitants. They’re extremely weird, and I mean that in the best possible way. Non-stop oddities make each turn of the adventure a memorable, dream-like event. UFOs are causing a ruckus at Romani Ranch, ghosts roam the world, and one side-quest has you helping out a disembodied hand that resides in a toilet. Piecing together characters’ stories, motivations, and goals over three days is a treat, and doing it again armed with new information from the last cycle and special items that carry over exposes new facets. Even the side-quests are rich with story, and definitely worth completing.

Throughout all of this, the terrifying moon lingers in the sky, grinning at you with apocalyptic joy. The colorful nature original Majora’s Mask looks even better now, thanks to improved textures, draw distance, and some really great use of 3D. All of these strange, atmospheric occurrences add an effective layer of sadness to the world, and make Termina as textured and memorable as any version of Hyrule we’ve seen.

The other big but effective departure from Zelda conventions in Majora’s Mask is that most of your powers and upgrades come from the 24 masks scattered across Termina. The three core masks allow you to fly as a Deku Scrub, roll as a Goron, and swim as a Zora. These add a lot of depth to how Link moves through the world, and each contribute to some really great puzzles throughout the adventure. Loading On the other hand, a few of Majora’s risks don’t pay off as well. A prime example is that this adventure features only four major dungeons, and not all of them are as great as the Stone Temple. That one a real test of wits that throws in puzzles that require you to carefully hop between all three of your main masks, and proves to be one of the toughest, but most satisfying dungeons the Zelda series has ever created. On the flip side, the Great Bay Temple is bloated, filled with unintuitive puzzles, and far too long. Considering it’s a quarter of Majora’s dungeons, it’s disappointing to say the least.

At the end of the dungeons, though, are some of the most interesting Zelda bosses ever. Majora’s Mask retains the same excellent Z-targeting and pattern memorization that’s been a staple of the series since Ocarina of Time, but the additional abilities of the three major masks adds a new layer to each encounter. A boss battle that highlights this is Goht, a giant mechanical bull that you have to fight while in wearing your Goron Mask and rolling around an arena. It plays out like a tense, puzzle-filled version of the chariot scene from Ben Hur, and there’s nothing else like it.

A few new tools, including the ability to set in-game reminders and precise control over skipping ahead in time, make it easy to optimize your schedule. That being said, I wish the information you learn about the characters and their schedules was tracked and presented in a more manageable and digestible manner. The Bomber’s Notebook, your in-game secretary, isn’t all that intuitive, and I found myself having to constantly scribble down real-world notes about where people would be at certain times, and in which order I had to complete objectives in order to finish a specific quest. Especially on a portable system like the 3DS, that’s an inconvenience.