The votes from my last poll were tallied and Majora’s Mask was voted to be the next game I review. Wow this game; there are many things I can say about this game. I straight up love this game. Not only is it one of the best Zelda games, but it is probably one of the best games of all time. Majora’s Mask has a long name, so for the rest of the review I’m gonna refer to it as MM (Majora’s Mask). So MM came out two years after its predecessor “The Legend of Zelda:Ocarina of Time” and boy let me tell ya, they did an amazing job for only two years in development. So let me set the scene for you, the year is 1998, you just beat Ocarina of time and your all like, “That was fricin awesome! Man I wonder how they’re gonna top this one? Whatever they decide to do, I just hope it comes out soon.” So you wait two years and the day finally arrives, “Oh happy day! It was everything I wanted and more!” It really was everything we wanted.

MM really is a complex game and to understand what I’m gonna talk about, you need to know a little bit about the plot.(If you’ve already played the game, now would be the time to skip on down to the next paragraph) MM starts a couple of months after Ocarina. Link is leaving Hyrule to find an unknown friend. So he sets off into the lost woods, where he gets attacked by the Skull Kid, who has stolen Majora’s mask. Majora’s mask has given the Skull Kid magical powers and he uses them to steal the Ocarina from Link. So Link tries to chase him down, but the Kid turns Link into a Deku. Stuck as a Deku, Link has to venture after the Skull Kid. On his way after him, Link runs into the Happy Mask Salesman. The Salesman tells Link, if he can get the mask and the Ocarina back, then he can turn Link back to normal. So you continue your chase into Clock town, which is the center Termina.(Temina is the new area you are in) Skull kid is pulling the moon towards the town in hopes to destroy it. Long story short, you get the Ocarina and return to the Salesman and he turns you back to normal and now you have a Deku mask. Now you must gather other masks, recruit the giants to push back the moon, and get back Majora’s mask.

So what made this game so great? Well first off, MM added a new game mechanic, the “three day cycle”. The three day cycle worked like this: Link had three days to stop the moon from crashing into Termina. During that time frame, Link would try to gather one of the four giants to help him stop the moon from crashing. You could use the Ocarina of Time, to send you back those three days and all major changes would be saved. This added a whole new level of strategy and thought to the game. In game time, the three days added up to about fifty three minutes, that’s not a lot of time. So you had to try to get things done quickly, however, you could slow the passing of the days with your Ocarina, but still not a lot of time to work with. You had to complete dungeons and acquire masks, all within this small amount of time, it made for a really fun experience.

Now another big change in the game was the addition of masks. I know mask were in the old game, but now the game revolves around the three main masks: The Deku mask, the Goron Mask, and the Zora mask. Each mask gave you different abilities that you needed to beat the bosses of the game and to get through certain areas. The Deku mask gave you the power of flight and to shoot spit bubbles, the Goron mask gave you super strength and the ability to roll around as a spiky metal death ball, and the Zora mask gave you super swimming abilities and arm boomerangs. These three main masks can be used at any time, so you have to know how to use them in different situations, this added a whole new level of thinking to the game and a whole lot of different puzzles that you needed the masks to solve.

Besides the main three masks, there are other mask that give you abilities. Now these mask don’t transform you into new creatures, but some do give you powers. You can use them to solve different puzzles and trying to collect them all is really fun. A lot of these masks are very useful. The Bunny Hood lets you run at a faster speed, this helps out a whole lot because Link is pretty slow on foot. The Giants mask in particular is one of my favorites. It turns you into a giant link, until you run out of magic. These masks are acquired through side quests, which leads me to my next point: MM is the darkest Zelda game ever.

MM is a very dark game. It shows that a lot through its side quests. For example, one side quest is on the final day and involves you going to reunite a couple and then they decide to die together. Another is also on the last day, on Lon Lon farm. This one in particular is creepy because it suggests that the older sister is going to give her younger sister a type of wine to kind of numb her, so she doesn’t feel pain when the moon hits and everyone dies… that’s really sad. Another thing is that the main mask that you’re using, are from the spirits of dead creatures. Plus when you put them on it looks really painful, for proof click here. Also the music is really creepy, one song in particular, the song of healing. On the outside this may seem like an ordinary Zelda game, but it is filled with depressing back story. One thing that makes it so eerie is, that the moon is constantly over you and you can see it getting closer. Not only is it a constant reminder of your impending doom, but it makes you wanna work harder to save Termina. This game is just really dark and at some points creepy… and it just makes me love it even more.

MM just keeps bringing me back time after time. I find my self finding something new each time I play it. It has a great an eerie feel, that keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time. This is one of those game that I absolutely recommend buying. MM is game that still stands up with modern games. Its story is great, its game play is amazing. Majora’s Mask gets 5 out of 5 stars.