By Sam Coles:
Me and a select majority are the only gamers that
seem to think that The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask is better than Ocarina of
Time and I and those select few seem to get lambasted by comments saying “No
it’s not Ocarina of Time is the best game ever”! The reason why I love Majora’s
Mask because it strayed away from the standard Zelda formula where you have an
adventure with no Ganon or Zelda, well she’s in it for a few seconds to remind
you the Song of Time.
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Story takes place after of the events of Ocarina of
Time where you see Link riding Epona through the forest as he is in search of
his fairy friend Navi, but he is then ambushed by Skull Kid who has been
possessed by Majora’s Mask where he steals Link’s horse and Ocarina then turns
him into a Deku Scrub. He finds himself in the world of Termina which is a
parallel world to Hyrule which has the same citizens as Hyrule but they have
different roles and they don’t know who Link is. In the small hub Clock Town
you find that Skull Kid has summoned an evil moon to crush the world in three
days and you must summon the four giants to stop him.
You’ll trudge through Termina disguised as a Deku Scrub,
Goron and a Zora, what I like about this is that no one really registers Link’s
presence rather they register the spirit that he has transformed into such as
the King of the Gorons or the guitarist for that bizarre rock band in the Zora
domain. This philosophical approach is great because you can work your little
elven legs, but it is no use because the land is doomed, because when you
revert the time back to the first day everything becomes gloomy and depressing
again when you have saved the swamps from the poison water or melted the ice
from the Goron’s homeland it reverts back to its problematic situation.
The gameplay is identical to Ocarina of Time with a
few minor tweaks and changes; for starters Link is more robust and flexible
with his movements with the subtle addition of flips when he jumps rather than
a simple jump animation. The main gameplay mechanic in this game is the three
day time loop where you have those days to get what you need to get done before
the moon smashes into the world. Your Ocarina is your main tool in this game
where you can reverse time back to the first day which in the original game was
one of the only ways to save the game, but it does work like that in this one I’ll
get into that later. Other ways you can alter time are you can play the Song of
Time backwards so you can slow the passage of time (which is very helpful) or
the song of double time where you can fast forward time.
Features that they’ve added and tweak are great such
as the save system which makes the game more accessible compared to before
because as I said before you can no longer save the game when you revert back
to the first day, however there are more save points around and you don’t have
to quit the game like you did in the old version. The bombers note book has
been fine tuned and you get it when you meet the Happy Mask salesman rather from
the Bombers and everything is better laid out compared to before.
The graphics and presentation have been given a
massive boost compared to its N64 counterpart with textures that have been
smoothed out in every way by making the colours vibrant to the new design to
the moon which looks scarier coupled with more detail to Clock Town with the
added posters that the N64 couldn’t render. The main thing that I’m thankful
for is the frame rate runs at 30 frames per second and I don’t think it drops
at any point, Majora’s Mask had very bad frame rate issues on the Gamecube and
N64 which would drop to 15 fps which is unplayable, but they have fixed this in
this remaster.
Overall The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask is just as
good as I remember it and this remaster is another case of how it should be
done with updated visuals and gameplay tweaks to suit the portable system. So
if you haven’t played Majora’s Mask before then pick up this version of the
game, but play it on the “new” 3DS for the better control scheme.
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