Majora's Mask

Majora's Mask is my favourite Zelda game, in fact, it's probably one of my favourite games of all time. To my eternal shame, I've never actually finished it until now. I first came to know about the game in my first year of college when I went to a friend's house and he had been playing it, I had been a big Ocarina of Time fan, but as I had been away at school for the previous 2 years, I missed out on a lot of games and had never heard of this new Zelda game. I was intrigued and he talked me through the basic mechanics, which I recall confusing me greatly at the time, but the concept of a game on a repeating loop was very intriguing to me and it still is, I love games that are designed to be repeated and iterated like that, Dead Rising or Breath of Fire V for example.

I've made a couple of aborted attempts to  complete the game in the past, but on both occasions was frustrated by the game crashing, a lot, the N64 due to a loose connector pin, and the Gamecube Re-release due to that disc's tendency to crash randomly. For whatever reason, I risked the Collector's Edition disc again, and thankfully this time it worked flawlessly on my Wii, I dunno if the Wii made a difference but I'm going to attribute the lack of crashing to it anyway.

The game starts with young Link looking for Navi, for... reasons. Whereupon he is accosted by a naughty kid and his two fairy companions, naturally, the kid is a dick and steals your Ocarina, chases away Epona and turns your into a Deku scrub. It's interesting that most Zelda game start with you being just a powerless kid and proceed to empower you with talk of Destined Heroes and other such nonsense, while this one removes your power first before you can earn it back. While in Deku form, your powers are limited, but still useful enough to get you to Clock Town, where your are given your main quest, to stop the kid who has stolen the titular mask, and returned to human form, albeit with the use of the Deku's spirit in the form of a mask. Upon ascending the clock tower, you find yourself powerless against  Majora's Mask, however you are able to retrieve the Ocarina of Time and with some useful advice from Tael and your new fairy, Tatl, you return to the beginning of the three day cycle, where your quest properly begins.

Compared to Ocarine of Time, Majora's Mask is a very small game, it contains only 4 real dungeons and the world itself is far smaller in size, the story is also much smaller, more personal. It's a common complaint about the game, combined with constant repetition of the cycle that seems to put most people off the game, but to me those are its strengths, allowing the game to more fully explore its themes of grief and loss.

The three-day cycle is a window into the lives of the people of clock town, most of whom are also dealing with grief and loss in their own way, where you learn all about the people and ultimately, help them deal with their suffering as you learn to deal with yours. Very little of the Bomber's Notebook (a tool to keep track of your quests, and something sorely missing from every other Zelda game) can be filled in to begin with, but as you move ahead, completing temples and other side quests, observing the routines of the people of Clock Town and surrounds you start to get a sense of these people and their lives outside the cycle too. The notebook is home to one game-spanning quest that is done brilliantly, lasting not only from the beginning of a cycle to the last minute of one, but also to the end of the game when you have access to all the skills and masks required, when you finally complete it, the payoff is beautiful, and like everything else Majora's Mask, fleeting and bittersweet, I genuinely welled up. The way the game fosters an immensely personal relationship with these people is probably its biggest strength, for example there were so many times that towards the end of the cycle, I was torn between just letting the end hit, or resetting the cycle, /I didn't want these people to be hurt, but at the same time, I didn't want Link's, and by extension my connection to them to be completely severed yet again, but that's how the game gets you to care, by seeing their lives on such a micro level even though they are mostly oblivious to your presence.

The four temples make the game feel far less "epic" in scope compared to previous entries, but again, this feeds into the themes of the game, and let's face it, having more temples would have made the three-day cycle really obnoxious due to the way you must tackle each of them. Generally, the way I went about each was to start a new cycle, and complete what quests I could to get to the temple entrance, and if possible get to the dungeon's item, or if not, restart the cycle and attempt the whole dungeon from there. The game walks a tightrope with regards to meting out progress while not making things feel repetitive, so once you find a song, or important item, or an owl statue allowing you to teleport, then you rarely have to repeat much. Even with all those things in place, you may still find yourself having to repeat sections of the game multiple times, especially if you're hunting for side-quests and hearts, which can be frustrating at times, and I know puts many many people off the prospect altogether, but I look to each cycle as a learning experience, once you've done something once, you can either pass it altogether, or get around its obstacles much quicker, which in it's own way is a different form of progress.

The graphics are the same as Ocarina of Time, being that they use the same engine, and most of the assets in the game are re-used, however the character models you see repeated only help to give the game a sort of uneasy, familiar unfamiliarity, this is stuff you know and have seen, but different. I think it captures the mood of Majora's Mask wonderfully to have these old assets in a different context, combined with the original assets for the game, like the amazing moon model and it's dark palette of greens and purples. The music helps to cement this feeling of bizarro Hyrule, most of the music is in minor keys, and gives the whole game a feeling of dread throughout, especially the Clock Town theme which gets darker, more discordant, twisted and panicked, all with a very melancholy tone, as you get closer to the fated hour. Even the music in the world, feels like a bizarro version of OoT, it reuses many common leitmotifs and elements from classic Zelda music, but again, it's warped, it all feels sadder somehow, more dreadful, and uplifting at the same time.

If i have any complaints with the game, they're mostly in regards to playing on the Wii, what feels tight and precise on an N64 controller, with it's stiff analog stick and very specific button layout, doesn't feel right on a GCN controller, or I would wager the classic controller either. During the shooting gallery mini-games this is especially apparent as aiming is too sensitive, but it can also be troublesome during some platforming sections when you get the angle slightly wrong and have to start all over again. My only other complaint would be that there just isn't enough to do in the town, I would be happy with a notebook twice that size, but that's just me!

Overall though, the experience is overwhelmingly positive, the base mechanics are those of OoT so it's hard to fault them. The plot and themes are beautiful and resonant and presented with such a simple eloquence that games still struggle with, a lot of AAA devs could take a leaf out of this game's book when it comes to presenting your themes as a function of gameplay, mechanics and progression within the game. It makes me sad that Nintendo will probably never make a game like this again, it's too much of an anomaly coming at the end of the N64's life, although maybe with the WiiU underperforming they might learn to take a risk or two again.