Majora's Mask Why I Did Not Like Majora’s Mask As Much As Some Other Zelda Games

[PhantomTriforce]

Before I start, I want to tell you that I am well aware that someone else has created a similar thread, but that was his own opinion. This is my opinion, so I thought I would create a new thread.

Majora’s Mask is a wonderful Zelda game, and many people agree with that. However, I do not agree with that right away. Currently, it stands 4th place in my Zelda games rankings, below Twilight Princess (1st), Ocarina of Time (2nd), and A Link to the Past (3rd). Here are some of my reasons:

Dungeons Dungeons is an important feature in Zelda. It was up until MM, with all the games having more than 7 dungeons. I know that trying something new is good, but I think that for it’s time, it was a too rapid burst. We have dungeon-heavy Zelda games until now, and then a quick drop to a sidequest-heavy game, with only 4 dungeons. There are 7 if you count the mini-dungeons, but they were all really short and easy compared to the main Temples, so I won’t count them. I’ll discuss the dungeons below:
.......Woodfall Temple – This Temple is considerably easier than the other 3 Temples. I think this is wrong. If they game contains only 4 dungeons, they should get into it right away, and not create something easy to start off with. It had a creative, decently tough first boss.
......[Snowhead Temple – A lot harder compared to the precious dungeon. This Temple, however, annoyed me a lot. First off, how does a dungeon in the ice and snow filled mountains have a basement filled with fire and lava? The Goron rolling bits, where you had to roll off a narrow path was so merciless – I kept falling off. Maybe that’s just me. The dungeon difficulty improved as well, a good thing. Though the boss battle was creative, it was wayyyyyyyyyy to easy.
.......Great Bay Temple – This dungeon had a lot of creativity to it, nothing much to complain about. Many people describe how this dungeon makes them go nuts, it didn’t really do that for me. I thought this dungeon was easier than the hideous Water Temple. The boss battle was pretty tough needless to say, he does quite some damage.
.......Stone Tower Temple – Man, this dungeon was MM’s biggest strong point. It was amazing, in both design and puzzles. It had puzzles that included all three transformation masks. And the inverting of the Temple was nothing more than genius. No bad thing about this dungeon, except maybe the boss battle was a bit too easy compared to the difficulty of the Temple.
I also would have preferred an "Inside the Moon" dungeon for a final dungeon, or at least when you talked to the Majora kid, he warped you in a dungeon, and then the final boss fight.

Enemies I disliked the enemies in MM a lot. With the exception of bosses and mini-bosses, there were very few new enemies, which created no sense of difficulty even when fighting the iron knuckles, as most of us knew how to beat him from OoT.

Graphics This is not such a great deal for me, but you needed to buy a plug-in for the N64 version to update graphics. This was totally useless in my opinion, as the graphics from the two games were very similar, and we would have experienced the same thing if MM used OoT graphics.

Items/Masks The concept of the transformation masks was a great and creative one. However, what happened with the other masks? Except for the Captain’s Hat, the Gibdo Mask, and the Garo Mask, the others were used once. Also, take an item like the Lens of Truth. That, at maximum, was used twice in the whole game. So then what is the difference between these masks and some items and some items from Twilight Princess that everyone is complaining about because they are useless? I wasn’t a big fan of the arrow types in the different dungeons, as it made it predictable and thus reducing the fun. And the items were the same as OoT, which didn’t give us any new experience. They also removed some items like the Megaton Hammer, Hover Boots, and the three goddess’s spells. And I don't know whether this was intentional or not, but it annoyed me when I pulled out a magic arrow, but didn't fire it, and it still drained my magic.

Well, there are my reasons. And remember, this is my opinion, and I am not trying to start any war here. I just want you guys to think about what I wrote, discuss anything wrong about my statement, and write down what you thought about this.

 

[TheGreen]

I think it's interesting point you make about the items. I think several of the items and masks could be used more frequently if you're doing 100% and finding little secrets, but I agree that Bremen Mask for instance is a one liner. I think the relevance of these relatively small tasks and item uses is that they should be taken as a whole and not as a single instance. These small tasks often have immediate rewards like heart pieces or new masks and eventually lead up to the Fierce Deity's Mask; although if you're perceiving them a certain way there's nothing that can be done about that.

With the dungeons, I agree that they are a weak point in the game, but I think the time cycle structure was considered during development, to be a huge step up in difficulty across the board. In recognizing this I trick myself into thinking they are quite good

 

[JStraitiff]

The reason i liked Majora's Mask so much was A) All the side quests The transformations. I always loved the side quests in OOT and because the games where so similar it made it really cool for me. it was like a continuation. I also always loved the zora's domain and water stuff so being able to transform into zora link was awesome! The graphics upgrade thing i dont really care about because we already needed it for Donkey Kong anyway. I believe it was just a continuation of OOT in all forms. It did a good job of doing so. The dungeons in MM sucked. I never really liked them too much. Ocarina of time did a good job with them and a good job utilizing the items found in each dungeon. That wasn't really the idea of MM. It was more just a way to get the items and use them throughout the game in a bunch of aspects.

Over all i think Majora's Mask was a really great game despite some of the downfalls you pointed out.

 

[VembersWind]

PhantomTriforce i'd just like to say that i 100% agree with your post. in my opinion, it just wasn't as good as all of the other console zeldas (with the exception of AoL) i already stated my reasons for disliking it, but PhantomTriforce pretty much covered all of the problems i had with it, except for my issues with the time system and anju and kafei sidequest.

 

[blubb]

OK, I'll make some comments too. Since MM is one of my fav Zelda games, I have to disagree on some points, many of them are rather a matter of taste anyway. You made many comparisons with OoT, so I'll do that too here. Again, I don't want to bash OoT, it's just that I think that OoT made many things possible and introduced a lot, but MM improved and perfected them.

Dungeons Dungeons is an important feature in Zelda. It was up until MM, with all the games having more than 7 dungeons. I know that trying something new is good, but I think that for it’s time, it was a too rapid burst. We have dungeon-heavy Zelda games until now, and then a quick drop to a sidequest-heavy game, with only 4 dungeons. There are 7 if you count the mini-dungeons, but they were all really short and easy compared to the main Temples, so I won’t count them. I’ll discuss the dungeons below:
.......Woodfall Temple – This Temple is considerably easier than the other 3 Temples. I think this is wrong. If they game contains only 4 dungeons, they should get into it right away, and not create something easy to start off with. It had a creative, decently tough first boss.
......[Snowhead Temple – A lot harder compared to the precious dungeon. This Temple, however, annoyed me a lot. First off, how does a dungeon in the ice and snow filled mountains have a basement filled with fire and lava? The Goron rolling bits, where you had to roll off a narrow path was so merciless – I kept falling off. Maybe that’s just me. The dungeon difficulty improved as well, a good thing. Though the boss battle was creative, it was wayyyyyyyyyy to easy.
.......Great Bay Temple – This dungeon had a lot of creativity to it, nothing much to complain about. Many people describe how this dungeon makes them go nuts, it didn’t really do that for me. I thought this dungeon was easier than the hideous Water Temple. The boss battle was pretty tough needless to say, he does quite some damage.
.......Stone Tower Temple – Man, this dungeon was MM’s biggest strong point. It was amazing, in both design and puzzles. It had puzzles that included all three transformation masks. And the inverting of the Temple was nothing more than genius. No bad thing about this dungeon, except maybe the boss battle was a bit too easy compared to the difficulty of the Temple.

Well this is one of the main complaints I hear about the game, and I can somehow understand why, because people want many dungeons. But for me, quality > quantity, so that's why I like the dungeons of MM more than those of OoT. Sure, OoT had a big number of dungeons, but IMO most of them were quite average. In OoT, the first three ones were rather introductory, and definitely easier than fx Ikana Castle of MM which was "only" a mini-dungeon. Now the adult temples: The only ones I really like a lot were the Forest and Water Temples because of their non-linearity. Spirit Temple was OK, but Shadow and Fire Temple were extremely linear and easy.
Now in MM, you have only four temples, but IMO they're much better: less linear, generally harder, more innovative/unique and the difficulty level increased in the order of the temples and didn't jump around from easy to hard to medium to easy etc.. Also, the atmosphere of the respective temples was implemented better, it was easier to imagine that you were actually standing in the temple yourself than it was the case in OoT. What I really liked about the bosses and the temples is that unlike in OoT, you did not only use the dungeon item to progress in the dungeon/beat the boss, but you had to use previous items a lot too. The weak points of the bosses were not given away that easily this time around, unlike in OoT, where in almost all of the boss fights you simply had to use the dungeon item (this became boring and obvious quite quickly), plus there were different ways to beat a boss in MM, especially in the final battle, which can - IIRC - be fought in 5(!) different shapes and with multiple items.
The Woodfall Temple, of course, is also some kind of introduction, but at least for me it was still harder than all of the three first dungeons of OoT. Already there, several rooms had to be revisited after getting the dungeon item/keys/etc. and it was not in a tedious way (like in WW's Dragon Roost Cavern). The boss was arguably the hardest first boss of any Zelda game.
Snowhead Temple really stood out because of its non-linearity. You had that central room with the blocks to knock out and many doors to go and a boss that could be fought either by shooting arrows as normal Link or by rolling with Goron Link.
Great Bay Temple was the first in the series to show a more technically advanced design, but it still had the "Zelda feel". The currents system was a cool innovation and instead of simply finding keys and going through rooms, you had to activate pipes. The boss was quite hard, getting eaten deducted 2 hearts and landing back on the platform with an out-of-the water jump wasn't that easy.
Now Stone Tower Temple is my favourite temple in the whole series, mainly because you had to use all three transformation masks, there were 3 minibosses and 2 dungeon items, many parts of the temple were outside so the day/time had an effect on the graphics, plus the whole flipping thing and staring into the changing sky were all excellent. Sure, the boss could've been a little bit harder this time, but hey, if you wanted the extra challenge you had the possibility to fight him without the Giant's Mask, which is actually quite hard. And without Romani Milk and an upgraded magic bar, the challenge was to beat him in time before your magic ran out.
Finally, the in-between dungeon action was much more than in OoT. Some parts were transitional between being overworld and dungeon (Deku Palace, Gerudo Fortress, Bottom of the Well, Ikana Castle), a concept which SS will build upon. I've said it in another thread but again: It took me twice as long to beat MM as it took me to beat OoT, and I played OoT before, so I even had some "3D/Controls Training" to start with. And then there were lots of side quests, and getting heart pieces was much more important, because you'd only have 7 hearts without getting any, while in OoT you would have 11.

Enemies I disliked the enemies in MM a lot. With the exception of bosses and mini-bosses, there were very few new enemies, which created no sense of difficulty even when fighting the iron knuckles, as most of us knew how to beat him from OoT.

While it is true that most enemies were imported from OoT and therefore were easier to beat if you played OoT before, there were still lots of new ones: Chuchus, Boes, Death Armos, Eyegore, Takkuri... just to name a few. And some of the enemies were improved compared to OoT and harder to beat: Dodongos, Skultallas, Dinofols etc.

Graphics This is not such a great deal for me, but you needed to buy a plug-in for the N64 version to update graphics. This was totally useless in my opinion, as the graphics from the two games were very similar, and we would have experienced the same thing if MM used OoT graphics.

Sure, they weren't completely new, and those who played OoT before might have thought "Been there, done that" but I think while using the same engine, they were still improved a lot. All the areas look way more detailed and colourful, and the LoD was much higher than in OoT. Just two examples out of many: Compare Termina Field vs. Hyrule Field: Much more stuff and more details plus cool area transitions while in Hyrule Field there was the same green grass everywhere with only a river and some trees which you had to get pretty close to to make them appear. Or Clock Town vs. Hyrule Castle Town: Much bigger, plus seperate, real 3D modeled screens and much more stuff to do.
And the dungeons of course had really cool graphics, especially if you keep in mind that it was the same N64. Just think of the entrance hall of Stone Tower Temple in the flipped state: the brightness and color not only of the sky but also of the room changed depending on day and time.
Remember, the N64 only has a CPU of 93,75 MHz, a GPU of 62,5 MHz and 4 MB RAM (8 MB RAM with the Exp. Pack), so I don't think that there's much more room for improvement if I look at MM's graphics.

Items/Masks The concept of the transformation masks was a great and creative one. However, what happened with the other masks? Except for the Captain’s Hat, the Gibdo Mask, and the Garo Mask, the others were used once. Also, take an item like the Lens of Truth. That, at maximum, was used twice in the whole game. So then what is the difference between these masks and some items and some items from Twilight Princess that everyone is complaining about because they are useless? I wasn’t a big fan of the arrow types in the different dungeons, as it made it predictable and thus reducing the fun. And the items were the same as OoT, which didn’t give us any new experience. They also removed some items like the Megaton Hammer, Hover Boots, and the three goddess’s spells. And I don't know whether this was intentional or not, but it annoyed me when I pulled out a magic arrow, but didn't fire it, and it still drained my magic.

This is where I have to agree with you partially. They could have reduced the number of masks to - let's say 12. But then again, the game revolves around the masks and everyone of them has a story behind them. I think they shouldn't be viewed as/compared to real items (except the transformation masks), but rather as some kind of keys to other things, like story progression or heart pieces. Yeah, most items were from OoT too and no new classical items were introduced, but for me the transfromation masks, which were used pretty well and had a lot of functions, really made up for it. Especially the Zora Mask made underwater action much more enjoyable than the iron boots did, and speeding around with the Goron Mask was a lot of fun too. And at least here, the ice arrows had some use .

My conclusion: Many people wanted too see an "Oot 2" back then, but didn't get it (IMO they got it with WW and TP), so MM was quite underrated back then. But fortunately, after a few years had passed, MM finally received the reputation it deserves among most Zelda fans. Looking back, I think many of you will agree that an "OoT 2" with the same controls and graphics would have been rather boring and Nintendo did the right thing with going into another direction - MM.

 

[JStraitiff]

im sorry i dont know why my posts keep bugging out. disregard this one

i think they actually did an oot 2 with majora's mask.