You’ve Met With Some Terrible Gameplay

Last week I discussed the terrible narrative of Majora’s Mask, and today we’re taking a look at its terrible gameplay. Majora’s Mask went to great lengths to differentiate itself from other games in the Zelda franchise when it was released in 2000, but there’s a wide gap between simply standing out and successfully innovating.

While some of Majora’s Mask’s gameplay delivered fresh and rewarding experiences, it also served up many stale slogs of repetition, unpolished game mechanics, and major features that were undercooked. Let’s start with a look at one of the worst game mechanics in Majora’s Mask: the way it handles saving game progress.

A Terrible Save System

The saving system in Majora’s Mask is among the most convoluted of any game I’ve ever played. Why are some saves “temporary” while others are “permanent” and how does this distinction benefit players? Designing a game so that an unexpected crash of the game or the Moon results in a major setback to player progress is a needless inconvenience. The whole game is already presented as a tension-filled race against the clock; why do I have to worry about losing my game progress as well?

Every Zelda game before Majora’s Mask allowed players to save anywhere at almost any time. Majora’s Mask requires players to choose between preserving their three-day progress by finding an Owl Statue for a “temporary” save, or losing their three-day progress by playing the Song of Time for a “permanent” save. If you’re confused by that last sentence, I think it proves my point of how contrived this save system is!

Furthermore, new players must play the first hour of the game as a Deku Scrub locked in a small town before they are even allowed to save any progress at all. Yes, talking to the scarecrow shortens the wait somewhat, but how is that process supposed to be intuitive for a new player? And why must players be forced to play an hour of a game before they are allowed to save for the first time?

But once that first hour is past, the fatter problems of Majora’s Mask’s save system drag themselves into the spotlight.

Those Owl Statues with their ability to temporarily save game progress are a nice alternative to playing the Song of Time. The fact that Owl Statues act as warp points for fast-travel is nice too, but these avian monuments are too few and far between in the land of Termina. No region has more than two Owl Statues, and no dungeon has any Owl Statues, so saving progress mid-dungeon requires players to navigate their way out of a dungeon before they can access a temporary save.

Playing the Song of Time also removes many of Link’s inventory items such as Magic Beans, Deku Nuts, and bottled items. I understand carrying some bottled items between cycles would make certain quests too easy, but how does Link hold onto his Bomb Bag between cycles, yet lose all his Bombs? Recollecting arrows at the start of every three-day cycle did not add immersion or challenge to Majora’s Mask, it was simply a tedious and unrewarding chore I had to cope with every Dawn of the First Day.

Admittedly, Majora’s Mask 3D addressed many of these glaring flaws by filling Termina with more locations to save progress and making all saves “permanent” saves. The remake for the Nintendo 3DS also gave us three save files instead of two, and took a leaf out of Skyward Sword’s book by placing save points inside dungeons as well as outside them. That said, only the most devoted fanboy or fangirl would pretend the original release of Majora’s Mask had a saving system that was anything other than clunky.

A Terrible Focus on Racing

Why does Majora’s Mask contain so many races? Is racing a cultural fascination among Termina’s inhabitants? I’m not talking about the metaphorical race against time that permeates the subtext of Majora’s Mask’s gameplay; I’m talking about the physical competitions of speed that keep showing up in this game.

Saving the Deku Princess from Woodfall Temple allows us to race the Deku Butler in order to earn the Mask of Scents. We race after a monkey to find Koume in the Woods of Mystery; we race the Groman Brothers to earn the Garo’s Mask; we race some psychedelic beavers for an empty bottle; we race some rolling Gorons in a competition for gold dust and a sword upgrade; we race Captain Keeta to get the Captain’s Hat; we even race the boss of Snowhead Temple!

While not all of these races are mandatory, they are similar enough that it warrants questioning why Majora’s Mask so frequently pushes players onto racetracks or tasks them with chasing after another character. This may delve too deeply into the realm of personal preference, but I find races to be too simple, mechanically, for a Zelda game.

Of course, I have no outright objection to the inclusion of any races in Zelda games. Races have appeared in many Zelda games, and examples of them include horse racing around Lon Lon Ranch in Ocarina of Time, a boating course in The Wind Waker, snowboarding in Twilight Princess, and many more. Races are fun, and they can provide Zelda games with delicious variety to spice up the gameplay for players. However, Majora’s Mask has so many races, they add bland repetition to the game rather than variety.

As nice as races may be in Zelda games, Majora’s Mask‘s game mechanics are ill-suited for such a large number of races. Traveling at top speed at the end of the Goron racetrack only to be overtaken by another Goron is not just frustrating; it is indicative of a game that was not optimized for racing gameplay. And that’s what Majora’s Mask is: a modification of the mechanics in Ocarina of Time, a game that had some racing sections, but was mostly designed to handle adventuring, combat, solving puzzles, and exploring a three-dimensional environment. This is Zelda, not Forza!

The only reason I can think of for why Majora’s Mask has so many races is that races were easier to make in the game’s single year of production. Why design a puzzle that upholds the Nintendo standard of being challenging, intuitive, and unique… when you could simply recycle the Dampé race from Ocarina of Time for multiple parts of this game?

If that were the case, I wouldn’t see it as proof that Majora’s Mask

’s designers were lazy, rather they had to understandably cut corners under such a tight deadline. Nonetheless, the result is an inferior gameplay experience, with races that feel shoehorned into the game rather than a natural part of them like the races in other Zelda games.

Terrible Masks

Speaking of shoehorning, that’s how I feel about far too many of the masks in Majora’s Mask. Outside of the three-day cycle, the biggest fresh idea Majora’s Mask brings to the gameplay table is 24 masks players are invited to collect and wear so Link can assume special powers and abilities, à la Kid Chameleon. It’s a great idea in concept, but in practice it falls flat, or at least stumbles over itself.

Granted, the game’s three transformation masks, which radically alter Link’s abilities by changing him into a Deku Scrub, Zora, or Goron, are wonderfully designed game items that provide Majora’s Mask with gratifying gameplay that feels at home in the game’s world.

The transformation masks are important items that provide rewarding gameplay because they are used so frequently in a wide variety of scenarios. The same can be said for the Bunny Hood, Stone Mask, and the Great Fairy’s Mask: these are all very useful masks for Link to carry through his adventure and feel as important as his Bow and Hookshot.

The rest of the game’s masks… not so much.

Eleven of the game’s 24 masks essentially serve a single purpose, which is usually little more than getting a single piece of heart. Beyond that, these masks are next to worthless in terms of gameplay. Consider Don Gero’s Mask, an item used to chat with a plethora of frogs spread throughout the game so they can sing a song and give Link a piece of heart. After this quest is completed, the Don Gero’s Mask is nothing but a silly hat. You see, Valve? Nintendo was doing the hat thing years before Team Fortress 2!

Worse than that, however, is the Giant’s Mask. Now, did my head explode with excitement the moment I saw Link turn into a towering badass when I donned this mask in the fight against Twinmold? You’re damn right I did! Was I stoked to find out I couldn’t even put the mask on outside of that single room? Absolutely not!

The same goes for the Fierce Deity’s Mask. Sure, it’s cool to have Link transform into a special body for the final battle of the game, but the Fierce Deity’s Mask is just a way to make an already easy boss fight (Zora boomerang, for the win!) even easier. I don’t think that’s a particularly satisfying reward for collecting all 23 other masks in the game and completing four extra mini-dungeons.

For me, the entire masks mechanic in Majora’s Mask feels undercooked. The masks don’t feel like they have the impact they should on gameplay, which is especially disappointing considering this is a game that presents masks as a major gameplay feature. Too few masks provide meaningful utility to gameplay, and too many are one-trick ponies.

Terribly Repetitive

Why does the fight with Wizrobe appear five times in Majora’s Mask? Recycling a race from Ocarina of Time several times was bad enough; why does such an embarrassingly easy sub-boss get dragged out to supposedly challenge us so many times in Majora’s Mask? When I saw Wizrobe pop up again in the Secret Shrine, I just shook my head because I had to roll out the same simple arrow-slinging strategy on this sub-boss for the fifth time.

Couldn’t we have fought Wart or Gomess more than once instead of getting stuck with Wizrobe five times? At least those sub-bosses had some personality and posed something of a challenge. Wizrobe is just some malformed green dude who repeats the same attacks over and over as you repeat the same fight over and over from Snowhead Temple to the Secret Shrine. Interestingly, the Secret Shrine is also right next to one of the worst individual sections of the game: the Beneath the Well mini-dungeon.

Beneath the Well suffers from atrocious dungeon design. The whole underground labyrinth just leads players from one fetch quest to another. It’s just tedious. This Gibdo wants 10 Bombs for no reason; that Gibdo wants 5 Deku Sticks for no reason; another Gibdo wants a Bug for no reason. Who thought this would be fun? None of it makes any sense, and none of it is really solving puzzles unless you consider figuring out the simple riddles of the Gibdo to be a challenge.

But Beneath the Well also highlights one of the painfully repetitive actions players must do throughout Majora’s Mask: pause the game to access our inventory. I know that sounds like an extremely minor gripe, but it’s not such a small deal when you consider how much larger Majora’s Mask’s equippable inventory is in comparison to Ocarina of Time. Both of these games allowed players only three buttons to assign items, which was acceptable in Ocarina of Time but became a bottleneck in Majora’s Mask.

Freedom of choice isn’t so great if I have to dig into a pause screen for a specific tool with every new enemy or obstacle. In Ocarina of Time, no more than 19 items would ever compete for a place on my C buttons, and many sections required I choose between fewer than eight of them. But Majora’s Mask frequently had more than 30 unique items competing for a space on just three hotkeys. Adding in the restriction where masks can’t be put on or taken off from the pause menu, and Majora’s Mask left me pausing and unpausing my game far more frequently than I would have liked.

Majora’s Mask would have been better if it let us don masks from the pause screen. Even better: keep all the inventory items on the C buttons and put the masks on the D-pad! That way, I wouldn’t have all the arrow types and bottles and explosives and twenty-some masks fighting over three buttons. But that’s just wishful thinking on my part. The bottom line is, Beneath the Well is all about grabbing bottles from your inventory again and again. If I wanted to play a game about managing my inventory, I’d play Skyrim Daggerfall!

Terribly… Popular

Majora’s Mask has endured over the years not just with a cult following but lucrative mainstream success. What started out as a game relying heavily on the fame of Ocarina of Time to achieve relevance morphed into a major entry in the Zelda series that left a lasting mark on the franchise. Majora’s Mask proved that major components of the Zelda formula could be shaken up, flipped on their head, or eliminated while still providing a fulfilling gameplay experience for many fans.

Even if people like me can’t count oursel

ves among Majora’s Mask’s fans, we can’t deny it’s hit a sweet spot with many others. Majora’s Mask may not be my cup of tea, but its success is deeply woven into the success of the rest of a franchise I adore, and I am deeply thankful for that.

But for the reasons listed in this series, I hope to wait a long time before having to once again meet with Majora’s Mask’s terrible fate.