Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
This is a game I got for x-mas 12 years ago that I never finished. I decided to pick it up again about a week ago while randomly watching a speed run. It's different from other Zeldas - although it has the same gameplay as Ocarina of Time - it's quite a dark and emotional game. The reason I didn't like it at first was the infamous "3 day system". You have 3 days, in-game time of less than an hour to save the world. While this appeared stressful to me back then, it's merely an illusion. You can make time pass slower playing songs and all of the important stuff gets saved when you travel back to the first day (you lose things such as ammo and money, people don't remember you, yet you can bank the money)
It's harder to get into than the average Zelda. Being 28 now, I was really struck by the complexity of this game. This game has a ton of side quests. Unlike most Zeldas, heart pieces aren't just put in a hard-to-reach location. You have to do a bunch of stuff to really earn that heart piece.
Everything in the game has its (sometimes not obvious) purpose. There are a lot of masks you can get, and they all have their use. Whether for the main story or the side quests. To 100% this game, you need a lot of time and lots of logical thinking as well as planning.
A particular side quest in this game is mind blowing. The way the story is told is unlike anything I've seen and it's the kind of thing that can make grown men cry.
The game doesn't have as many dungeons as most LoZ titles and therefore the main story might be a bit short if you stick only to the compulsory stuff. This is a very non-linear game and although there's constantly a sense of hurry, you really have to take your time to enjoy this game and figure everything out.
This game's not friendly for the casual gamer and it's a bit sad that there is so much great stuff packed into a game so relatively inaccessible as this. You needed a custom memory expansion to play it at the time and the game does have some controversy with the limited save system.
They clearly didn't go the commercial way with this game and for that I love it. Even the ending might leave you pissed off and unsatisfied. The game isn't meant to be all joy, happiness and fairy tales with happy endings, and that is perhaps what I liked most about it - the originality.
Plays very well on a laptop with DualShock 3 btw
9.2
Last edited by fanapathy; 06-18-2012 at 11:58 AM.
Reason: Wrong rating