Majoras Mask 3ds

[Edge7]

Has anyone noticed that Tatl's enemy advice is a lot less... sassy than it used to be? She used to make fun of you for not knowing staple Zelda enemies, which always made her more fun than Navi in my mind.

[Skyblade]

So, I have to say...

It's a good game.

Other than that, I completely disagree with almost everything that everyone has to say about it.

It's not even close to being the darkest Zelda game, the themes of the game are massively off from a lot of what I've been told about, and the popular "exploration of Link's death" theory completely overlooks almost 90% of the game's content.


One thing people bring up about this game is the constant, looming threat of the moon hanging overhead and how it shapes everything. Except...it doesn't. The moon threatens Clock Town, and that's about it. The Deku shrubs? They're upset about the kidnapping of their princess. Once that's resolved, they look to the poisoning of the swamp, and are relieved that it's ok. That it. They never even mention the moon. The Gorons? Well, they're worried about their lost elder, their fallen hero, and the fact that their entire land is frozen. Again, they don't care about the moon at all. Heck, they'd probably welcome a big wave of fire warming up their land.

What's more, the moon only hangs over Clock Town. From anywhere else in Termina, even on the third day, it is distant and tiny. It doesn't feel like a looming threat because it's not overhead, and it's not hovering over you. It's hanging over Clock Town (and it's about the size of Clock Town as well, seriously tiny moon in Termina).

This is made worse by the fact that the moon never falls. I've run through the three day cycle at least fifty times. Apart from getting the Ocarina of Time back on the first day, I think the closest I've gotten to it falling is six hours away. It's way too easy to just rewind time and start again. Heck, most of the sidequests are time-based and can't even be worked on late into the third day, so why would you bother hanging around? Just rewind time and start again. I don't see how anyone could actually see the moon fall unless they were outright trying to see it.

The moon isn't a threat to you, because it is dead simple to rewind time to avoid it. It isn't a threat to the rest of Termina because no-one cares about it. It's only a threat to Clock Town, because those are the only people who directly react to it. And, admittedly, Clock Town's reaction to it and the way the town changes over the three days is really good. But the moon is a completely unengaging part of the game apart from that. When the timer started to run low in the first dungeon, my thought wasn't "oh no, I have to hurry and save Termina", but rather "oh no, if I don't find this last lost fairy fragment soon, I'm going to have to redo this entire frelling dungeon again". It was more an annoyance than a threat.

This is where I feel that some of the other games portray the threats better, and convey a darker tone because of that. I mean, look at Twilight Princess. You see the land consumed by twilight. You see the people form resistance movements and fret about the troubles, or waste away to shadows and ghosts when the twilight comes. You see Link himself cursed twice, Zelda possessed, and the spirits of light, the great guardian forces there to aid you, turned into weapons against Link. That conveys a dark tone and atmosphere far better than a hovering moon that no-one every addresses or cares about.



The other big thing is that Link is completely outside of Termina. Termina is a world doomed to a dismal fate. Yet Link is beyond this fate, and everything about him and the game centers around this theme. Heck, the owl reinforces it several times, outright stating that Link is not bound to Termina's fate and is free to change it. It feels more like the setup for Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, an exploration of one person's ability to change everything.

It's all about working over people's troubles. You don't help people work out their feelings towards a doomed fate, you're averting that doomed fate at every step. The Deku, for example, were supposedly representing the anger phase of grief. Yet their anger is not an aspect of grief or related at all to their impending demise. What's more, once you finish the dungeon and save the princess, their anger is over and they resolve all their troubles without any further development or in depth reaction.



The game is more about healing and mending troubles rather than coming to accept or cope with them. And, in that regard, it's great. It's very fun, the characterization is excellent, and the quests are incredibly well designed (and, overall, very mature). There are some conveyance problems, and a little bit of pacing trouble early on, but those are minor complaints to an overall very solid game. But I was primed for this incredibly dark and depressing experience, and it just really doesn't hit those notes with me at all.

[Pumpkin]

I do find it incredibly dark and depressing and part of that is BECAUSE you can rewind time. You go through all that trouble to save the swamp and it's back to poisoned again a few hours later. You go through all that trouble to save the Gorons and a few hours later, they're freezing to death again. But because you move on with the game this time, no one consoles that poor crying child, no one rescues the freezing gorons, the swamp stays poisoned, the witch never finds her sister, no one reunites Anju and Kafei, that old woman gets mugged, and it all happens over and over and over again until you beat the game. And that one spoilery part that happens anyway

It's just different perspective I guess but if I could rewind time and the time period in which I could do it was a loved one on their death bed for example, I wouldn't suddenly be "well I'm not sad because they won't die since I can rewind time" even if the reason I'm looking to rewind time is to have more time to find a cure for example, because I'm still watching the person die slowly over and over again.

Also it's mentioned about the moon thing and Clock Town. That's why a lot of them thing they can leave Clock Town and be safe, because the moon IS less imposing everywhere else, but ignorance to it doesn't make it less of a threat. It kills them all if the moon drops, not just Clock Town.

But I'm not trying to argue with your opinion, how you feel is how you feel and I'm glad you're enjoying it Just explaining what feelings it evoked for me personally. Until the very end it does feel very desperate and depressing for me. Especially the final dungeon, that place is creepy

[Skyblade]

The primary game mechanic serves as a very interesting counterpoint to Ocarina of Time. In Ocarina, Link is robbed of his youth, his chance to mature. Seven years blink by, and he never gets to experience them, learn, or grow. In this game, he gets almost an opposite experience. Everyone else is unaware of the time passing for Link as he experiences those three days over and over again. He's constantly learning from his journey, and I almost feel that this personal growth is one of the game's main themes.

Never given the chance to grow up, or a parental figure to teach him, this Link is completely inexperienced in the complexities of humanity. The only parent figure he had, the Great Deku Tree, wasn't even worth much in this, as many of those things, like loss and death, didn't occur in the forest or affect the Kokiri.

Yet, on this quest, over the course of these three days, Link gets to see so many sides of humanity. Despair, loss, love, friendship, sorrow, regret, teamwork, and joy. It lets Link learn how those things affect people, how they change, how they cope. In OoT, he goes from a perpetually unchanging world to one where everything is different in the course of a few days. In this game, he gets to experience those changes, see how a world can be reshaped, how lives can change, or how a world can be turned into an apocalyptic nightmare, in the course of a few days. It's a chance for him to grow up, and come to terms with his own feelings. To find where he fits in the world, and move forward in life, moving past the loss that drove him to run in the first place.

I do see a weird duality between these two games, and I really like it.


It's really a testament to the game's depth how differently people can interpret it.