Majora's Mask does change a lot of things but that doesn't mean it is a great Zelda game
I bought this game sixteen years ago but I never managed to complete a playthrough till now. Every time I started it something would cause me to never quite finish it. Mostly thanks to the time mechanics that make this more unique compared to other Zelda games while also reusing a lot of assets from Ocarina Of Time. Those mechanics drive the game in interesting ways while also punishing the player for not getting done with certain tasks in time. I’ll go over that more in a bit but first here is a quick synopsis of the plot.
Link has been traveling across the lands in search of Navi who has gone missing. While in the land of Termina he runs into Skull Kid who pranks him and then steals his ocarina and horse. While trying to chase him down he gets turned into a Deku kid and must travel across the land to figure out how to turn himself back to normal. Unfortunately for him, Majora's mask will doom this land to be crushed by the moon in 3 days. From this point, the player will guide link across 4 different environments to solve the problems that have appeared in each area.
The game itself still fits in the mold of a Zelda game. Go to a certain place and figure out how to get into the dungeon. Then solve said dungeon with the tools you find along the way. With a heavy focus on masks. For example, the first one you get is the Deku mask that lets you get to places you couldn’t get to otherwise and the ability to hop on water. The main 3 all give you different abilities that then get used heavily in each dungeon. The four dungeons are quite unique and I enjoyed my time playing through them. Yet getting to each dungeon was a bit monotonous.
Other than the first one each dungeon requires quite a bit of running around to unlock it.Like to get to the water dungeon you must reclaim 7 lost Zora eggs. To do so requires a trek through a pirate base and then an underwater area full of sea snakes. After writing those words down that doesn’t sound like much but when I was playing the game it felt like I was checking off a list of stuff to collect. The worse case of that was getting through the ReDead grave site that makes you run around collecting a bunch of random items to continue. Which is even more annoying if you factor in the time you have to do everything.
Time isn’t on your side which really isn’t an issue when aiming to complete a dungeon. The reverse song of time gives you more than enough time to get everything done before the world ends. At least if you section everything off like do everything in the swamp in one 3 day cycle. The problem comes up if you want to do any side quests. Sure it is all optional but it was quite a bummer when I got an item to make my sword better only to learn that I couldn’t forge it since I was already on day two with a normal sword. So I would have to beat the world 2 boss again plus open up and race Gorons on the track to obtain it. All thanks to the fact everything is on a 3-day cycle. Yet other quests let you learn about the characters and their world in general. Which is this game's strongest positive attribute.
Almost everyone has either something weird going on or a task for you to solve by observing them. If you end up helping them they will reward you with a variety of items that’ll aid your quest. Kind of a really simple side quest log that doesn’t quite tell you what to do. In this age, it might seem annoying but for when this game out it must have been quite unique. The highlight of the side quests I did do was when I had to save Romani's ranch from a bunch of aliens. That is a weird line to say about a Zelda game huh?
In the end, this game has its good and bad points. I’m glad I finally got to see this game to its conclusion. It has let me see why a lot of people love it. I may not enjoy the game that much but it is still good for what it does do. From what I’ve seen if you want to play through this game the 3DS version is the one to play.