@arbitrarywater: Yeah, for what it's worth, the time mechanics could've been done better. Specifically, there's "regular speed" and "half speed" as far as the passage of time, and every time you restart the 3-day loop it defaults back to "regular speed". You have to play a Song of Time variant to switch to "half speed", WHICH IS STUPID BECAUSE WHY WOULD YOU EVER NOT DO THAT IMMEDIATELY. OK, the only time you would ever use "regular speed" is if you're trying to complete a sidequest that requires a specific time and want to advance time faster than usual.
It's possible to miss the...tutorial scarecrow that explains the Song of Time variants to you (the other variant skips you ahead half a day), and I'm sure at least some amount of players either missed him, or just put the game down for a week then when they came back they forgot those variants existed because they are never noted down in any of the pause screens. Playing the game with half as much time within each 3-day cycle would be nightmarishly frustrating, and I assume this explains at least some of the people who had a bad experience with the game.
I remember on some livestream, Jeff or Brad or somebody thought that it was confusing what reset in your inventory when you restart the 3-day loop, but that's bullshit, it's easy. The things you keep are masks, the MacGuffin you get for killing each boss, pieces of heart, and singular inventory items, since it would be insane for you to have to keep re-earning any of those. So you keep hookshots and bows and shit, but not arrows or deku nuts or whatever. You also don't keep quest items, since that would potentially break quest scripting; however, you obviously keep quest rewards that are masks or singular inventory items. You don't keep the amount of rupees in your wallet, but you can deposit rupees into a hilariously poorly run bank that honours your balance even though you didn't deposit the money in this particular timeline. I feel like all of that is very obvious after playing the game for like 2-3 hours.
As for the sidequests, I ended up liking them. If you don't, the payoff for a bunch of them is either a piece of heart, or just another mask of dubious utility that only really matters if you're trying to get all the masks which gives you something at the end of the game. So you're probably fine skipping them if you're not digging them, especially since you barely need that many hearts when the game contains a record 6(!) bottles, and in N64 Zeldas, fairies are a full heal.
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