The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D Review

The next big thing lands in your hands. (It's the moon.)

Every other aspect of Great Bay remains more or less the same. The Zora egg fetch quest is still un-fun because it still feels like padding to make the game longer. You need to make two trips between Pirate’s Fortress and Pinnacle Rock at the very least, and that’s assuming that you got four bottles before beginning the quest in the first place. If you didn’t get four bottles, you’ll need to make at least two trips to Pirate’s Fortress as well as a trip to Pinnacle Rock…and so on. No matter how many bottles you go into the quest with, the quest still feels like a slog; the mandatory stealthiness required through Pirate’s Fortress is finicky and uninteresting. It becomes far too easy if you use the Stone Mask to make yourself invisible, which the game encourages you to do by placing the person who hands it out in Pirate’s Fortress itself. It’s a pain no matter how you approach it, and the fact that this was left almost completely unchanged is completely baffling.

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Even more baffling than that is the fact that Great Bay Temple also has remained almost completely unchanged compared to the N64 version. In the Ocarina of Time remake, the Water Temple had a very clear pathway lit up to show you where the next water changing switch was. It was a minor change, just like any change in Majora’s Mask, but it helped make the dungeon much more navigable. An attempt was made to do something similar with Great Bay Temple; pipes that had water flowing through them now light up. In theory, this would mean that following unlit pipes would lead you to where you need to go next…but in practice this did not work. Great Bay Temple still looks largely the same until you’re too far in to prevent having to backtrack through several rooms, and there are lots of unseen hookshot points that make the dungeon much less sensible than it needed to be. It’s really disappointing, because of all the things many expected them to change in Majora’s Mask, Great Bay Temple’s structure was at the top of the list.

Majora's Mask 3D
Not pictured: plaque reading “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.

Remakes and remasters are a chance to listen to fans and make requested changes (as long as they’re within reason). Leaving the Great Bay Temple largely as is, when it was a known trouble area, displays a rather large missed opportunity. Considering the amount of polish that went into other areas of the game it’s almost as if they were unwilling to deal with this large, and almost universally disliked section of the game. Not just that, but actively making the zone worse by radically changing how Zora Link functioned seems like a huge step back in comparison with the rest of the small positive changes that the game made.

All of that having been said, issues with Great Bay are relatively small frustrations in the face of the rest of the product. There is so much that Majora’s Mask has to offer, and almost all of it outshines any of the game’s shortcomings. The unchanged Great Bay serves as a reminder that Majora’s Mask was not a perfect game when it was released, and it is still not a perfect game now. What Majora’s Mask is, however, is a game that has stood well against the test of time, and will continue to stand out as the most interesting Legend of Zelda title to date. Majora’s Mask is not to be missed, for veteran or newcomer alike, and deserves a spot in your 3DS.


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Author
Chris Jecks
Chris Jecks has been covering the games industry for over eight years. He typically covers new releases, FIFA, Fortnite, any good shooters, and loves nothing more than a good Pro Clubs session with the lads. Chris has a History degree from the University of Central Lancashire. He spends his days eagerly awaiting the release of BioShock 4.