Thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Majora´s Mask (Nintendo Switch Online)

Whenever I play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I end up playing The Legend of Zelda: Majora´s Mask. When I complete said games, there is always a question, ¨which one is better?¨, that´s a complicated question that even nowadays I can´t answer, no matter how hard I try. I already played Majora´s Mask this year thanks to the Nintendo 3DS, I played the remake but not my thing. This time, I´ve already played both Oot and Mm thanks to the Switch Online and, as always, the question of which one is better rose up again, but, this time was even stronger, I really felt related playing Mm and even now I can´t stop thinking about the game and its themes.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is sure a great and epic experience, you manage to be a hero and save an entire kingdom, it´s a cool and cute adventure, the one you would see everywhere. However, Majora´s Mask is more of a personal experience, the way I see it myself, one personal struggle from Link. I know what you are thinking, Link is supossed to be a silent character, he has no personality so we can relate as him, and you know, that´s actually true, but there are parts of the game when they show you Link is an insensitive person who have problems showing his feelings or that he is just a kid that can´t understand adults matters.

Spoiler alert from a game that is more than 10 years old but in Ocarina of Time you actually do a lot of stuff you are not supposed to do at your mental age, I mean, once you get the Master Sword, something like your spirit is sealed away in a chamber for 7 years, until you are ready to use the Master Sword, since the Hero of Time can´t be that young. Indeed, your body has matured but your mind hasn´t, you are still a child, let´s say Link´s mind wasn´t ever ready to deal with all the stuff he had to deal with in Ocarina of Time.

It´s been something said already but Link from both Oot and Mm might be the most tragic Link from a Zelda game. When you complete Ocarina of Time, you are sent to your original time and people forget every good think you´ve done, not only that, you lost to your only friend who is Navi and because you lost her, you are not basically welcome in the Kokiri Forest anymore, you have no parents, no friends, you saved the kingdom but nobody knows that, the gods forgot about you, you were the real deal because you were the Hero of Time, but once you did what you had to do, they just got rid off you, no wonder why Link left Hyrule in the end, he just didn´t fit there anymore.

In Majora´s Mask, Link has to start over again in a new place called Termina, even if he´s probably through a lot of stuff, he has no option but to help everyone and save the world from a giant moon which will fall in 3 days. From my perspective, Link is like inside of a well, it´s like when someone is traumatized or depressed, they get stucked in a cycle, they have no way to keep going until they get help or they decide to do something. The way I see it, Link got lost himself when helping everyone and his world, but now, in order to heal these wounds, he´ll have to help everyone in Termina once again, sometimes, I think the best way to help yourself is while helping others, the main quest is literally about healing the sorrows of dead people.

I feel myself very attracted to games which main theme is about death and how to deal with that feeling, I´m not sure why but it´s a theme I enjoy thinking and talking about, so yeah, Majora´s Mask doesn´t stop talking about death anytime. The coolest things about Majora´s Mask are their characters and side quests, whenever we are in Termina, there is always someone who needs help, it´d be a bad thing but these side missions are actually helpful to understand the characters, not your classic go to point B from point A. It´s a little unfair that Link has to help them because he´s just a little kid and these problems he has to deal with are more adult.

There´s a side quest which I like very much, you get to a bar where people drink milk, it´s not said in the game but it´s supossed to be alcohol but, you know, it was disguised as milk. You can see in the bar a frustrated man who is drinking non-stop, if you decide to do certain side quest in the bar, said man will talk to you and he´ll tell you his story, he was someone from the ranch and decided to work for the show business, he´ll tell you he misses his family and you can see how frustrated the character is because of the way he behaves while talking to Link, in addition to that, he gives you a mask as a reward for completing the side quest.

The mask he gives you shed a lot of tears, funny thing is, if you decide to go to the ranch when his brothers are working, and you talk to them with the mask, you´ll see they react different, telling you that they miss their brother (the guy at the bar). You can´t do business with them as long as you have the mask in your face, they´ll tell you to take off your mask and that´s something cool about Majora´s Mask, how everything is there for a reason and nothing is there because yes. The way everything is connected is amazing for a game of its time.

There is a side quest that amazed me at its time and I´m not sure why to be honest, it´s about a mailman. In Clock Town, you can see a mailman doing his job as usual, in order to do his side quest, you need to do another side quest as well, when you reach the last day, five minutes left until the moon destroys everything if I recall well, you can enter to his room, you´ll find him having an existential crisis, because there is one letter left to send, so he´s like do I do my job risking my life dying here or should I flee like everyone else? It was an impactful thing to me because he was seriously putting his work on top of his life, he was so absorbed of his work that he was willing to risk his life. If I was smart, I could say something pretentious like it´s a metaphor to capitalism, it´s not a rare sight to see people like that irl, people who is that absorbed their jobs that they lose their free will, people who just can think about work work work work work work work work work work work work until the day they die, neglecting every other aspect of their life. Don´t get me wrong, working is fine but don´t risk your life because of it (? I doubt it´s a metaphor to capitalism of course, that was just a joke, it´s probably a reference to something I don´t know.

If we give him the letter, he´ll get back to work even if we the moon is almost crashing. If we decide to follow him, we´ll see having a conversation with a woman in the bar, who is someone related to another side quest, as you see, everything is connected. We can dedice to listen or ignore the conversation, but in case we listen to it, you´ll be able to see how the woman commands him to flee, literally, she says ¨that´s an order!¨, poor man.

Before playing the Song of Time and getting back to the first day, I decided to take a walk through the town and to speak to the people that were still there. I went to a some kind of school where they teach you how to use a sword, the guy said things likes he´s not afraid of the moon and if he has to do it, he´ll destroy it with his sword only. If we decide to take him a visit, we´ll find him hidden, trembling with fear, begging for his life.

Alright, let´s talk about the temples. Temples in this game are interesting, it´s true they are just four, trust me, I wish there was even more but they are great, excepting the first one located in the swam, that one is okay but didn´t had a big impact on me. I actually think the Snow Peak Temple is better than the Fire Temple, I found the Fire Temple to be simple, comparing it to the Snow Peak Temple. I also think that the Great Bay Temple is way better than the Water Temple. Oot had both the Spirit Temple and Shadow Temple which are great Temples but I´ve got to say the Stone Tower Temple could easily count as two temples, plus the ¨gimmick¨ of flipping the Temple is amazing.

So Majora´s Mask still have that problem I mentioned about the items in my Ocarina of Time post but I felt like it was somehow fixed more or less, mostly because every item you get from the Temples are pretty useful, of course they are just arrows...fire arrows...ice arrows...light arrows, ok but get my meaning, you end up using this stuff currently, maybe it didn´t felt that bad because the game is shorter, I don´t know, plus you have the masks from other races that count as items the way I see it.

I personally have nothing to say about the combat system because it´s literally the same as Oot so I´d be repeating myself, there is a saying: If something isn´t broken, don´t fix it. I think that for its time, the combat system was more than enough.

All of the screenshots were taken by me