Playing A Game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D 3DS

Toward the end, playing through Majora's Mask 3D felt like I was just going through the motions. And sure, I didn't need to check all the checkboxes and collect all the collectibles, but ... well, I'll get to that in a minute.

It's especially evident in the shadow of Breath of the Wild, but Majora's Mask feels more like a precursor to open-world design, than like a real sandbox. It's not really "open" in the current sense of the term; it's more like a sequence of, do the first dungeon, then some things that unlock after that, then the second dungeon, then some things after that, et cetera.

Both the main storyline, and the bulk of the game's sidequests, are gated by a fairly static sequence of items. You can't roam the world and do whatever activities you find; first you have to climb the equipment ladder. And that means doing the dungeons, and events around the dungeons, in an enforced order.

But it isn't just the lock-step sequence of dungeons and sidequests that makes Majora's Mask feel so antiquated. Many sidequests - and even some errands necessary for the main story - are time-sensitive within Termina's three-day span. If you happen to have the necessary items, at the right place, but not at the right time, you might never know that there's an event there at all.

Like going back to Metroid and finding that there was no in-game map, the lack of discoverability (even with new hints!) around Termina's various events is a humbling, surprising disappointment.

But if you decided not to care about optional events and sidequests - i.e. if you were only to progress through the main quest - you'd find that there isn't much to Majora's Mask. There are only four dungeons, all of them fairly brief (though two of them are pretty creative). And the critical-path content between dungeons tends to be laborious, like Skyward Sword's tedium but without that game's explicit guidance.

Majora's Mask 3D is a commendable upgrade from the N64 original, both in its graphics and its user-friendliness -- the save system and time controls are way better, now. But the things that made Majora's Mask so memorable for me - the richly complex sidequests - are brought low by the game's now-archaic world design.

Better than: Darksiders: Warmastered Edition
Not as good as: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
Hard to say: how it compares to Skyward Sword, which I'm not interested in playing again.

Progress: Completed the Bomber's Notebook.

Rating: Meh