Previously - Ocarina of Time 3D
Majora's Mask is an odd Zelda game. For one, it's the only direct sequel in the mainline 3D Zelda games (I consider Phantom Hourglass more of a spin-off). It was made in just a year. The game is easily the darkest Zelda game, you're literally stuck in a timeloop where the world is destroyed at the end of the 3 days, and you keep going back in time to avert doomsday until you're able to stop it.
I'm not very familiar with this game (relative to the other 3D Zelda games), I know most of the main areas and the story, but since I've never played the game before (I might have played the opening a long time ago, but no more than that), I don't know much of the puzzles or the like. I'm excited to play this game because, in a way, it's like a new Zelda game for me.
At the end of OoT, Link is sent back in time, to rewrite history so that Ganondorf never takes over Hyrule, and to regain the 7 years he lost when he pulled the Master Sword and it sealed him away. However when he turns, Navi, his fairy companion, flys off, perhaps because her mission from The Great Deku Tree is complete. Link warns the Royal Family of Ganondorf's betrayal, and disaster is averted, but since he was sent back in time, almost no one remembers that he saved Hyrule and defeated Ganon...
Not long after, he goes on a search to find Navi, and heads into The Lost Woods...
Link and Epona are walking through the Lost Woods, when he's confronted by two fairies and Skull Kid, who's wearing an odd looking mask...
The fairies startle Epona, who knocks Link to the ground, unconscious. The Skull Kid takes the Ocarina of Time from Link and starts to play with it, when Link wakes up and is just like -_- and Skull Kid is like "WELP time to leave" and hops on Epona. Link grabs on to him and holds on as he tries to escape, but falls off. He continues to follow Skull Kid until he reachs a strange looking tree with opening in it. He heads inside, but there's no floor! Link falls, and there's a scene ripped straight out of Alice and Wonderland with strange floating shapes and heads in various colors.
When Link falls to the bottom, Skull Kid is there, he tells Link that "his stupid horse wouldn't follow instructions", and he did him a favor and "got rid of it". He then uses the mask to turn Link into a Deku Scrub and flys off, closing the large door in front of him. Tatl, one of the fairies, trys to distract Link from following Skull Kid, but gets trapped in the room with him when the door shuts. She then reluctently agrees to help Link so that he'll open the door and go find Skull Kid, and Link is just like "sure whatever lol".
Link heads through the passage way, and at the end finds a twisting hallway that seems to defy gravity. At the end, there's a large stone door that closes behind him. He's now inside a tower. He heads to the top, and there's a door, but before he can head out
You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?
There Link meets the Happy Mask Saleman, who says that he travels the world in search of masks, but he was robbed by an imp (Skull Kid) of a very important mask. He tells Link that if he gets the Mask back to him, he can remove the Deku curse from Link and turn him back to normal, but he has to do it in 3 days before the Happy Mask Salesman leaves town.
Link finally heads outside of the Clock Tower to Clock Town, where Tatl says they should find the Great Fairy in town, as she would know where Skull Kid went.
Okay I'm probably gonna be writing a bit less now that I'm out of the opening, because I don't want to have to stop every 5 minutes to write more >_<
So I was exploring Clock Town a bit and found a piece of the Great Fairy that told me that Skull Kid had split her into many pieces. I found the Great Fairy Fountain and restored the Great Fairy, and she told me she didn't know where to find Skull Kid but the guy at the observatory might, and I should go find him. She also gave Link a magic bar, which let's him shoot projectile bubbles. Outside you meet a group of kids called the bomber gang or something, and you need to play hide and seek with them to get to their hideout, which leads to the observatory. I ran out of time the first time I played, but the second time was easy since they didn't change spots so I only needed to find the one that I missed lol.
After I beat their game, I head through their tunnel to the Observatory. Up there the...observer...guy... says that the Skull Kid stole his Moon Tear (which btw I should mention, there's a Deku Scrub right outside Clock Tower that wants a Moon Tear in exchange for his Deku Flower (basically a launchpad)). There's also a telescope, and from there you can see a few things. One, Skull Kid on top of the clock tower, shaking his booty at you lol. Two, the moon, with a very angry face, sitting much closer to the ground then it should be. And three, another moon tear falls from the moon.
After going back to Clock Tower and getting the Deku Flower, it lets you reach a piece of heart (4 make a Heart Container which increases your health), and the door to the top of the Clock Tower. However, the door only opens on Day 3, the day of "the carnival". Not sure what the carnival is for exactly, but I just gotta sit and wait for the time to past (I am typing this as I wait, oh there's the Clock bell.)
Oh okay so I have to wait until midnight. There was a scarecrow in the observatory who said I could dance with him to pass time. I'll go talk to him. Also the music has gotten more urgent, and the Moon is closer...and the ground is rumbling...
I just talked to one of the guards, and instead of telling me I can't leave like earlier, he's telling me I ought to "go find my parents and leave town". Very reassuring. Also I depositied my rupees in the bank, if I recall correctly when you reset a cycle you lose your rupees, but the bank will keep them across time, because they're a magic bank I guess lol.
The scarecrow left, he said it was "looking dangerous outside" and that he was getting out of town. Guess I'll just stand and wait in front of the tower...the moon is almost touching the tower now.
After midnight, the staircase opens, and the music becomes ominous and...well like the world is about to end. There's now a timer counting down, with a moon logo next to it...I head up the tower to where Skull Kid is, and he's holding the Ocarina, and the other fairy, Tael (who is Tatl's brother btw). Tatl ask's Skull Kid to give the mask back, and he completely ignores her. Tael tells us Swamp. Mountain. Ocean. Canyon. Hurry...the four that are there. Bring them here...
before Skull Kid smacks him for "speaking out of line", and Tatl is like "what is wrong with you dude I thought we were friends" and he's just like "whatever lol". He then starts using his magic to bring the moon down faster. You then get control of Link back, but the only thing you can do is shoot Skull Kid with a bubble, and he'll drop the Ocarina of Time. You pick it up, and you get a flashback of Zelda teaching Link the Song of Time. Then Tatl is like "gee we really need more time, if only there were a way to have more time". So you play the Song of Time, and...
Okay I'm getting real tired of writing every story thing, so I'm just gonna assume you're familiar with the base story, and just talk about things I did, and when certain story moments happen without actually having to explain everything
So yeah, tatl tells you to go talk to the Happy Mask Salesman (I'ma just call him HMS for now on), and he's like "oh good you got your thing back, I'll teach you this song now" and he teachs you the song of healing and you get the deku mask. Then he's like "okay I did my thing, now give me my mask back" and Link is like "uhhhhh wellll" and HMS is like "You...did...get it back...RIGHT?". After agressively shaking Link, he tells him he really needs to get that mask back because it has evil powers and could destroy the world blah blah blah. He gives you the Bombers Notebook for some reason (I thought the Bomber gang was supposed to give that to you, maybe it was changed in the remake because people missed it?) and off you go. Cutscene
Tatl reminds me that the Great Fairy said she would do something when Link returns to his regular form, so I go back to the great fairy fountain and she gave Link the Great Fairy mask, which will let you find the stray fairies (broken shards of the great fairies) easier.
It's been a few days (IRL) since I last updated this. What happened was I played a little while after this, but when it came time to write more I just...didn't feel like it. But I didn't want to play any further before writing what I already played, so I'm here now. Lemme catch you up.
I knew that what Tael tells you is referring to the four areas of Termina, with a dungeon in each area. I decided to go to the Swamp area first. I don't know if there's any order you are supposed to do them in, I just vaguely remember the Deku swamp area being the "first" one, so that's what I did.
The Termina Field field starts off the same as the Hyrule field theme, but then changes to a remix of the TLoZ main theme, but still in the same soundfont (is that the right term?) as the Hyrule Field theme. I like it.
Upon reaching the entrance of the Swamp, you trigger a cutscene. Tatl recognizes a drawing on a tree made by Skull Kid and the fairies after they first met, and remembers how they first met him. Cutscene
This shows how the Skull Kid wasn't really bad until he was corrupted by Majora's mask. People have compared Majora's mask to The One Ring, and I think that's a pretty good comparison. Anyway, into the woods.
I forgot to mention him earlier, but Tingle is here. I think Tingle is a really funny character, the idea of a 35 year old dude in tights who wants to be a "forest fairy" is just hilarious. And his weird laugh is just so goofy lol. And I like the idea of having to buy area maps, because it really wouldn't make sense if you just "had them" by default, Link has never been here before after all.
I noticed the Chu Chu's look really weird. I guess this is actually the first game they appeared in? I'm definitely glad Wind Waker changed their design.
I totally forgot about the Song of Soaring, very useful. I was just thinking about how it would be annoying waste time each cycle just walking around Termina. Also, I find it interesting that Kaepora Gaebora says Whenever you play this song, we shall be reminded of our eternal friendship, which transcends both time and space!
when you first meet him here, which implies that he is already friends with Link, and thus the same person from Ocarina of Time and not just a Termina duplicate.
Wow, I knew Majora's Mask ripped a lot of assets from OoT (that was kinda of the point) but they really just plopped Koume and Kotake right in, same theme and everything. Also "The Woods of Mystery" just sounds like an off-brand Lost Woods lol.
At the Deku Palace. The music here is excellent. I go in and see the monkey tied up, with a door behind him. After going outside there's another monkey that says something about planting a magic bean to get to find a way in? I found the bean guy and got the magic bean from him, but I couldn't find the place to plant the bean (I probably wasn't paying enough attention when the monkey said where to plant it lol). I decided to just do another cycle so I could listen to the monkey again (he left after telling me about the magic bean). It was almost the third day, and I wanted to go see Romani Ranch, so I decided to go there before I reset. I'm familiar with the whole aliens/Romani Ranch thing, so I know that there's a boulder blocking your path until the third day unless you have bombs to blow it up. I went in but it seemed like I couldn't do anything before the aliens sidequest, so I just played the Song of Time and reset, then saved and quit.
If you didn't realize, I'm playing on Citra emulator (I didn't outright say it before, but anyway). It was kind of annoying when I was playing OoT3D and it had no C-Stick support, so I just, couldn't use the second stick I had right there lol (I'm using an Xbox One controller) so I'm glad to have proper camera controls. I also noticed how when equiping an item in the menu, instead of having to tap the item, then tap the item slot, you can just drag it, which feels so much better. And the map screen is so much better.
I wanted to use a HD texture pack originally, but the only one I saw was the one by Henriko, and I didn't like the look of it, I thought it wasn't faithful enough to the original look, also the texture on Link's tunic looked horrible when the camera was at a normal distance, while playing at 1080p. Anyway, I was looking at Majora's Mask cutscenes on YouTube so I could copy the links I posted above, and I saw this video on the recommended bar MMN64HD vs MM3D Comparison - May the Best Tingle Win (Nerrel)
. I recognized the name and pfp from a video of his I had watched a long time ago, Was Majora's Mask 3D a Bad Remake? (N64 comparison and review) (in retrospect I'm not sure why I didn't subscribe to him then, maybe it was because he didn't have hardly any other videos at the time?). Anyway, so in that first video I mentioned, apparently Nerrel made a texture pack for the N64 version of Majora's Mask? Interesting. But then part way through...
I'm gonna try and do the 3D one too
Turns out that one, he ported his N64 texture pack to 3DS, and two, there's a mod for Majora's Mask 3D that fixes almost all the issues he mentioned in the "Was MM3D a bad remake" video. Soooo, I'm gonna try and add those. I'm not sure if my save will work with the mod, but if not, at least I'll have the HD textures. So that's pretty awesome. (P.S. apparently there's a remastered soundtrack too!)
