Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh asdfghjklasd Majora's Mask!! ^_____^ After three years of fans asking and about a year of Nintendo and Aonuma teasing us with cryptic (and hilarious) comments, the game has finally been announced! \o/ So...yay! One of my favourite Zelda titles is being remastered. Not that anyone's really surprised it finally happened, the question was just "when". I would have preferred an HD remake, but I'll take this. Makes sense to re-use the OoT3D engine, I guess. Not particularly thrilled with the footage shown though. Too bright and cheery, like OoT3D was. And I was really hoping that should they finally do this that they'd go all out with the Tim Burton-esque look of the official art that accompanied the original release, but oh well. That box art o__o I hope they use it in North America and bring that Special Edition bundle over too. So, yeah. Discuss. I am really looking forward to this. Are you? Fond memories of the original or were you put off by it?
I am very excited about this. Been wanting to replay this for awhile now. However, I just remembered I still haven't played A Link Between Worlds! I COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT I HAVE THAT GAME!!!
Eiji Aonuma has come out on Miiverse and announced that Majora's Mask 3D has been in-development since 2011 when they wrapped up Ocarina of Time 3D. A couple of things to note here based on that: - That's more time than Ocarina of Time 3D spent in development - The original Majora's Mask on the N64 was, famously, built in a year Eiji also added that, "although we've been working on the game for quite some time, we didn't want to say it was being developed until we were at a point where we could proudly say that this is not going to be just another remake and that it's going to be worth your time". And that changes and new features would be announced closer to the release date. I know the game has its detractors, but I find the original to be near-perfect so there's not that much to improve upon really :P Plus borrowed assets from OoT3D. What have they spent all this time doing? I'd imagine they have a small team working on this maybe? In addition to Grezzo? More dungeons? Maybe a Master Quest mode with new dungeon layouts? Gotta be something new in there if they've spent this long! o_o
So...there's been some footage leading up to release from outlets that have the game, and it seems this is changed quite a bit more than OoT 3D was. They've changed all of the boss fights - it seems like they all have giant eyes as weak points now, Odolwa is much less spazzy and slower, and Gyorg actually takes you underwater for the second part of the fight. They also made it so that you can only Zora-swim if you have magic power. Also, owl statue saves are permanent, and the Song of Double Time allows you to select which hour you want to fast forward to. I'm kind of concerned with some of that, especially with the boss changes (except Gyorg). Zora swimming was so fluid and fun and it's disappointing to see it nerfed in the remake as well. For those who haven't seen the footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwX3vInNizM Odolwa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clc__TJYAug Gyorg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmous633Sx0 Swimming
I see no point to the eyeballs on the bosses. I don't like how lifeless Odolwa is now, but I'm okay with the new underwater part of the Gyorg fight - although, the other changes in that battle are unnecessary. The Zora change makes sense to me. You already now have some improved swimming abilities, if you want to go fast... well it's just like running and stamina in Skyword Sword, which I thought was good. There's not really a shortage of magic bottles in Termina. Just go into the field and kill a green ChuChu. I understand the change with the Song of Double Time. Being a portable title, you probably don't want to wait around from the nearest half day for whatever it is you're trying to do. But, at the same time, it reallys takes away some of the difficulty and charm of the original games. The point is to relive it repeatedly, not pick choose as you travel through time. And that change really makes me wish they did an HD remake instead of 3D, so we wouldn't require portable-centric changes. Similarly, the saving. Again, the game loses some of its charm and uniqueness. The game gets a lot of flack for its saving system and I'm not sure why. It just takes a little though. Start a new day, play the Inverted Song of Time, start a dungeon. If you can't beat a dungeon within 144 minutes you have some real problems. They could have added maybe a few more Owl statues for temporary saves, perhaps within a dungeon. Because, like the Song of Double Time, this is a portable game now. If you're playing on the bus and have to leave because your stop has come up, sure there's sleep mode - but really, you want to be darn sure you saved. So, unfortunately we get another catered change.
Out of all those, I think the boss changes irk me the most. Besides the extraneous eyeballs, Odolwa was always so unsettling and fun because of his unpredictableness and spazzy-ness. Gyorg seems to be good other than the eyeball. I really hope Goht is unchanged - that's one of the most fun bosses in the series. I know that they added an eyeball to him though, so it's not looking promising.
What possessed them to add the eyeballs though? Did someone not understand you have to attack the big enemies? Was this a complaint they got on OoT3D?
I've been playing MM3D just a little bit this week. I finished Woodfall...impressions so far: The Bombers' Notebook is soooooo intrusive now. Every single time you talk to someone it interrupts everything to bring up the Notebook, takes up the whole screen, slooooowly marks in a quest log, sloooowly puts in a schedule for that person, etc. They really should have just made it be a little "___ has been added to the Bombers' Notebook" prompt and then given you the option to look at it. Saving system is a huge improvement. I know, I know, "consequences for screwing up" and all that, but I hated having to replay the whole three days if I messed up one small part of a side quest. It's nice to be able to just save and not worry so much about that, especially in a portable game. Song of Double Time is also a big improvement. No more standing around waiting while doing nothing! Biggest complaint: Odolwa. Holy crap, Odolwa. He never even made a move to attack me in the whole fight. He's so passive now, and they neutered his design as well - his tattoos are really muted and they emphasized his pot belly a lot more. It's a huge disappointment - he never even tried to defend himself. I haven't gotten far enough to experience the other bosses, or Zora swimming, or the much-maligned Ice Arrow changes, so we'll see how that goes. This replay is cementing the fact that Majora is probably my least-favorite 3D Zelda though.
Why is/was MM your least-favourite? :( To this day it's still the only Zelda game to get me really invested in its world. Very few games have had such good world immersion to me. (Although admittedly, playing through it is such a pain that I've had no interest in the remake. Then again, it does sound like most of my complaints have been resolved, so maybe I'll give it a shot sometime.)
Justin just asked me the same question yesterday. I'm just not a big fan of the over-reliance on side quests. They basically are the game - the majority of the game is Link being an errand boy. And there's so much obviously recycled from OoT. Plus there are only four dungeons, and from what I recall from the last time I played it, two or three of them are mediocre. I do love the characters and tone though.
