"Believing in your friends and embracing that belief by forgiving failure. These feelings have vanished from our hearts."
~King Igos du Ikana
Perhaps the greatest criticism against Majora's Mask is that the gameplay is frustrating and unnecessarily difficult. This is, admittedly, a valid criticism. Majora's Mask can be frustrating at times. The three-day cycle that frames the game and the limited save system forces gaming sessions that are less flexible. You must complete whatever you wanted to do in a cycle, and if you fail, you must retry it. And no matter whether you succeed or fail, you lose all bombs, arrows, and rupees you're currently holding. However, on closer examination, the frustrating gameplay in Majora's Mask is quite probably an intentional choice that complements the themes of the game.
Majora's Mask is a game that seems to expect you to fail. There are only four dungeons (which I will go into in greater detail later), but all four are expansive. Jumping through all the necessary hoops to reach each dungeon usually takes the average player one cycle, and actually completing the dungeon (and any tasks available after the dungeon has been completed) will take another. If a player gets caught up on any particular puzzle within the game, they run the risk of losing all the progress they have completed within that cycle.
On top of that, the save system is frequently frustrating. There are two ways to save: by resetting time and saving at the beginning of a new cycle, or by using an owl statue for a temporary save. However, these temporary saves can only be used once. If players need to stop, they need to save again. It is impossible to use the same temporary save twice.* Once you start a cycle, you are locked into progressing through it once, and only once. You cannot revert to your last save if you fail.
Why would Nintendo deviate from their usual formula so? Why include this form of difficulty? The answer is not because the company wanted an easy way to make the game more difficult. No, the answer can be found in the fact that the game is a Groundhog Day Loop. The point of such loops in nearly all the media they appear in is to figure out how to break the loop. The character(s) attempting to do so must figure out what is the "right" way to do things, and what is the "wrong" way to do them. Majora's Mask is no different. The game is designed in such a way that players learn from their mistakes. In reality, Majora's Mask is no more difficult than it's predecessor Ocarina of Time or any other game in the series. In fact, many of the enemies in Majora's Mask are actually weaker than in Ocarina of Time. The difficulty comes solely from the fact that the game is timed. If a player takes a while to finish a puzzle and ultimately fails to complete their objective because of that, they have another chance: but this time, they know how to solve it immediately.
There is another reason, however, that Majora's Mask uses such a system. Like I said earlier, the game expects you to fail, and fail often. It becomes aggravating. Frustrating. If you were in the situation that Link is in, you would no doubt begin to despair. Majora's Mask intentionally tests players and makes them fail so that when they succeed, the success has more of an impact. Like the rest of the game, the gameplay portrays the odds as impossible, and when the player overcomes that, the satisfaction experienced is far greater.
And of course, one of the things that makes the gameplay of Majora's Mask stand out so much is the emphasis on sidequests. The way the game is set up allows for a very unique approach to sidequests. Every single person Majora's Mask has a schedule. While the schedule of many characters boils down to sitting around for long periods of time and going somewhere else, other characters have more complex schedules. Most notably, Kafei, Anju and her family, Cremia and Romani, and the Postman have set schedules that can change drastically depending on how you interact with them. In Majora's Mask, NPCs cease to be part of the scenery, spewing out a single line of dialogue. Because the game takes place over three repeating days, Nintendo was able to give its characters the ability to react to certain events and to have actual lives. As the moon draws closer to Termina, emotions intensify. The macho and condescending sword teacher cowers alone in the corner. The Postman is torn between his desire to flee and his sense of duty to his job.
The NPCs in Majora's Mask consequently cease to be mere characters and become people. While the system is crude in comparason to reality, it is a system that's difficult for even most modern video games to emulate. It's hard to empathize with a character who says nothing other than "Welcome to our town!" However, characters with hopes and dreams lamenting their immanent demise? It's much easier to get emotionally invested in them: which is exactly why there is so much emphasis on sidequests.
By characterizing the citizens of Termina and bringing them to life, the game encourages you to place and emphasis on sidequests. What's more, sidequests have to be done right, and they have to be done in a certain order. For example, to help the owner of the Indigo-gos, you'll need to enter the Milk Bar after dark...which can only be done after you help keep some thieves from stealing the milk Cremia is transporting...which can only be done after you help Romani save the cows from Them...which can only be done after you can buy powder kegs so that you can get to the Ranch...which can only be done after you've beaten part of the main quest. So from the main quest, one certain sidequest requires completing three other sidequests first, and helping Cremia requires helping Romani within the same three-day cycle. Compare that to perhaps the most complex sidequest in Ocarina of Time, obtaining the Biggoron Sword. It requires a chain of trading one object for another until Biggoron is able to repair a sword for you. However, while a few of these trades are timed, most can be done at leisure and they're all just part of one sidequest.
The example from Majora's Mask that I mentioned isn't even the most difficult sidequest in the game. That would be Anju and Kafei's sidequest, which has all sorts of requirement that need doing in a specific order. If you fail to deliver a certain letter or show up for a certain appointment or even if you decide to help a certain other character, Kafei won't face Anju, Anju will leave, or both. I'll go into the quest in more depth in a later chapter, but it's worth a mention here just because it is perhaps the best example in the game of perseverance paying off. It is incredibly difficult to pull off, and players not using a guide are almost certain to fail at least once. But it is one of the most heartwarming and rewarding sidequests in the game.
By utilizing the three-day cycle, Nintendo increased the chances of players becoming emotionally invested in the characters. However, there is one slight problem with it at the same time: resetting time undoes all the good you've done. This has the potential to be the cruelest aspect of the game were it not for one thing: the timeline. After failing several times at quests, it's likely that a player will know exactly what to do, and even if they don't remember, the Bomber's Notebook keeps a log of who has which problems at which times of which days. By examining the timeline laid out in the notebook, a detail presents itself: almost all of the people can be helped in a single three-day cycle. With only one or two minor exceptions (for Anju and Kafei's quest, you have to let a woman get robbed, though the stolen goods can easily be replaced), you can help everyone. With a lot of hard work, you can cleanse the four corners of Termina, save the monkey from being boiled alive, heal Pamela's father, reunite Anju and Kafei, release the postman from his duty, save Romani Ranch, and much more, then defeat the final boss so that all those achievements stay completed.
Going back to the Groundhog Day example, Bill Murray's character eventually decides that he's going to help everyone he can, no matter how hard it may be and how many times he may have to do it. While he knows he can't save everyone (like the old man who dies because it was simply his time), he is able to save a man from choking, catch a kid falling out of a tree, encourage a hesitant couple to go through with their wedding, help an old acquaintance out with his business, and much more. He does this over and over again (as evidenced by his statement that the kid who fell from the tree "has never once thanked [him]" until he is able to get everything right and finally break free from his loop.
This is ultimately the reason that Majora's Mask's gameplay is the way it is. It cannot sacrifice its difficulty because for the game to have the emotional impact it does, the player needs to fail. It must be an uphill battle filled with setbacks and pain from not being able to help the characters you care about to not being able to save Termina as a whole. Majora's Mask needs to be a difficult game, because it is a game that forgives failure. Without difficulty, there is no failure to forgive, and with no failure, nothing is learned.
*This is technically incorrect, as it is possible to copy the save into another file, but this is a loophole that not many people figure out and that goes against the spirit behind the game.
Majora's Mask is a game that seems to expect you to fail. There are only four dungeons (which I will go into in greater detail later), but all four are expansive. Jumping through all the necessary hoops to reach each dungeon usually takes the average player one cycle, and actually completing the dungeon (and any tasks available after the dungeon has been completed) will take another. If a player gets caught up on any particular puzzle within the game, they run the risk of losing all the progress they have completed within that cycle.
On top of that, the save system is frequently frustrating. There are two ways to save: by resetting time and saving at the beginning of a new cycle, or by using an owl statue for a temporary save. However, these temporary saves can only be used once. If players need to stop, they need to save again. It is impossible to use the same temporary save twice.* Once you start a cycle, you are locked into progressing through it once, and only once. You cannot revert to your last save if you fail.
Why would Nintendo deviate from their usual formula so? Why include this form of difficulty? The answer is not because the company wanted an easy way to make the game more difficult. No, the answer can be found in the fact that the game is a Groundhog Day Loop. The point of such loops in nearly all the media they appear in is to figure out how to break the loop. The character(s) attempting to do so must figure out what is the "right" way to do things, and what is the "wrong" way to do them. Majora's Mask is no different. The game is designed in such a way that players learn from their mistakes. In reality, Majora's Mask is no more difficult than it's predecessor Ocarina of Time or any other game in the series. In fact, many of the enemies in Majora's Mask are actually weaker than in Ocarina of Time. The difficulty comes solely from the fact that the game is timed. If a player takes a while to finish a puzzle and ultimately fails to complete their objective because of that, they have another chance: but this time, they know how to solve it immediately.
There is another reason, however, that Majora's Mask uses such a system. Like I said earlier, the game expects you to fail, and fail often. It becomes aggravating. Frustrating. If you were in the situation that Link is in, you would no doubt begin to despair. Majora's Mask intentionally tests players and makes them fail so that when they succeed, the success has more of an impact. Like the rest of the game, the gameplay portrays the odds as impossible, and when the player overcomes that, the satisfaction experienced is far greater.
And of course, one of the things that makes the gameplay of Majora's Mask stand out so much is the emphasis on sidequests. The way the game is set up allows for a very unique approach to sidequests. Every single person Majora's Mask has a schedule. While the schedule of many characters boils down to sitting around for long periods of time and going somewhere else, other characters have more complex schedules. Most notably, Kafei, Anju and her family, Cremia and Romani, and the Postman have set schedules that can change drastically depending on how you interact with them. In Majora's Mask, NPCs cease to be part of the scenery, spewing out a single line of dialogue. Because the game takes place over three repeating days, Nintendo was able to give its characters the ability to react to certain events and to have actual lives. As the moon draws closer to Termina, emotions intensify. The macho and condescending sword teacher cowers alone in the corner. The Postman is torn between his desire to flee and his sense of duty to his job.
The NPCs in Majora's Mask consequently cease to be mere characters and become people. While the system is crude in comparason to reality, it is a system that's difficult for even most modern video games to emulate. It's hard to empathize with a character who says nothing other than "Welcome to our town!" However, characters with hopes and dreams lamenting their immanent demise? It's much easier to get emotionally invested in them: which is exactly why there is so much emphasis on sidequests.
By characterizing the citizens of Termina and bringing them to life, the game encourages you to place and emphasis on sidequests. What's more, sidequests have to be done right, and they have to be done in a certain order. For example, to help the owner of the Indigo-gos, you'll need to enter the Milk Bar after dark...which can only be done after you help keep some thieves from stealing the milk Cremia is transporting...which can only be done after you help Romani save the cows from Them...which can only be done after you can buy powder kegs so that you can get to the Ranch...which can only be done after you've beaten part of the main quest. So from the main quest, one certain sidequest requires completing three other sidequests first, and helping Cremia requires helping Romani within the same three-day cycle. Compare that to perhaps the most complex sidequest in Ocarina of Time, obtaining the Biggoron Sword. It requires a chain of trading one object for another until Biggoron is able to repair a sword for you. However, while a few of these trades are timed, most can be done at leisure and they're all just part of one sidequest.
The example from Majora's Mask that I mentioned isn't even the most difficult sidequest in the game. That would be Anju and Kafei's sidequest, which has all sorts of requirement that need doing in a specific order. If you fail to deliver a certain letter or show up for a certain appointment or even if you decide to help a certain other character, Kafei won't face Anju, Anju will leave, or both. I'll go into the quest in more depth in a later chapter, but it's worth a mention here just because it is perhaps the best example in the game of perseverance paying off. It is incredibly difficult to pull off, and players not using a guide are almost certain to fail at least once. But it is one of the most heartwarming and rewarding sidequests in the game.
By utilizing the three-day cycle, Nintendo increased the chances of players becoming emotionally invested in the characters. However, there is one slight problem with it at the same time: resetting time undoes all the good you've done. This has the potential to be the cruelest aspect of the game were it not for one thing: the timeline. After failing several times at quests, it's likely that a player will know exactly what to do, and even if they don't remember, the Bomber's Notebook keeps a log of who has which problems at which times of which days. By examining the timeline laid out in the notebook, a detail presents itself: almost all of the people can be helped in a single three-day cycle. With only one or two minor exceptions (for Anju and Kafei's quest, you have to let a woman get robbed, though the stolen goods can easily be replaced), you can help everyone. With a lot of hard work, you can cleanse the four corners of Termina, save the monkey from being boiled alive, heal Pamela's father, reunite Anju and Kafei, release the postman from his duty, save Romani Ranch, and much more, then defeat the final boss so that all those achievements stay completed.
Going back to the Groundhog Day example, Bill Murray's character eventually decides that he's going to help everyone he can, no matter how hard it may be and how many times he may have to do it. While he knows he can't save everyone (like the old man who dies because it was simply his time), he is able to save a man from choking, catch a kid falling out of a tree, encourage a hesitant couple to go through with their wedding, help an old acquaintance out with his business, and much more. He does this over and over again (as evidenced by his statement that the kid who fell from the tree "has never once thanked [him]" until he is able to get everything right and finally break free from his loop.
This is ultimately the reason that Majora's Mask's gameplay is the way it is. It cannot sacrifice its difficulty because for the game to have the emotional impact it does, the player needs to fail. It must be an uphill battle filled with setbacks and pain from not being able to help the characters you care about to not being able to save Termina as a whole. Majora's Mask needs to be a difficult game, because it is a game that forgives failure. Without difficulty, there is no failure to forgive, and with no failure, nothing is learned.
*This is technically incorrect, as it is possible to copy the save into another file, but this is a loophole that not many people figure out and that goes against the spirit behind the game.
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