The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D

 3DS
User Score
8.9

Generally favorable reviews- based on 863 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 757 out of 863
  2. Mixed: 53 out of 863
  3. Negative: 53 out of 863
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  1. Stuvok
    Sep 11, 2018
    4
    a bastardized version of the original that some how looks better and worse than the original. Full of changes that make the game worse than the original... not only removing all it's character but breaking many gameplay mechanics. If you want to play the only good version of Majora's Mask you need to break out your 64.
  2. Switch2803
    Feb 19, 2015
    3
    Majora's Mask is my favourite game. To me, it is the epitome of perfection in not only game design, but also mechanics, art, audio, narrative. It got me through a lot of hard times and is directly responsible for my choice in career. However, this remake has made me turn off my DS in disappointment time and time again.

    I understand the need for a different save mechanic as it's now a    Majora's Mask is my favourite game. To me, it is the epitome of perfection in not only game design, but also mechanics, art, audio, narrative. It got me through a lot of hard times and is directly responsible for my choice in career. However, this remake has made me turn off my DS in disappointment time and time again.

    I understand the need for a different save mechanic as it's now a handheld title, but they've gone way overboard with save points - they're absolutely everywhere.

    The most jarring change so far is the bosses. They now have an enormous Majora's eye which pops out as an obvious weak point. Think Gohma's eye style simplicity - all four of them have one now. I first played this game when I was 11 and never struggled more than was necessary with the bosses. Sure, I died, I had to go back, but I felt a great achievement when I finally managed it. None of them have been improved by this change, only made more frustrating.

    The artists have done an incredible job, the models and textures look great, but even with that change, some of the original Majora's Mask is lost. The mood of the game has been changed alongside the art - the darkness and incredible pressure from the moon above has been diminished by over saturation. It was always a colourful game, but the saturation was contrasted with darkness. All three main transformations have smiling faces or bigger eyes. It all seems a bit... too happy for an impending apocalyptic setting.

    The clock UI has changed, it's now a bar. You can play the song of double time to skip to whatever point in time you want. The whole, core mechanic of being up against time itself has been negated.

    Characters have been moved, text has been tacked on. The zora swimming has been made painfully slow. All your character's attacks are faster, more powerful. Skull Keeta needs to have a little chat before he slowly meanders away.

    Aonuma said in an interview something similar to, "this game is for people who didn't like the original Majora's Mask, or gave up halfway through." That's exactly right. Anju and Kafei's quest? Full of unskippable bomber's notebook pop-ups. Skip to whatever time you need, telling you exactly who needs what and where.

    I'm glad more people are getting interested in Majora's Mask, but it's just too different for me to enjoy. Majora's Mask 3DS is a good-looking, upbeat, dumbed down and easier version of a game I love with all my heart.    … Expand
  3. King_Outrage
    Apr 20, 2015
    3
    Listen I've played Legend of Zelda many times and honestly don't find it enjoyable, i understand that it has a fan base but honestly i don't think it deserves the nostalgia praise that it gets from score sites like this who give it a perfect score, convince me to play the game and leave me disappointed in the end. i don't find most Legend of Zelda games to be terrible but its the fact ofListen I've played Legend of Zelda many times and honestly don't find it enjoyable, i understand that it has a fan base but honestly i don't think it deserves the nostalgia praise that it gets from score sites like this who give it a perfect score, convince me to play the game and leave me disappointed in the end. i don't find most Legend of Zelda games to be terrible but its the fact of it being so overrated is what leaves me a little empty and disappointed in the end. #Overrated… Expand
  4. sumbodyshero
    Sep 7, 2018
    0
    This is the WORST remake of all time. How can all these positive scores be flooding in? HOW!

    -The controls are completely NERFED. -The moon looks like he's had a labodomy. -The graphics look like Skyward Sword neon piss. -The bosses are all nerfed and INSULTING to your intelligence. -The entire premise of the gameplay has been gutted out due to being able to save whenever you want.    This is the WORST remake of all time. How can all these positive scores be flooding in? HOW!

    -The controls are completely NERFED.
    -The moon looks like he's had a labodomy.
    -The graphics look like Skyward Sword neon piss.
    -The bosses are all nerfed and INSULTING to your intelligence.
    -The entire premise of the gameplay has been gutted out due to being able to save whenever you want.

    one million out of ten    … Expand
  5. ShiningLion
    Jan 22, 2016
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This game is probably so popular out of nostalgia. I'm a long time Zelda fan, have played a majority of the series ever since childhood, starting with the original, love this series more than any other video game series (along with Final Fantasy), but as I played Majora's Mask, I just kept waiting for it to get good, and it didn't.

    I think this game relied too heavily on regurgitating content from Ocarina of Time. Character models, weapons and items, soundtrack, sound effects, so many things were exactly the same. It seems like they lazily slopped together something new from old content. Where the hell is Zelda? Isn't this the Legend of Zelda? She was shown in a flashback and I kept waiting to see her actually have a part in this plot, but she didn't. No explanation for why childhood link has ended up in "Termina", no longer in Hyrule, but all the same people he knew in Hyrule were there, some of them mortal enemies in Ocarina of Time, now just chums.

    The time mechanic was the most terrible annoyance and seemed pointless. Most of the "scheduled" events were sidequests that you had a one in a million-chance of being at the right place at the right time to encounter without using a walkthrough. I'm shocked to know that the Song of Double Time wasn't in the original because if I had had to wait for time to pass over and over I'd have wasted such a huge chunk of my life playing this game I'd have probably given up after the first temple (oh wait, that is exactly what happened when I played it on N64 long ago). Though my biggest annoyance was that even after slowing the flow of time there were times I ran out of time JUST as I was nearing the end of a dungeon. It's bad enough you have to be timed trying to solve the dungeons, but it's a slap in the face that there's a freaking collect quest in each one for great fairies, some of which are practically impossible to find without a walkthrough. Some dungeons I had to make a choice whether to finish it and fight the boss or take the fairies to the fountain b/c I wouldn't have time to do both before the world ends. So I had to do one and then start the days over and go through the temple from scratch. Who the hell thought that would be fun? It's not fun. It's a waste of time and utterly annoying.

    I think this game insults its players by making them repeat many tasks via the time mechanic, not just if you run out of time, but if you want to get alternate options on a quest, or if you have to go "correct" one of the four regions again by fighting its boss to start another quest in that area that is dependent on it being in its proper state.

    Honestly, the countdown timer in the game didn't make me feel a sense of impending doom since there is no real end to it and you can just start over. All it did was make me aware that hours of my life were trickling away as I played this. I am all for the designers of Zelda taking liberty with a game that strays from the traditions, but I just didn't like this game, and I played it all the way to the pointless, lackluster finale where nothing made sense and it got surprisingly even more gaudy than it already was. I feel like this game is a window into someone's acid trip... Rather than it having the poignant dream-like feel of Link's Awakening or the dark delusion and gloom of Twilight Princess, it all just seemed so tacky and unguided, so random. Links screams and animation every time he put on a mask were gag-inducing.

    There really wasn't much of a plot or any friends or emotional attachments for Link either, so storywise this game was really shallow. The only time I got a remotely emotional reaction was during an optional side quest about Anju and Kafei... and maybe for a split second over that Zora who dies on the beach, whose friends and girlfriend never find out he's dead... unsettlingly.

    I didn't actually enjoy playing as the various species except maybe the Goron. The various controls and attacks seemed to make Link's set of equipment fairly useless and it didn't feel like a Zelda game much. Imagine playing Twilight Princess as a wolf for 3/4 of the game and how awful that would have made it. That's how I felt here. There were also many, many times where this game just had awful controls and physics, especially when controlling the alternate forms, and it would punish you with constantly having to redo or retry something to get it right when the problem isn't that the player isn't skilled. It's that the controls are clumsy and unresponsive and often do the opposite of what you tell them to.

    The music in this game was mostly not memorable, and the new ocarina and instrument "songs" were terrible. Most sounded like random notes and not songs, unlike the very memorable tunes in Ocarina of Time.

    I feel really disappointed and surprised at how bad this game is, so much that I'm struggling to feel this was a Zelda game and wondering how it earns its praises. It's gotta be nostalgia or people who love side-quest games.    … Expand
  6. NotATraitor
    Feb 13, 2015
    1
    I love Majora's Mask. It is one of my favorite Zelda titles. Majora's Mask 3D, on the other hand, is absolute garbage. When I first started playing, I was amazed by the graphics, and was instantly in love. I got to the part where you first meet Skullkid and got turned into a Deku Scrub. Everything was fine, until I did the spin move. At first I thought it was a visual glitch. There was noI love Majora's Mask. It is one of my favorite Zelda titles. Majora's Mask 3D, on the other hand, is absolute garbage. When I first started playing, I was amazed by the graphics, and was instantly in love. I got to the part where you first meet Skullkid and got turned into a Deku Scrub. Everything was fine, until I did the spin move. At first I thought it was a visual glitch. There was no way they thought this was okay, right? Wrong. Deku Link's hat turns into a flipping spiked club when you do a spin attack. I was shocked, but I tried to accept it, as it's only a minor thing, and it's not like they made any major changes, right?

    How wrong I was...

    I made it to Clock Town and was instantly confused. The bank is now behind the Clock Tower and the Owl Statue now has a book for some reason and no longer explains how it works. Where the bank used to be is now just a blank wall. The stalls in south clock town and the Deku Merchant's Flower has been moved. I finally recovered from the shock of things being out of place and decided to continue on my quest. I go to play hide and seek with the Bomber Kids and some aren't where they used to be. I searched and searched but could not find the last two. At this point I just gave up and put the game on the shelf, right next to Duke Nukem Forever. The games I waited for, and then severely disappointed by.    … Expand
  7. TemplarGR
    Sep 10, 2016
    0
    One of the most overrated and overhyped Zelda games of all time. Hipster trash.

    This game was a Nintendo experiment to find out how little they can invest in making a new "AAA" game and getting away with it. On the N64 it just recycled and re-arranged all the assets of Ocarina of time, with minor additions/alterations. They didn't want to waste time making new levels, so they introduced    One of the most overrated and overhyped Zelda games of all time. Hipster trash.

    This game was a Nintendo experiment to find out how little they can invest in making a new "AAA" game and getting away with it. On the N64 it just recycled and re-arranged all the assets of Ocarina of time, with minor additions/alterations. They didn't want to waste time making new levels, so they introduced a ton of backtracking and justified it with a "turn back time" gimmick. They padded a very small game to last for many boring and frustrating hours. Then called it "innovation".

    Suprisingly, it failed back then. I say suprisingly, because Nintendo fans aren't known for being smart or having good taste in games, in general. After all, if they knew any better, they wouldn't have bought a N64 in the first place, for just 2-3 good games. Still, it was so sh1t it failed and was forgotten.

    Then, as it always happens with hipsters and with the help of some manufactured hype after the Ocarina 3DS remake, somehow opinions that Majora's mask was an underrated gem surfaced. Counting on kids having never played the original back in the day, and adults having forgotten.

    And we got this, in the same way we got it on the N64: A recycled game from Ocarina of time 3DS. With some improvements to hide the fact that this game is a polished POS.

    Games like this are the equivalent of taking a turd, puting a ribbon on it, placing it on a museum and calling it "modern art". Hipsters should buy it 5x times in order to learn, the rest of us should play better games. Avoid.    … Expand
  8. NoIdeaName
    May 10, 2020
    3
    The idea of a real-time limit quest may sound good on paper, but the Legend of Zelda franchise is about exploring and adventuring, doing it while looking at the clock is extremely unpleasant.
  9. ElCaptain
    Jul 19, 2020
    4
    Never got the hype for this game..it's just confusing and has not aged well at all
  10. pichuscute
    Feb 13, 2021
    2
    An awful version of a fantastic game. MM3D suffers a myriad of issues that ruin much of the fun of the original, including gimping the fun movement of half of the characters, ruining one of only four dungeons, ruining boss fights by either making them insanely tedious or braindead easy, moving the location of key items and making them easily missable, adding new bugs, etc. While it makesAn awful version of a fantastic game. MM3D suffers a myriad of issues that ruin much of the fun of the original, including gimping the fun movement of half of the characters, ruining one of only four dungeons, ruining boss fights by either making them insanely tedious or braindead easy, moving the location of key items and making them easily missable, adding new bugs, etc. While it makes some QoL improvements as well, there are too many broken parts of the game for it to be considered anything but the worst version of the game and an insult to the original. If you want to play Majora's Mask, do not play this own.… Expand
  11. Williamcolossus
    Feb 15, 2021
    4
    My favorite Zelda game, however, only the n64 version, in this version they changed the game too much, all the bosses in the game are MUCH easier, with a strange eye (?) That makes it very easy to find out how to defeat him, in the n64 version I loved all the bosses, but in this version they disappointed me, besides having made the gameplay like Zora a lot worse, seriously, if you want toMy favorite Zelda game, however, only the n64 version, in this version they changed the game too much, all the bosses in the game are MUCH easier, with a strange eye (?) That makes it very easy to find out how to defeat him, in the n64 version I loved all the bosses, but in this version they disappointed me, besides having made the gameplay like Zora a lot worse, seriously, if you want to play Majoras Mask, play the original n64 version.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

1
#1 Best 3DS Game of 2015
1
#1 Most Discussed 3DS Game of 2015
11
#11 Most Shared 3DS Game of 2015

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
89

Generally favorable reviews - based on 82 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 81 out of 82
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 82
  3. Negative: 0 out of 82
  1. Nintendo Force Magazine
    Apr 20, 2015
    90
    Dark, surreal, poignant. Link's foray into the world of Termina – a strange fascimile of Hyrule destined to be crushed beneath a grimacing moon unless our hero can find a way to stop its descent – is certainly one of his most unusual adventures, but it's also one of his best. [Issue #14: Old vs. New – March/April 2015, p.64]
  2. Games Master UK
    Apr 9, 2015
    91
    Another brilliant and bold 3DS must-buy. [April 2015, p.74]
  3. Washington Post
    Apr 6, 2015
    100
    To my immense surprise, I haven’t fallen for a Zelda game like this since I played the The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991). Evidence of master craftsmanship is everywhere in this game. By the time you’re flipping a temple upside down then right side up, you may discover that your imagination has been enlarged.
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