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The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is an action / adventure game released on Nintendo 64 on October 26, 2000 in Europe, developed and published by Nintendo. This is the 6th game of the famous saga of Shigeru Miyamoto and the second to be in 3D. It is the direct sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time released on the same console 2 years earlier. Majora's Mask also reuses the same graphics engine of Ocarina of Time, improved thanks to the expansion pak.

After saving Hyrule from Ganondorf, Link decided to leave for a long trip on the back of his faithful mare Epona. As he was traveling through an unknown forest, Link is suddenly attacked by a strange character named Skull Kid. The latter wearing a strange mask steals the Ocarina of Time and Epona. So Link goes after him and finally manages to catch him up. But the strange boy casts a curse that transforms Link into a Deku Scrub. Then Skull kid condemns the whole region of Termina to destruction: an evil Moon appears in the sky and threatens to crash in 3 days. Link will then try to lift the curse of SkullKid within 3 days and so save Termina from its terrible fate. For that, he may go back in time with his ocarina and live again the 72 hours before impact as many times as necessary to be successful.

This new Zelda, somewhat different from other opus, plunges us into a darker world, sometimes unhealthy. Link must travel the vast land of Termina and try to awaken 4 giants, protectors of Termina, able to stop the Moon. The gameplay of the game is partly based on masks that Link can get throughout his adventure. There are 2 different kinds of masks: the transformation masks, and normal masks. The 3 transformation masks (plus a 4th which is hidden) allow Link into Deku Scrub, Goron or Zora. These masks give Link of many skills that are essential to progress in the game, especially in dungeons. The normal masks provide small special powers that are not necessarily essential to complete the main quest. They are often obtained by performing side quests given by many pnj from the cities of the game.

The adventure of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask taking place on a time slot of 72 hours, so there is also the day / night cycle already present in the previous opus. The time is counted, so we will have to pay attention to the clock and act accordingly. Taking into account this temporal dimension, each non-player character of the game performs specific activity during these 72 hours. The player will then have to analyze their schedules in order to be able to interact with them effectively and accomplish some quests.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask managed to surprise the fans of the series, and offers an unusual, long and exiting adventure.


Find out more about this unique episode on:

Zelda Universe

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask reviews