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Majora's Mask 3D |OT| Remakes are a Nice Thing to Have Heh, heh
- Thread starter Kriken
- Start date
I failed the first time too, that sequence is kind of unforgiving.
TheMoon
Member
Finally at the stone tower temple. Hope it's as good as everyone says.
I think I'm done with most of the sidequests as well.
It's gonna turn your frown upside down
Damn,i loved this game.Would love to play this remake,but my last Nintendo console was a Game Boy Advance,haven't been following them ever since,although i love Zelda games
Majoras Mask and Ocarina of time are really a pinnacle to action-adventure games,can't express how much i loved em on my N64 back in the day.Any graphical remake would make them reach top annual releases,since their gameplay mechanics hold out excellent through the passing of time.
Majoras Mask and Ocarina of time are really a pinnacle to action-adventure games,can't express how much i loved em on my N64 back in the day.Any graphical remake would make them reach top annual releases,since their gameplay mechanics hold out excellent through the passing of time.
The ending isn't dependent on the notebook, just the masks themselves. You just end up seeing more of the game's characters and their "epilogues" during the credits for each mask you obtain. If you didn't finish a sidequest, that segment of the credits movie will just be a black screen with the mask you missed displayed.
You don't have to finish any of them on the same cycle as your completion of the game. Just having finished them once at any time is enough.
Barrow Roll
Member
I never knew that this was a thing, but I've never finished a playthrough without getting every mask. Wow.
Perfect! Thanks.
Just finished the game. I think this game will stay with me for a long while, the imagery, the atmosphere and the themes are some of the most unique I've ever seen in a game. The garden in the moon ,with the masked kids playing, was so surreal but also moving: to see that the thing that's been frightening you the whole game could hide such a beautiful place...it was just beautiful. The symbolism in this game is something else, and the fact the nothing of the story is forced upon you instanly puts this game above most of the "cinematic" games we see nowadays.
I'm glad you liked it. So many people complain about the time system just on the face of it and insist that the game should be unlimited just like OoT, or never bother to finish the game at all. The game depends on that stuff, though. It's a really surreal, emotional game that's unlike anything else, and the odd mechanics enforce that mood. If you could roam around freely without worry, it wouldn't be Majora's Mask.
It makes me sad to see how many people pass on the game, but when people do like it, they tend to regard it as a masterpiece. There's really not much middle ground on this one.
It makes me sad to see how many people pass on the game, but when people do like it, they tend to regard it as a masterpiece. There's really not much middle ground on this one.
HoodWinked
Member
played a bit more of this game after putting it down for months and man so fucking frustrating.
got to the part you need to get the eggs and i found 4 at the pirate base dumped them and nothing happened even tho the fairy says you got all of them. so i thought the game was bugged so i reset the game and got the last two again and nothing happened so i, figured maybe this is some optional quest for a heart so i said forget and left. i managed to find this sea crater with eels and found two more eggs them dumped those to find out still nothing. by then i'm pretty much out of time so i reset the day timer.
i look around talk to everyone again to find out there are 7 eggs so basically i ran a marathon to quit 10ft from the finish line. turns out there were 3 eggs at that eel section which is easily missed because whoever designed this part of the level thought players would love to kill these eel things 8 times and made all of these look identical and even the map to make it look like 6 . so i go back to the pirate base and i keep getting caught by the frustrating stealth section. this egg collection with having to go back and forth has put me off the game so much. by the time i essentially collected 15 eggs and made my way to the dungeon my battery was low so i just stopped.
eel map. 6 tunnels? nope 8 because there are two on top of each other.
got to the part you need to get the eggs and i found 4 at the pirate base dumped them and nothing happened even tho the fairy says you got all of them. so i thought the game was bugged so i reset the game and got the last two again and nothing happened so i, figured maybe this is some optional quest for a heart so i said forget and left. i managed to find this sea crater with eels and found two more eggs them dumped those to find out still nothing. by then i'm pretty much out of time so i reset the day timer.
i look around talk to everyone again to find out there are 7 eggs so basically i ran a marathon to quit 10ft from the finish line. turns out there were 3 eggs at that eel section which is easily missed because whoever designed this part of the level thought players would love to kill these eel things 8 times and made all of these look identical and even the map to make it look like 6 . so i go back to the pirate base and i keep getting caught by the frustrating stealth section. this egg collection with having to go back and forth has put me off the game so much. by the time i essentially collected 15 eggs and made my way to the dungeon my battery was low so i just stopped.
eel map. 6 tunnels? nope 8 because there are two on top of each other.
Just started playing this over the Christmas period, and I can see why it's loved, but man is it a strange and dark game, totally unlike any other Zelda I've ever played.
I'm trying to complete Kafei's quest line, where his mum told me he was missing, but it turns out he's been
is really an un-Nintendo kind of theme for a game, but it does seem like they got very creative with Majora's Mask.
I can see why people suggest you concentrate on just one thing per 'cycle', without the Bomber's Notebook I'd be completely lost - I have no idea how people played this originally without missing things.
I've got the Sonata of Awakening, Song of Inverted Time and Song of Double Time, and I've just beaten Odolwa (the Jungle Warrior) in Woodfall Temple - why on earth did they make it so that the Great Fairy mask doesn't 'tick off' the locations of the fairies? Apparently I've got two left to find in Woodfall Temple, but I've got no idea where they might be.
Looking forward to finding out what all the other side quests are like!
I'm trying to complete Kafei's quest line, where his mum told me he was missing, but it turns out he's been
transformed into a child, so he asked me to give Anju the Pendant of Memories, and during the final few hours she just sits next to a weirdass wedding mannequin saying she won't flee Clock Town to save herself because she trusts him to come back. The idea she's waiting patiently for her death
I can see why people suggest you concentrate on just one thing per 'cycle', without the Bomber's Notebook I'd be completely lost - I have no idea how people played this originally without missing things.
I've got the Sonata of Awakening, Song of Inverted Time and Song of Double Time, and I've just beaten Odolwa (the Jungle Warrior) in Woodfall Temple - why on earth did they make it so that the Great Fairy mask doesn't 'tick off' the locations of the fairies? Apparently I've got two left to find in Woodfall Temple, but I've got no idea where they might be.
Looking forward to finding out what all the other side quests are like!
TheMoon
Member
The Bomber's Notebook was in the N64 version, too. Just way way way way less feature-rich and only with a basic list of the NPC events.
The new Bomber's Notebook is so good. Filling it out has this addictive pokedex-like quality to it.
It does, but then I'm not sure how many unique NPCs there are and how many entries in the notebook there are, so it's like trying to catch all of the Pokemon without knowing how many of them exist.
TheMoon
Member
WiiRevolution1
Member
Sorry for the bump, but figured this was the best place to ask if anyone else has this problem: Recently got Majora's Mask 3D and am enjoying it (beat 3 dungeons on Wii VC, but should do this this time since its much better on a handheld) but I noticed that inside of the 3DS Game Cartridge it feels like something is...loose in it if I shake it. Does anyone else's Majora's Mask have this problem? None of my other 3DS games are loose. Kinda worried it may die out which would piss me off since I buy cartridges to last. Played upto the second dungeon without any problems but dunno if this will become a problem.
Doesn't help that I bought it from gamestop since I only had credit there, the game wasn't hooked into the game case when I first opened it, but the game itself was sealed, not open.
Doesn't help that I bought it from gamestop since I only had credit there, the game wasn't hooked into the game case when I first opened it, but the game itself was sealed, not open.
Delicious Waffles
Member
Since I have my 3DS with my copy in it right next to me, I gave my cartridge a shake and it, indeed, has something moving around in there. It actually sounds kind of big, if that makes sense. I've had it since release and, playing it sporadically ever since, never had a problem with it if that reassures you.
Just beat the second temple and upgraded my sword.
I've played the original so many times that it's actually a tad hard to play the 3DS version because they rearranged so many things and I was hunting down stray fairies in the temple, sweating as the final day counted down.
It's really great.
I've played the original so many times that it's actually a tad hard to play the 3DS version because they rearranged so many things and I was hunting down stray fairies in the temple, sweating as the final day counted down.
It's really great.
WiiRevolution1
Member
peppermints
Member
Can someone point me in the right way to play through this? The thing I like most about Zelda games are the dungeons + puzzle solving. This seems to have a limited amount of that comparatively. I just beat the first dungeon, but am feeling like rushing through the dungeons and skipping a lot of the sidequests is playing this the wrong way. Is that correct?
How did you guys tackle sorting through and prioritizing sidequests? I'm getting the bomber's notebook filled out as I talk to people, but I'm having some trouble grasping their schedules and objectives.
What all will I be missing out on if I just power through the dungeons?
How did you guys tackle sorting through and prioritizing sidequests? I'm getting the bomber's notebook filled out as I talk to people, but I'm having some trouble grasping their schedules and objectives.
What all will I be missing out on if I just power through the dungeons?
Shuggananas
Banned
Do dungeons + stray faeries
Once you've done all 4 dungeons do the sidequests
Once you've done all 4 dungeons do the sidequests
I think you can play it any way you want. The game has only 4 dungeons though so you might feel that is short. There are mini-dungeons like the skulltulla's houses too. The pirate fortress can by considered a dungeon too in my opinion.
Give some sidequests a chance. There are a lot and it might feel overwhelming so just start with a couple, some are requirements to finish others so its also ok to be stumped. If you can't move forward drop the sidequest and pick another one.
Give some sidequests a chance. There are a lot and it might feel overwhelming so just start with a couple, some are requirements to finish others so its also ok to be stumped. If you can't move forward drop the sidequest and pick another one.
It's been over a year, so I decided to revisit the game in the hopes that my opinion of it would have softened. So far, no. The changes are still often inept and I only feel frustrated returning to them. For instance... there's absolutely no perceivable benefit to the Deku scrub running and hopping more slowly, but the negative impact of the change is right in your face. Getting around the swamp is definitely not much fun compared to the original. I've heard people defend these changes by saying things like "it doesn't really matter/who cares," but no one ever actually says it's a good change or one that enhances the game in any way. It's a pure downgrade, and the only defense for it is that it doesn't actively ruin the game.
The fact that there are so many changes like this makes me question how much better graphics matter to me in comparison to gameplay- and I still can't believe how much of the gameplay they blew after that long wait. The game is beautiful, but it's not necessarily that far removed from the old N64 visuals. And frankly, the graphics are the only thing I like about the remake aside from gryo controls, which can probably be approximated in an emulator with the steam controller.
I did want to do a test to see how bad the zora swimming really is. I started from the far wall near the laboratory in great bay and timed how long it took to reach the pirate fortress entrance/loading point.
Taking the same path each time, the result to get across the bay when slow swimming was 40 seconds while the fast/shield swimming was 36. Not a huge difference really, but the difference in fun is obviously clear. The new swimming is so stiff and boring. The original fast swimming is also really annoying to use with the shield buzzing and taking up so much of the screen... it's notably harder to see where you're going with that thing active. I also ran out of magic just to reach that point, which underscores how useless the fast swimming is for travel now.
Most people seem to really like the game and don't mind these things, so I don't know if I'm unreasonable or what. It makes me wonder how many of the people who loved this remake also loved the original game. I just can't imagine someone who was a big fan of the N64 version disregarding so many downgrades. The nerfs to the forms are one thing, but the difficulty nerfing is also pretty lame. Things like the platforms no longer moving in the Deku palace infiltration or captian Keeta running at a snail's pace kind of kill the fun of the original segment.
A big amount of the game's content. The best way to play is to do whatever you feel like. If one day you want to just do the main quest/dungeon, do it. If you feel like wandering around and seeing what you can do elsewhere, do it. Maybe the best thing about Majora's Mask is how rich it is with content and how free you are to select what you want to do at any time. If you only do the dungeons and then turn to sidequests afterward, you won't be getting the full experience of the game. I usually do a play session or two of sidequests only before tackling the next dungeon. That way, you'll also gain upgrades and heart pieces that you can benefit from in the main quest.
The fact that there are so many changes like this makes me question how much better graphics matter to me in comparison to gameplay- and I still can't believe how much of the gameplay they blew after that long wait. The game is beautiful, but it's not necessarily that far removed from the old N64 visuals. And frankly, the graphics are the only thing I like about the remake aside from gryo controls, which can probably be approximated in an emulator with the steam controller.
I did want to do a test to see how bad the zora swimming really is. I started from the far wall near the laboratory in great bay and timed how long it took to reach the pirate fortress entrance/loading point.
Taking the same path each time, the result to get across the bay when slow swimming was 40 seconds while the fast/shield swimming was 36. Not a huge difference really, but the difference in fun is obviously clear. The new swimming is so stiff and boring. The original fast swimming is also really annoying to use with the shield buzzing and taking up so much of the screen... it's notably harder to see where you're going with that thing active. I also ran out of magic just to reach that point, which underscores how useless the fast swimming is for travel now.
Most people seem to really like the game and don't mind these things, so I don't know if I'm unreasonable or what. It makes me wonder how many of the people who loved this remake also loved the original game. I just can't imagine someone who was a big fan of the N64 version disregarding so many downgrades. The nerfs to the forms are one thing, but the difficulty nerfing is also pretty lame. Things like the platforms no longer moving in the Deku palace infiltration or captian Keeta running at a snail's pace kind of kill the fun of the original segment.
A big amount of the game's content. The best way to play is to do whatever you feel like. If one day you want to just do the main quest/dungeon, do it. If you feel like wandering around and seeing what you can do elsewhere, do it. Maybe the best thing about Majora's Mask is how rich it is with content and how free you are to select what you want to do at any time. If you only do the dungeons and then turn to sidequests afterward, you won't be getting the full experience of the game. I usually do a play session or two of sidequests only before tackling the next dungeon. That way, you'll also gain upgrades and heart pieces that you can benefit from in the main quest.
A lot of fans of the original (myself included) consider this remake to be inferior, though you're right that the downgrades do seem to be mostly ignored. The discussions were pretty common when the game was about to come out, but we were definitely in the minority.
The issues you mentioned are pretty big, but one other thing that REALLY bothered me were the changes to certain models (like the Moon's face or the Clocktown map) and changes to some colors (Like the color of the sky on certain days) which really change the atmosphere/mood.
Beren the Empty-Handed
Member
The original is my favorite game of all time, and I consider the remake an almost universal downgrade. They made it easier for people who didn't want to put the effort in, changed a number of artistic choices for no reason, and took the unusual (for 3D Zelda) frantic boss fights and boxed them into a structure like every other 3D Zelda boss fight. And I'll never forgive them for the swimming.
I have to disagree, most things were improved, and I don't see any downgrade in difficulty.
The swimming was improved, the Great Bay Temple is not longer an exercise in frustration, I do think they should have left a way for fast swimming and not use magic though, but it is still an improvement, and you can still infinitely fast swim with lon lon milk.
The notebook is vastly improved, the alarm system is perfect.
Speed while jumping as a Deku scrub is such a minor change I only knew about it because of this thread.
Gyorg's battle was weird, but the others are now epic, specially Twinmold, again they were improved.
The ice arrow thing is "eeeh" but I can live with it.
I feel some fans have some obsessive devotion to the original like if it was some flawless game when it wasn't, and the whole thing is just odd for me since back then I felt I was the only one who loved the game. Some gamers really think frustration equals difficulty.
The swimming was improved, the Great Bay Temple is not longer an exercise in frustration, I do think they should have left a way for fast swimming and not use magic though, but it is still an improvement, and you can still infinitely fast swim with lon lon milk.
The notebook is vastly improved, the alarm system is perfect.
Speed while jumping as a Deku scrub is such a minor change I only knew about it because of this thread.
Gyorg's battle was weird, but the others are now epic, specially Twinmold, again they were improved.
The ice arrow thing is "eeeh" but I can live with it.
I feel some fans have some obsessive devotion to the original like if it was some flawless game when it wasn't, and the whole thing is just odd for me since back then I felt I was the only one who loved the game. Some gamers really think frustration equals difficulty.
I mean, it's your opinion, I'm not going to say you're unreasonable. But I've long held the original N64 version in my heart as my favorite Zelda game, and I consider this remake the definitive version, to the point I loaned out my N64 cartridge to some neighborhood kids even though I may lose it in the process.
In my view, this remake smoothed out a lot of rough patches in the N64 game. mantidor has covered the improvements well, but I still cringe thinking about banging into walls repeatedly in Great Bay. That's my most frustrating memory from the N64 version, and I'm glad it's no longer an issue. As for the rest—well, maybe I did lose something, and I'm just getting old and forgetful, but I don't miss any of it and have never felt compelled to compare the original game.
On a slight tangent, I really disliked the uprendered versions, primarily due to the fact that the changed analog stick characteristics not accounted-for in emulation seriously messed with my ability to aim arrows (had the same problem with Ocarina.) Probably speaks to my low tolerance for frustration in these games.
Solid SOAP
Member
So, I play this game about once a year, as it's my favorite game. I just gotta say, I'm so happy that they ported this to a portable system. I'm gonna be en route to Europe in a few days, I'm gonna use my plane time to try to blast through the game in a sitting or two if possible
Beren the Empty-Handed
Member
The notebook was improved, and is one of the few things I'd argue really was.
The boss battles were all worse except for possibly Twinmold, which might only be marginally better. Gyorg was terrible, while Odolwa and Goht had unnecessary extra things added on that didn't really improve the experience.
Great Bay Temple was never difficult for me, and I always thought it was pretty clever. Swimming was simple because I knew when to go fast and when to just do the dog paddle or whatever he's doing when he waves his arms around. Maybe I'm just a god at Zora swimming, but I somehow doubt it. They made it easier to swim if you struggled with the controls, but it's undoubtedly worse if you were already proficient. That's not a good exchange imo.
The boss battles were all worse except for possibly Twinmold, which might only be marginally better. Gyorg was terrible, while Odolwa and Goht had unnecessary extra things added on that didn't really improve the experience.
Great Bay Temple was never difficult for me, and I always thought it was pretty clever. Swimming was simple because I knew when to go fast and when to just do the dog paddle or whatever he's doing when he waves his arms around. Maybe I'm just a god at Zora swimming, but I somehow doubt it. They made it easier to swim if you struggled with the controls, but it's undoubtedly worse if you were already proficient. That's not a good exchange imo.
I guess I'm glad to see it's not just me. I was holding out hope that the game would get a patch after there were complaints about these things, but now the only real hope is that the game might get a re-release somewhere down the road. I'd love an HD release of OoT3D+MM3D on NX, and maybe there they'd revisit some of the changes. Otherwise, I'm going to have to stick with the original. I just can't enjoy this version.
Off the top of my head...
*The save system is obviously easier to use. The original forced you to plan your play session and accomplish all your tasks in that time. The new system just sort of says "aw, fuck it" and just lets you save wherever. I'm personally not opposed to the new saving being added, but I wish they had allowed for the original song of time method so I could play the way I prefer. Why not?
*As I mentioned, the Deku palace was royally nerfed. The platforms don't move now until you land on them- there's no confusion about this, that is flat out lowered difficulty.
*Odolwa is also inarguably easier. He doesn't even attack, not unless you stand still for the 10 seconds it takes for him to stop dancing and finally charge at you. All you do is deku bomb him, stab his head, and repeat. You can do it 3 times in rapid succession and he'll never even try to land a blow. I hated this fight the first time I played MM3D, so this time I tried to see if there was an alternate way to attack without using the ridiculously easy, formulaic deku bomb method. If there was, I didn't find it; he blocks your arrows, jumps away from your bombs, and shields your sword/spin attacks, forbidding you to attack him in any other way. Some people will argue that there were tactics you could use to kill him quickly in the original too, but it's not the same. You couldn't predict which set of attacks he would use next, and he was obviously attacking much more frequently.
* I'm pretty sure Goht's attacks don't land as often. His lighting bolt attack in the original was very fast and accurate. I never get hit by it in MM3D, it seems to track you much more poorly.
*Captain Keeta moves at what seems like half of his original speed or less. This is another clear difficulty reduction. I always enjoyed this part in the original since you had to race to kill all his underlings as fast as you could to catch him and it was usually a fairly close call. That's what made it exciting. It wasn't unreasonable; you could shoot arrows at him to hold him if he were getting too far ahead. In the new fight, I caught him after the very first gauntlet of enemies, which is ridiculous. It ruins the whole premise of the fight.
*The ice arrows now have glowing spots that show you just where to fire. That does make things a little easier in that you no longer have to judge the spacing of your platforms yourself. I wouldn't have cared so much if they still let you fire arrows wherever... that was a bizarrely insulting decision.
*The bombers have also made secrets easier to discover. They run right up to you and fidget in your face until you talk to them, then they give you pretty generous hints about a lot of the heart piece or mask locations that were never in the original game. There were a few hints that made me groan just because they were practically giving it away.
I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting. There are a lot of changes that I do think simply removed frustration- for instance, allowing you to shoot the eye outside of stone tower temple without having to move the blocks again. That's not a difficulty reduction, that's a removal of an excessively repetitive task. But there's a big difference between something like that and then making an enemy attack less frequently or move more slowly.
I never considered the temple to be frustrating, and I think the old swimming actually works much better in the areas with strong currents. Obviously, Zora swimming wasn't ideal for tight spaces, but it works far better than the new swimming in the bay and you're now prohibited from using it there, which means that traveling is much less fun than before. It also makes any segment that requires the zora swimming less fun, since that damned barrier and whirring are really distracting. Using romani milk doesn't fix that, nor is it practical to expect someone to waste an entire day every session just to get a bottle, nor would I really want to have infinite magic while doing the rest of the temple in human form. It's not a solution to this problem, and yes, it is a problem. They broke something about the original game that a lot of people loved.
If I had to choose just one swimming or the other, it would be the original without a doubt. I can bonk my head a few times, who gives a shit. It's much less annoying than what you have to put up with now.
The deku hop was fun because you could build up a lot of momentum and keep it unbroken as you went from pad to pad, which allowed you to travel over water very quickly. Now, your momentum is broken after each and every pad and it's generally tedious. If you used the spin technique in the original, it's a huge difference, but even if not, there are times when the slow speed creates problems. For instance, I've seriously gotten stuck on this platform on both of my playthroughs:
You just barely have enough speed to make it to the first pad, and you can't move backward to build up a run because you'll end up re-entering the tomb. It's really fucking frustrating to have to deal with things like this when this would have been a simple, thoughtless jump in the original.
When it comes to the bosses, there are some good ideas but there's also a general awkwardness to all of them. They just stretch on for too long and wear out their welcome. Having to stand around punching twinmold after you run out of rocks to throw is bizarrely tedious after what was otherwise a pretty big improvement in the boss fight. Gyorg's underwater phase is also really clunky and goes on too long. I prefer the original fights just because they're purer and don't have these, long, awkward pace killing segments.
It reminds me of the old Resident Evil games and how some people love them while others consider them clunky and dated. REmake could have added more ammo and given you an over the shoulder view and a lot of people would have loved it, but it would have ruined the original gameplay. MM3D isn't that bad, but it's a step in that direction; sacrificing the original mechanics to appease a wider audience.
It's not as if I'm blind to any problems the game may have. There are a few things that I think even the biggest fans would agree were problems, just as everyone agreed OoT's water temple/iron boots issues were a problem. In this game, the stone tower climb and elegy of emptiness were obviously tedious. This remake did nothing to fix that. You still have to play the elegy of emptiness over and over, you still have to watch the encore performance, and it's still generally a huge drag on what is otherwise a classic segment of the game.
TLDR version is that for me, the game doesn't fix what I and a lot of fans would have considered the real problems the game had and it creates new ones by wrecking things that were perfectly fine before. It's just like a special edition; this is what happens when the people working on something don't understand it in the way the fans do. You can't revisit something and do it justice unless you understand what makes it great. A lot of the changes in MM3D make it clear that Aonuma didn't really know what he was changing half the time- no fan would have done what he did to the zora swimming if they had been in charge of this.
The one thing I hope everyone can agree on is that the changes could have been implemented better, even if you like the changes. They didn't have to remove the original mechanics so often, and they could have created an alternate mode that would have preserved the original difficulty. Things like the slow swimming and free saving could have been really great additions to the game without any drawbacks if you could still use the fast swimming or song of time save to your heart's content.
Off the top of my head...
*The save system is obviously easier to use. The original forced you to plan your play session and accomplish all your tasks in that time. The new system just sort of says "aw, fuck it" and just lets you save wherever. I'm personally not opposed to the new saving being added, but I wish they had allowed for the original song of time method so I could play the way I prefer. Why not?
*As I mentioned, the Deku palace was royally nerfed. The platforms don't move now until you land on them- there's no confusion about this, that is flat out lowered difficulty.
*Odolwa is also inarguably easier. He doesn't even attack, not unless you stand still for the 10 seconds it takes for him to stop dancing and finally charge at you. All you do is deku bomb him, stab his head, and repeat. You can do it 3 times in rapid succession and he'll never even try to land a blow. I hated this fight the first time I played MM3D, so this time I tried to see if there was an alternate way to attack without using the ridiculously easy, formulaic deku bomb method. If there was, I didn't find it; he blocks your arrows, jumps away from your bombs, and shields your sword/spin attacks, forbidding you to attack him in any other way. Some people will argue that there were tactics you could use to kill him quickly in the original too, but it's not the same. You couldn't predict which set of attacks he would use next, and he was obviously attacking much more frequently.
* I'm pretty sure Goht's attacks don't land as often. His lighting bolt attack in the original was very fast and accurate. I never get hit by it in MM3D, it seems to track you much more poorly.
*Captain Keeta moves at what seems like half of his original speed or less. This is another clear difficulty reduction. I always enjoyed this part in the original since you had to race to kill all his underlings as fast as you could to catch him and it was usually a fairly close call. That's what made it exciting. It wasn't unreasonable; you could shoot arrows at him to hold him if he were getting too far ahead. In the new fight, I caught him after the very first gauntlet of enemies, which is ridiculous. It ruins the whole premise of the fight.
*The ice arrows now have glowing spots that show you just where to fire. That does make things a little easier in that you no longer have to judge the spacing of your platforms yourself. I wouldn't have cared so much if they still let you fire arrows wherever... that was a bizarrely insulting decision.
*The bombers have also made secrets easier to discover. They run right up to you and fidget in your face until you talk to them, then they give you pretty generous hints about a lot of the heart piece or mask locations that were never in the original game. There were a few hints that made me groan just because they were practically giving it away.
I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting. There are a lot of changes that I do think simply removed frustration- for instance, allowing you to shoot the eye outside of stone tower temple without having to move the blocks again. That's not a difficulty reduction, that's a removal of an excessively repetitive task. But there's a big difference between something like that and then making an enemy attack less frequently or move more slowly.
I never considered the temple to be frustrating, and I think the old swimming actually works much better in the areas with strong currents. Obviously, Zora swimming wasn't ideal for tight spaces, but it works far better than the new swimming in the bay and you're now prohibited from using it there, which means that traveling is much less fun than before. It also makes any segment that requires the zora swimming less fun, since that damned barrier and whirring are really distracting. Using romani milk doesn't fix that, nor is it practical to expect someone to waste an entire day every session just to get a bottle, nor would I really want to have infinite magic while doing the rest of the temple in human form. It's not a solution to this problem, and yes, it is a problem. They broke something about the original game that a lot of people loved.
If I had to choose just one swimming or the other, it would be the original without a doubt. I can bonk my head a few times, who gives a shit. It's much less annoying than what you have to put up with now.
The deku hop was fun because you could build up a lot of momentum and keep it unbroken as you went from pad to pad, which allowed you to travel over water very quickly. Now, your momentum is broken after each and every pad and it's generally tedious. If you used the spin technique in the original, it's a huge difference, but even if not, there are times when the slow speed creates problems. For instance, I've seriously gotten stuck on this platform on both of my playthroughs:
You just barely have enough speed to make it to the first pad, and you can't move backward to build up a run because you'll end up re-entering the tomb. It's really fucking frustrating to have to deal with things like this when this would have been a simple, thoughtless jump in the original.
When it comes to the bosses, there are some good ideas but there's also a general awkwardness to all of them. They just stretch on for too long and wear out their welcome. Having to stand around punching twinmold after you run out of rocks to throw is bizarrely tedious after what was otherwise a pretty big improvement in the boss fight. Gyorg's underwater phase is also really clunky and goes on too long. I prefer the original fights just because they're purer and don't have these, long, awkward pace killing segments.
This is pretty much a confirmation of what I was saying above- that the people who really like this remake thought the original was heavily flawed or needed fixing. I always regarded MM as being just as great as OoT. The things they "fixed" were often things I enjoyed, and the "solutions" often introduce new problems to the game.
It reminds me of the old Resident Evil games and how some people love them while others consider them clunky and dated. REmake could have added more ammo and given you an over the shoulder view and a lot of people would have loved it, but it would have ruined the original gameplay. MM3D isn't that bad, but it's a step in that direction; sacrificing the original mechanics to appease a wider audience.
It's not as if I'm blind to any problems the game may have. There are a few things that I think even the biggest fans would agree were problems, just as everyone agreed OoT's water temple/iron boots issues were a problem. In this game, the stone tower climb and elegy of emptiness were obviously tedious. This remake did nothing to fix that. You still have to play the elegy of emptiness over and over, you still have to watch the encore performance, and it's still generally a huge drag on what is otherwise a classic segment of the game.
TLDR version is that for me, the game doesn't fix what I and a lot of fans would have considered the real problems the game had and it creates new ones by wrecking things that were perfectly fine before. It's just like a special edition; this is what happens when the people working on something don't understand it in the way the fans do. You can't revisit something and do it justice unless you understand what makes it great. A lot of the changes in MM3D make it clear that Aonuma didn't really know what he was changing half the time- no fan would have done what he did to the zora swimming if they had been in charge of this.
The one thing I hope everyone can agree on is that the changes could have been implemented better, even if you like the changes. They didn't have to remove the original mechanics so often, and they could have created an alternate mode that would have preserved the original difficulty. Things like the slow swimming and free saving could have been really great additions to the game without any drawbacks if you could still use the fast swimming or song of time save to your heart's content.
Just got an New 3DS and Majora's Mask. Looks pretty good but I don't know for God's sake why they changed things like replacing the bank accountant to the back of the clock tower? Now, the alley in the west feels a bit more empty without him. He fit there with all the other shops. But at the clock tower... it just seems out of place to have a bank THERE. WHY, for Christ's sake?!
I guess I'm glad to see it's not just me. I was holding out hope that the game would get a patch after there were complaints about these things, but now the only real hope is that the game might get a re-release somewhere down the road. I'd love an HD release of OoT3D+MM3D on NX, and maybe there they'd revisit some of the changes. Otherwise, I'm going to have to stick with the original. I just can't enjoy this version.
Off the top of my head...
*The save system is obviously easier to use. The original forced you to plan your play session and accomplish all your tasks in that time. The new system just sort of says "aw, fuck it" and just lets you save wherever. I'm personally not opposed to the new saving being added, but I wish they had allowed for the original song of time method so I could play the way I prefer. Why not?
*As I mentioned, the Deku palace was royally nerfed. The platforms don't move now until you land on them- there's no confusion about this, that is flat out lowered difficulty.
*Odolwa is also inarguably easier. He doesn't even attack, not unless you stand still for the 10 seconds it takes for him to stop dancing and finally charge at you. All you do is deku bomb him, stab his head, and repeat. You can do it 3 times in rapid succession and he'll never even try to land a blow. I hated this fight the first time I played MM3D, so this time I tried to see if there was an alternate way to attack without using the ridiculously easy, formulaic deku bomb method. If there was, I didn't find it; he blocks your arrows, jumps away from your bombs, and shields your sword/spin attacks, forbidding you to attack him in any other way. Some people will argue that there were tactics you could use to kill him quickly in the original too, but it's not the same. You couldn't predict which set of attacks he would use next, and he was obviously attacking much more frequently.
* I'm pretty sure Goht's attacks don't land as often. His lighting bolt attack in the original was very fast and accurate. I never get hit by it in MM3D, it seems to track you much more poorly.
*Captain Keeta moves at what seems like half of his original speed or less. This is another clear difficulty reduction. I always enjoyed this part in the original since you had to race to kill all his underlings as fast as you could to catch him and it was usually a fairly close call. That's what made it exciting. It wasn't unreasonable; you could shoot arrows at him to hold him if he were getting too far ahead. In the new fight, I caught him after the very first gauntlet of enemies, which is ridiculous. It ruins the whole premise of the fight.
*The ice arrows now have glowing spots that show you just where to fire. That does make things a little easier in that you no longer have to judge the spacing of your platforms yourself. I wouldn't have cared so much if they still let you fire arrows wherever... that was a bizarrely insulting decision.
*The bombers have also made secrets easier to discover. They run right up to you and fidget in your face until you talk to them, then they give you pretty generous hints about a lot of the heart piece or mask locations that were never in the original game. There were a few hints that made me groan just because they were practically giving it away.
I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting. There are a lot of changes that I do think simply removed frustration- for instance, allowing you to shoot the eye outside of stone tower temple without having to move the blocks again. That's not a difficulty reduction, that's a removal of an excessively repetitive task. But there's a big difference between something like that and then making an enemy attack less frequently or move more slowly.
I never considered the temple to be frustrating, and I think the old swimming actually works much better in the areas with strong currents. Obviously, Zora swimming wasn't ideal for tight spaces, but it works far better than the new swimming in the bay and you're now prohibited from using it there, which means that traveling is much less fun than before. It also makes any segment that requires the zora swimming less fun, since that damned barrier and whirring are really distracting. Using romani milk doesn't fix that, nor is it practical to expect someone to waste an entire day every session just to get a bottle, nor would I really want to have infinite magic while doing the rest of the temple in human form. It's not a solution to this problem, and yes, it is a problem. They broke something about the original game that a lot of people loved.
If I had to choose just one swimming or the other, it would be the original without a doubt. I can bonk my head a few times, who gives a shit. It's much less annoying than what you have to put up with now.
The deku hop was fun because you could build up a lot of momentum and keep it unbroken as you went from pad to pad, which allowed you to travel over water very quickly. Now, your momentum is broken after each and every pad and it's generally tedious. If you used the spin technique in the original, it's a huge difference, but even if not, there are times when the slow speed creates problems. For instance, I've seriously gotten stuck on this platform on both of my playthroughs:
You just barely have enough speed to make it to the first pad, and you can't move backward to build up a run because you'll end up re-entering the tomb. It's really fucking frustrating to have to deal with things like this when this would have been a simple, thoughtless jump in the original.
When it comes to the bosses, there are some good ideas but there's also a general awkwardness to all of them. They just stretch on for too long and wear out their welcome. Having to stand around punching twinmold after you run out of rocks to throw is bizarrely tedious after what was otherwise a pretty big improvement in the boss fight. Gyorg's underwater phase is also really clunky and goes on too long. I prefer the original fights just because they're purer and don't have these, long, awkward pace killing segments.
This is pretty much a confirmation of what I was saying above- that the people who really like this remake thought the original was heavily flawed or needed fixing. I always regarded MM as being just as great as OoT. The things they "fixed" were often things I enjoyed, and the "solutions" often introduce new problems to the game.
It reminds me of the old Resident Evil games and how some people love them while others consider them clunky and dated. REmake could have added more ammo and given you an over the shoulder view and a lot of people would have loved it, but it would have ruined the original gameplay. MM3D isn't that bad, but it's a step in that direction; sacrificing the original mechanics to appease a wider audience.
It's not as if I'm blind to any problems the game may have. There are a few things that I think even the biggest fans would agree were problems, just as everyone agreed OoT's water temple/iron boots issues were a problem. In this game, the stone tower climb and elegy of emptiness were obviously tedious. This remake did nothing to fix that. You still have to play the elegy of emptiness over and over, you still have to watch the encore performance, and it's still generally a huge drag on what is otherwise a classic segment of the game.
TLDR version is that for me, the game doesn't fix what I and a lot of fans would have considered the real problems the game had and it creates new ones by wrecking things that were perfectly fine before. It's just like a special edition; this is what happens when the people working on something don't understand it in the way the fans do. You can't revisit something and do it justice unless you understand what makes it great. A lot of the changes in MM3D make it clear that Aonuma didn't really know what he was changing half the time- no fan would have done what he did to the zora swimming if they had been in charge of this.
The one thing I hope everyone can agree on is that the changes could have been implemented better, even if you like the changes. They didn't have to remove the original mechanics so often, and they could have created an alternate mode that would have preserved the original difficulty. Things like the slow swimming and free saving could have been really great additions to the game without any drawbacks if you could still use the fast swimming or song of time save to your heart's content.
You sum this stuff up way better than I could hope to.
TheMoon
Member
It's incredibly obvious why. Because the save statue is right there. This is your "base." Manage saving and money deposits right in the same spot. It's much much more convenient this way. And not out of place at all. In my town, the bank is right next to the clock tower (which houses the municipal office).
Yeah. I don't necessarily want to say "if you didn't like the original swimming, you were just bad at it," but I do think that if you knew how to handle the zora well that you would really dislike this change. There are moments when those controls feel so good and rewarding, like when you dolphin dive out of water and somersault onto a platform. I also love how agile the spiraling turns feel... you can really get a great range of sensitivity in your turns depending on how far you tilt the stick and how tight the spiraling becomes.
Like you said, head bonks are mainly a result of trying to use the full speed when you should probably just use the stick to paddle alone. You can also dart forward and then stop short by pressing B if you want to cover some ground fast without hitting a wall. I do think the new swimming was a great addition to address this problem, but god, ruining the original swimming was totally unnecessary.
I understand the moon complaint, because the new face doesn't really have the mystery the original did. Before, the expression was somewhere between bewildered fear and anger; as if this thing didn't even know how it felt about what it was doing. Now, it's just angry. It's not quite as disturbing, but I still think it looks good from a head on view. My main complaint with it is that it looks goofy and unintimidating from the sides.
I like a lot of the visual tweaks, especially the woods they've added to the exit of romani ranch and the extra foliage in the swamp. A lot of clock town also looks better, with the new details like the balcony in the laundry pool. I don't really care for the new layout in central clock town, nor do I understand why it was necessary. It's nice that all the doorways line up now, but it wasn't really a problem before. The new sky doesn't bother me, since the colors are surreal and strange enough to suit the game for me. It may be different than the original, but at least they tried to keep it weird.
My main complaint with the visuals is that they didn't push the darkness that was in the MM concept art. MM had distinctly different art than OoT did, yet both incarnations of MM have now just reused OoT's visuals wholesale. I would love to see how MM would look with this darker, shadow heavy vibe in-game:
Even the bombers weren't anything to fuck with.
It's another example of trying to make things as easy and convenient as possible. It wasn't hard to walk the extra 20 feet, and I honestly kind of liked walking over each time to do it as part of my saving ritual, but now it's that much faster to deposit before you save. Like was said above, it's kind of like a hub now. I don't think it was necessary since all of clock town was your hub, but whatever. At least it defaults to depositing every rupee now, which was a great improvement.
It's incredibly obvious why. Because the save statue is right there. This is your "base." Manage saving and money deposits right in the same spot. It's much much more convenient this way. And not out of place at all. In my town, the bank is right next to the clock tower (which houses the municipal office).
Yeah, it's like a small hub within the "Clock Town hub". But it doesn't feel organic. In your real life city nothing is build around and for you. You choose your place and sometimes just have to walk or take a bike or car. Nobody would say "oh, I better open my shop around this TheMoon guy". It's just because you're the protagonist. Like in Metal Gear Solid V you don't die because of ridiculous reasons in the first ten minutes of the opening cinematics. Ridiculous reasons just because it's the protagonist.
But that's not a plausible nor a elegant reason.
If we could develop it a bit further you could argue that all the shops and whatnot should also be in the same place. Why even offer different districts with different attractions and shops. Nope, sir, in the classic it felt much more proper. You had, like, your shop district (with the bank), the attraction district with the inn, pub and game booths and so one.
It's by far not a deal breaker. Not at all. MM is an amazing game but I hate it when they alter anything for whatever their reasons might be. Because you're basically wrong when you just want the original classic experience portable. And that's a shame. In my opinion that's what remakes are for. There, they can alter whatever they want like in Final Fantasy VII because it's re-made. But remastered or just ported should stay away from ANY alterations OR offer an option in the menus.
We have to agree to disagree then, I did not see a downgrade in difficulty and if there was it was not noticeable for me. I was also disappointing about ice arrows and swimming, specially the swimming, because I loved it, but I see the reason behind it and I don't think it was as an insane decision as some think.
But there are some things I need to address:
The original lets you save wherever too. In fact the remake doesn't let you, it only uses statues. This is neither easier nor more difficult, it's different. I personally prefer it because in the original I never used the owls, I always used the Song of Time, which meant I never saw the second and final day unless I really needed to for the quest at hand and I had to stay waiting idle for minutes doing nothing. The whole save system was obviously a hardware limitation, the original japanese version didn't even had owls. This is again confusing frustration and obtuse design out of hardware limitation as "difficulty".
I didn't know they gave you hints for hearts as well, the hints to get you started on the sidequests are minimal in my opinion, and again, you can just ignore the bombers, it's not like they stop you from moving.
I never say that, the original is not heavily flawed, but its not flawless, most of it comes from hardware limitations though.
I felt the elegy of emptiness was actually faster this time, but I have to check out to be sure about it.
I think the art is pretty much ok given the tone, this is a game that makes you run in cute bunny ears for christ sake.
Making things convenient? the nerve of these people.
But there are some things I need to address:
The original lets you save wherever too. In fact the remake doesn't let you, it only uses statues. This is neither easier nor more difficult, it's different. I personally prefer it because in the original I never used the owls, I always used the Song of Time, which meant I never saw the second and final day unless I really needed to for the quest at hand and I had to stay waiting idle for minutes doing nothing. The whole save system was obviously a hardware limitation, the original japanese version didn't even had owls. This is again confusing frustration and obtuse design out of hardware limitation as "difficulty".
I didn't know they gave you hints for hearts as well, the hints to get you started on the sidequests are minimal in my opinion, and again, you can just ignore the bombers, it's not like they stop you from moving.
I never say that, the original is not heavily flawed, but its not flawless, most of it comes from hardware limitations though.
I felt the elegy of emptiness was actually faster this time, but I have to check out to be sure about it.
I think the art is pretty much ok given the tone, this is a game that makes you run in cute bunny ears for christ sake.
Making things convenient? the nerve of these people.
You could save any time you wanted... at the cost of losing all of your current progress. It's not the same thing. You had to choose when to save, and you had to make sure everything you needed to have done was finished and that all of your rupees were deposited. The only thing "harder" about the new system is that you have to warp to a statue to save instead of playing the song of time, which is a minuscule extra step.
I don't understand how you can possibly come to the conclusion that the save system was a technical limitation. The US version let you save everything- all of the same progress this new version does- using an owl statue. So... what was limited? It's the exact same save system as now, the only difference being that the game was programmed to erase your save after it was loaded. There was nothing about the hardware restricting the save system, they deliberately programmed it to work that way when they added the owl saves because they didn't want to disrupt the original song of time save system.
If they had really wanted the new save system from the start, they simply would have just never programmed the game to delete your owl statue saves. Done. The new system was designed for handheld play, which is honestly a good idea. The game needed a system like this to be portable. But it does make things easier on the player, and eliminating the original song of time method was an unnecessary mistake.
I know that they specifically tell you about the colored statues around Termina and how they like to have music played, which is pretty much saying "go here and do this." There are other hints that give away just a little too much, and sure you can ignore them, but they make it damned hard to do. When doing quests in an area of town that they're in it's pretty obnoxious, since they'll be there fidgeting right in your face during the cutscenes. Kamaro's mask, for instance. I had a bomber just standing right in the way of the dancers the whole time... It's a little over the top.
You can skip just a slight amount of the statue creation cutscene at the very end, but you still have to play the song each time and watch the encore performance. WWHD allowed you to skip encore performances altogether after the song was played once. That's the minimum that should have happened here, although they really should have given you a fast shortcut to create clones after playing the song once. Maybe a touchscreen button for that purpose. This would have been equivalent to solving the iron boots problem from OoT3D.
They also could have put the main masks on the D-pad, which had 3 unused buttons. It was a perfect fit. Or they could have opened up the extra shoulder buttons on the N3DS for more inventory, which also would have been a godsend for the gorge climbing section. Basically, they did next to nothing for the part of the game that needed streamlining the most. The fact that they added fishing but didn't fuck with this at all is frustrating to me.
Making things convenient? the nerve of these people.
I should clarify by saying that they often made things convenient at the expense of the original game mechanics. I like a lot of the conveniences when they don't actively negate something from the original. Defaulting to all your rupees depositing at the bank is great. I'm also OK with the shortcut exit out of the magic bean seller's cave, even though I think it should be sealed until you've gotten in there the hard way first. There are plenty of meaningless little improvements here and there, but they often mess up something that was much more important (in my opinion) than what they fix.
I'm talking about the owls, they work the same except that in the original you were forced to leave.
Memory. It's why the japanese version has three player slots, while the US version has only two with owl saving. Owl saving alone ate up a whole save file.
These games were smaller than some of the modern gifs people post in forums.
I had to grab some photos of the bombers invading the kamaro scene. I don't even know if it's possible to do this without him charging at you. This shit is actually hilarious:
It wasn't exactly technically limited then, was it? The same new save system was clearly possible. They just had to use two save files instead of one, which the US version already did. I know the tech was being pushed, but doesn't the US version prove they could have used this save system if they had really wanted? If this game had been on Wii U instead of a portable system, I'm not sure they would have taken this same route.
It's not across the board all over the game, but when it's there, it's there. Odolwa is a joke compared to the original. Seriously, he just politely stands there and dances until you deku bomb him. Keeta is also slowed to the point that his fight is just completely pointless. The Deku palace platforms being frozen is another clear example. If you go back to the original and play these segments in particular, you'll see the difference immediately.
I figured out why this change feels weird while playing tonight. Before, the banker was out of the way in a quiet street and seemed almost like some humble street urchin that you were befriending and trusting with your money. There was something endearing about it. Now, being in the clock tower with a fancier shop makes it seem more official and less personal. It's a bigger, busier feeling space and it loses the charm. I can live with this change, but I'd reverse it without hesitating. That spot in west clock town is just sad to look at now.
I've been pretty negative on the game, so I wanted to share some of the things I love about it. The borders of Termina have been replaced by much more organic woods and foliage, which looks much better than the old ugly 2D walls. The new foliage in general looks amazing:
I also think Snowhead looks remarkably better. There's an atmospheric haze that conveys cold and snow much more authentically than the original.
The new moon may be goofier at times, but it has its moments:
Give me these visuals and gyro controls with the original gameplay and I'll die happy. Or at the very least, stop complaining about this remake.
It wasn't exactly technically limited then, was it? The same new save system was clearly possible. They just had to use two save files instead of one, which the US version already did. I know the tech was being pushed, but doesn't the US version prove they could have used this save system if they had really wanted? If this game had been on Wii U instead of a portable system, I'm not sure they would have taken this same route.
It's not across the board all over the game, but when it's there, it's there. Odolwa is a joke compared to the original. Seriously, he just politely stands there and dances until you deku bomb him. Keeta is also slowed to the point that his fight is just completely pointless. The Deku palace platforms being frozen is another clear example. If you go back to the original and play these segments in particular, you'll see the difference immediately.
I figured out why this change feels weird while playing tonight. Before, the banker was out of the way in a quiet street and seemed almost like some humble street urchin that you were befriending and trusting with your money. There was something endearing about it. Now, being in the clock tower with a fancier shop makes it seem more official and less personal. It's a bigger, busier feeling space and it loses the charm. I can live with this change, but I'd reverse it without hesitating. That spot in west clock town is just sad to look at now.
I've been pretty negative on the game, so I wanted to share some of the things I love about it. The borders of Termina have been replaced by much more organic woods and foliage, which looks much better than the old ugly 2D walls. The new foliage in general looks amazing:
I also think Snowhead looks remarkably better. There's an atmospheric haze that conveys cold and snow much more authentically than the original.
The new moon may be goofier at times, but it has its moments:
Give me these visuals and gyro controls with the original gameplay and I'll die happy. Or at the very least, stop complaining about this remake.
No Zelda ever has been released with just one game slot, having several files is important to them. I doubt a Wii U version would have used anything different than what MM3D does. The 3DS obviously has no such limits, so what we are getting is what they think is the best save system.
And Majora's Mask wouldn't have had to either:
You can have two owl saves active at once. There's absolutely nothing keeping this game from using the new save system other than the code to delete your saves after loading... your argument that the save files were the reason Nintendo did not do this originally doesn't hold water since the US version had two save files anyway; obviously, they were willing to accept two files.
Again, they had the same basic save system that's in use now active in the US version- they went out of their way to add the code to delete your saves and return to the menu. Had they not done that, the new save system would have been in the original Majora's Mask. They went out of their way to limit it; obviously, this was a deliberate choice.
The thing about the save system is that the original suited the gameplay better. It was inflexible, maybe even unreasonable, to expect players to always do everything in one sitting, but it is the definitive way to play. You start with a clean session, see the "dawn of the first day" message, and plan the tasks you want to do for this cycle. Then, after everything is done, you lock in all your progress at once. It was stressful, but it was also extremely rewarding. One of my favorite parts of the game was always that feeling of gratification you got when playing the song of time after finishing a lot of quests in one cycle.
It kept things clear and orderly; you never had to drop into the middle of a cycle and wonder which quests you were in the middle of. When you loaded up the game, you always had a clean cycle to start with. When you finished, every loose end was tied up; your next session would be a total renewal of the cycle. It just makes a lot more sense to play that way. With the new system, you have a bunch of half-finished tasks greeting you when you load up, which is less exciting than starting with a new cycle where you can do whatever you feel like at that moment.
I tried to approximate the old system by saving after the song of time or just before it, but it's not quite the same without loading the game to see that splash screen and starting right into a brand new cycle. This is another one of those things that they easily could have avoided by just keeping the old save system as an option. I don't care if they add the new system. I have no problem with it at all, it obviously has made a lot of people happier with the game. Just don't wipe the old one out and leave fans without the choice of playing the game the way it was originally intended.
Solid SOAP
Member
They really should've just kept the original version in with improved graphics as an option from the new version. That couldn't have been to hard, right? Like how when you boot up OoT 3D you're greeted with a splash screen that asks if you want to play the regular quest or master quest, they could've done something aimilar. The tweaks are all pretty minimal, it wouldn't have been a big deal.
And Majora's Mask wouldn't have had to either:
You can have two owl saves active at once. There's absolutely nothing keeping this game from using the new save system other than the code to delete your saves after loading... your argument that the save files were the reason Nintendo did not do this originally doesn't hold water since the US version had two save files anyway; obviously, they were willing to accept two files.
Again, they had the same basic save system that's in use now active in the US version- they went out of their way to add the code to delete your saves and return to the menu. Had they not done that, the new save system would have been in the original Majora's Mask. They went out of their way to limit it; obviously, this was a deliberate choice.
The thing about the save system is that the original suited the gameplay better. It was inflexible, maybe even unreasonable, to expect players to always do everything in one sitting, but it is the definitive way to play. You start with a clean session, see the "dawn of the first day" message, and plan the tasks you want to do for this cycle. Then, after everything is done, you lock in all your progress at once. It was stressful, but it was also extremely rewarding. One of my favorite parts of the game was always that feeling of gratification you got when playing the song of time after finishing a lot of quests in one cycle.
It kept things clear and orderly; you never had to drop into the middle of a cycle and wonder which quests you were in the middle of. When you loaded up the game, you always had a clean cycle to start with. When you finished, every loose end was tied up; your next session would be a total renewal of the cycle. It just makes a lot more sense to play that way. With the new system, you have a bunch of half-finished tasks greeting you when you load up, which is less exciting than starting with a new cycle where you can do whatever you feel like at that moment.
I tried to approximate the old system by saving after the song of time or just before it, but it's not quite the same without loading the game to see that splash screen and starting right into a brand new cycle. This is another one of those things that they easily could have avoided by just keeping the old save system as an option. I don't care if they add the new system. I have no problem with it at all, it obviously has made a lot of people happier with the game. Just don't wipe the old one out and leave fans without the choice of playing the game the way it was originally intended.
You are making assumptions based on nothing. Again, if the temporary save was always intended, why does MM3D has a different system? If anything temporary saves fit it even more.
And something tells me you don't now much about how memory works, if you think they really added purposefully "code" to "delete" the owl save I don't know what to tell you.
Because it's a portable game and the original system would have been incredibly inconvenient for handheld play, not to mention Nintendo baby-proofs everything they make now (look at the rest of the game- they added tutorial videos, extra bomber hints, a much more generous notebook). And it's not based on "nothing," you can see for yourself right there in the image I posted that you could have two files with all of your play data saved at once. I'd say that's a pretty solid base for an argument.
You're saying that data saved onto the game cart had to be deleted out of necessity because it was somehow competing with the game data being loaded into the system's RAM? I'm not trying to be a dick here, but you'll have to explain that to me. At what point does data saved on the cart itself come into competition with the system's resources? I'm no N64 expert, but I can only see that happening if the system wrote data to the cart itself during gameplay- in the space allotted for save files- in addition to the system RAM. I don't see any way else external data resting on the cart would have to be deleted for the game to work. Also, the idea that developers would deliberately code such a thing is hardly outlandish. Should I assume the exact same quick saving system in NSMBU was also due to memory limitations?
Even if the developers were somehow forced into the original system, I like it better. I don't care if you prefer the new system; my argument is that players who liked the game as it was should have been considered as well. Starfox 64 3D had a "3DS" and "64" mode so that players could have it either way. This game desperately needed the same thing.
EDIT:
WHHHYYY
Fucking whyyyyyyyyy
Fuck this divot. This is definitely the most bizarre change of all. This fairy just required you to jump from the pillar in the original. It wasn't necessarily the hardest to get in the game, especially if you used the bunny hood, but it was the biggest pain in the ass because you had to climb all the way back up the tower to finish the dungeon. At some point, in the midst of making the game faster and easier everywhere possible, someone decided "this isn't tedious enough" and made this impossible to get without wasting a solid minute floating down from the very top of the temple.
I'm seriously baffled. I at least see where they were going with the zora and save system changes. This? ....
Nope, it was very barebones, the game did a lot with the limits the N64 had, but it showed. Some complained the Notebook in MM3D now notifies your entries like if it was some sort of sacrilege when such thing in no way spoils the experience.
I'm a big OG MM fanboy but you just have to admit the notebook is vastly improved, it seems that die hard fans confuse a game being obtuse or archaic, most of the times due to technology, with "difficulty". The new notebook does now what it meant to do back then.
Thank you. That was my recollection of it as well and I felt the updated Notebook was a vast improvement that allowed thoughtful knowledge about where people will be without being too handhold-y (to me, at least, I know opinions very much differ on that) and working well as a general guide of who you've met and what they do. I felt like the original game you would have had to make detailed out-of-game notes to complete the Notebook.