Making a remake is no easy task, to modernize every aspect of a video game to current times can be complicated, many factors can affect the existence of said remake, for example, if it is the right time to make a remake in the first place. I think there are two kind of people who enjoy remakes, the first kind wanting the remake to be completely faithful, and the second kind, who thinks that the remake should have changes that freshen up the experience.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a peculiar video game, it´s considered the darkest game of the franchise since it handles issues that can hurt the sensitivity of the player. At the beginning, The Legend of Zelda Majora´s Mask wasn´t well received by both users and critics, it remained in the shadow of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, however, the passing of time has given Majora's Mask its deserved place. A remake was released many years ago, it gave a lot to talk about due to its changes compared to the original game.
My first contact with the remake was nice, because indeed the remake has a facelift that actually suits it, not only looks graphically nice for a 3DS game, the artistic style shines as well and certain details make these aspects to stand out, the water and the vegetation are looking good, especially vegetation, to give an example, in Milk Road there are these trees in the area, in the original Nintendo 64 game they are simple textures of low quality, in the remake, you can´t interact with said trees because they are more of a stage decoration but I have to say that they are not just polygons of bad quality, they look like real trees and I loved that.
In the remake, there are different changes that kind of upgrade the experience regarding the original game, for example, there is the double time song, this also exists in the original version, but you were restricted to moving the time forward one day or one night only, there are many moments in the game that you have to wait for at a certain hour and you have nothing special to do, just waiting, this is fixed, because you can advance to the hour you want in the day, which is very useful and solves the problem of dead times where there was nothing to do, of course, this upgrades the experience, but to be honest, it breaks the immersion a little bit, the fact that Link can advance the time at any hour he wants seems a little broken to me.
On the other hand, you can save the game through the owl statues, something impossible in the original game, since the only way to save the game was to travel back in time, which meant losing all your progress. Now, it is true that in the original game these statues are usable, but they are more of an attempt of save state, they don´t save the game, it´s just way to resume the session if you want to quit the game and once you choose the file, that ¨save¨ is deleted.
It´s true that upgrades the experience, but as I said before, it breaks the immersion. In the original game, it was exhausting to save the game only traveling in time and losing everything, so you had to manage your time very well and what you were going to do, I mean, you had to do a lot of management, there was this feeling of urgency every time, it was something really cool for the atmosphere of the game, you are in the end of the world, but that just breaks because of the remake.
A change that was entirely positive for me is the inventory management, in the original game you only have 3 slots for the items, the slots are increased on the remake, so you won't have to press the pause menu every five seconds to use a certain item, the camera item has its own slot, so it's actually quite useful.
The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask 3D presents an interesting dilemma regarding the creation of remakes, if you look closely, the positive changes I mentioned have their negative counterpart, despite the fact that, indeed, these changes upgrade the experience, it´s also true that they break the immersion and atmosphere to some extent, so... is it really good to modernize the experience if it compromises such important aspects as atmosphere or immersion? In the same way, is it worth breaking the atmosphere and immersion of the game if it helps to upgrade the gameplay of the game?
It´s a complicated question, as for me, I am sure that in the original game these aspects existed because of the limitations of the time, and even so, I consider that was the charm of the game, it´s for this kind of detail that I still prefer the original game, it will sound weird but Majora's Mask 3D is not exactly a claimed remake because of these changes that I just mentioned, in addition to some others.
The bosses in Majora's Mask 3D have changes regarding the original, they all have a certain gimmick of looking for an evil eye on them and hitting that eye until you kill the boss, this design broke one of my favorite bosses in the game, which is Odolwa. The boss fight agains´t Odolwa in the original game is fantastic, it's a one-on-one duel of swords, it's an extremely frantic fight, and if you don't know the boss and you're in poor health, it can give you problems, because Odolwa doesn't have a pattern, it´s a potpourri of attacks which you must know how to deal, unfortunately, in the remake this boss fight is not like that, it´s based on becoming a Deku and throwing an item that stuns him, we must shoot him in his evil eye, they basically ruined the whole boss fight.
I think I'm not wrong when I say that moving Link Zora through the water in the original game was a lot of fun, just swimming at full speed through the sea, however, the remake changes this and I don't know why, now Link Zora swims slower, as if he was a normal person and I still don´t understand this design decision, you can swim as if it was the original game but for that you need magic, every time you want to swim at high speed, you must use magic and hold a button, and man, that sucks.
The Bombers' notebook is something that already exists from the original game, it's a pretty useful notebook that records the important NPCs you talk to, those who give you side quests, hours and so on, it´s better implemented on the remake and I used it from time to time, when in the original game I never used it at all, but something I didn't like was that every time you did something significant, a sidequest, talk to an important character, etc, the game interrumps the action to show you the bombers´notebook, I know it sounds stupid but it's really annoying because it happens every single time, it's not just one time.
At the end of the day, I don´t consider The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D to be a bad remake, it´s pretty decent and cool I think, but I still preffer the original game, these changes are not for me, I understand why and I like new people can play the game in a better way, but nope, not my thing, don´t get me wrong, I had a blast playing the remake, but if you ask me, the original is better, that´s it.
All of the screenshots were taken by me