The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (3DS) Review

Note: I’m not going to be worrying about avoiding spoilers in this review; I won’t be laying the whole game out in front of you, but I will be going into detail about things like boss fights and certain sidequests, so if you want to avoid that kind of thing, be warned.

                The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D is a misguided remake of a brilliant video game. While the core experience is still something truly special, this new “3D” version has gotten what some might call the “George Lucas” treatment. From Link’s first steps in the Lost Woods and onward throughout the entire experience until the game’s surreal and memorable conclusion, MM3D is riddled with changes, alterations, and adjustments from the original Nintendo 64 classic, some of which nicely streamline the experience, while most, unfortunately, bog down the experience. These changes include several head-scratching alterations to how the game plays, overhauls of every boss battle, and several new hand-holding elements that damage the subtle design of the original and often did a nice job of breaking my immersion throughout my playthrough. What resulted was a very mixed experience for me: the essential Majora’s Mask experience is still buried in this remake underneath all the “enhancements” (big sarcastic airquotes here) and this game still emotionally moved me just as the original Majora’s Mask always has, but for every ten steps of supreme immersion and enjoyment I had, there’d be another two or three that made me shake my head and wish I was just playing the original game.

                If I was going to sit here and lay out everything that makes Majora’s Mask such a triumph and address my extensive feelings on the many changes in this remake, this review would end up being twice as long as my Paper Mario: Sticker Star review, and no one wants that. Instead, I’ll save my extended thoughts on the heart of Majora’s Mask for another time or another several times (probably another several times). Thus, most of this review is going to focus on the changes and alterations from the original. But before getting into that, I do want to say a few words about the core experience here, as I’d be remiss if I did not. By and large, MM3D is still Majora’s Mask. It has a new coat of paint (with a lot of cracks) but this experience still thrilled me, moved me to near tears, and engrossed me just as it always has. Every time I play Majora’s Mask, I get something different out of the experience. This time, the loneliness of Link’s quest really sunk in…at least at first. Getting to know a bunch of interesting characters, helping them, helping the world at large, and then having to undo all of it so those people not only have no idea who I am anymore, but are also once again faced with the same hardships is heartbreaking. But as my adventure wore on, and more and more of the complete picture of the land of Termina and its troubled people became clear to me, it began to feel like home and its citizens inevitably began to feel like family, just as always. Even though they often didn’t know me very well, I knew them intimately. So, after so many cycles of the same three days, by the time I raced up those clock tower stairs to try to finally put an end to all the madness, I cared about saving this world like it was my own home, just like I always do. The world in Majora’s Mask, despite being built fifteen years ago in about a single year on primitive hardware, and despite having numerous nonsensical elements, feels more real than any other world in any other video game I’ve ever played. The genius of the three-day system, the falling moon scenario, and all the events that make up the adventure is astounding; it’s a wonder not only how the original developers were able to achieve what they did in such a short time so long ago, but also that no one has really done anything like it since. But beyond this, it’s all the details that make MM so incredible: an extra line of dialogue from a simple shopkeeper that addresses the state of the world, countless hidden reactions based on the many masks in the game, a random bird that drops rupees if you play music for it, countless mysteries and strange scenarios, and some of the most emotional moments in any video game I’ve ever played coming from completely optional, hidden conversations or even just from a single line of dialogue. All this makes Majora’s Mask not only a cut above most other Zelda games for me, but most other adventure games in general. Despite thoroughly playing through the original game multiple times over the years, I’m still discovering moments I don’t think I’ve ever seen or experienced before, and I know there are others still. Majora’s Mask is a game of many faces (pun fully intended) and many experiences, and no two people’s will be quite the same. MM might be one of the most tense, nerve-wracking games I’ve ever played, but it’s also one of the chillest: just hanging out and getting to know NPCs, watching the rain fall at Romani Ranch or a fireplace crackle in the Stock Pot Inn. It’s an experience that shifts and surprises from moment to moment and all of it is special. But that’s the core experience. All of that applies to the original as well as this remake. Majora’s Mask 3D, however, wears a new mask over all of that.

                Let’s get the most apparent change out of the way first: obviously the title has received a visual overhaul and for the most part, it looks quite nice. The most notable aspect of the cosmetic change is how many new little details were added to the world at large, not only in terms of textures and models, but in regards to physical architecture and new objects and other elements brought into Termina. New posters, flyers, and newspaper clippings posted around Clock Town add flavor to the world and make a lot more sense in a big town in the midst of carnival season than these elements did in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. Interesting new landmarks have been added everywhere: a miniature model of Clock Town in the Mayor’s office, an ostentatious painting of a young Mayor Dotour and Madame Aroma hanging above the front desk of said office, new statues and other artifacts in the dungeons, and just overall a world full of even more detail and small touches that make everything feel lived in and alive. My favorite of all of these new touches though has to be the interesting family pictographs that can be seen in Anju’s grandmother’s room and in the Romani Sisters’ bedroom. These pictures are an excellent and smart detail that fleshes out a world I already know so intimately even more, and I love seeing these new kinds of details in a remake like this.

New details like these pictures in the Stock Pot Inn are among MM3D's best new contributions

Obviously, the game looks better in a “technical sense”: better textures, smoother models and animations, higher framerate and so on (and as in OoT3D, the 3D effect is pretty great too), and some aspects really benefit from the new visuals, such as the sky (not sure how I feel about the new green-tinged purple sky on the third day though, which reminds me of an Easter egg or something), but that’s not the whole story. On such a small screen, often the experience can look a little fuzzy and jaggy, which is especially noticeable when talking to NPCs. Also there seems to be some truly unfortunate camera work sometimes, such as trying to talk to an NPC only to have the camera decide to take up position behind a giant plant, blocking the player’s view (this kind of thing is especially irritating with the 3D turned up). In addition, many of the character animations, while mostly smoother-looking, often just don’t feel as special as the original’s, either because they are too quick or not as emphasized as they originally were. These are nitpicks, but much more questionable are the artistic changes made in this remake. Everything is a little too bright and the lighting seems to be a lot flatter and less atmospheric than in the original. This is especially noticeable inside dungeons, during nighttime, and also anytime when Link is near torchlight, which flickers and dances about the environment in a more impactful way in the original. There are subtle artistic differences all over the place, but most notable of all is the change to perhaps the most important visual motif in the game: the moon. The moon’s expression in the remake is basically straight-up maniacal, as opposed to the more subtle, ambiguous expression of the original moon (which looks more sad and disturbed than particularly “evil” or “angry” to me, but it was open to interpretation really). This new face can be quite frightening, especially on the final day when it’s leering directly above Link, but it can also be seen as too comically over the top, depending on how you look at it. At least one scene that loses part of its value in the remake due to the moon’s revamped design is when the “Moon’s Tear” falls from its eye; in the original, the moon looked like it could indeed be crying or was in pain (which had interesting implications), while in the remake the scene doesn’t even make sense anymore really. I think that the moon’s expression being one of sadness, or perhaps of regret or remorse, suits the world and its events much better, but no matter how you interpreted the original moon’s expression, its demented ambiguity enhanced the subtle, strange narrative and surreal atmosphere of the game. It's worth noting that the art in the remake still overall looks very good, there are just a number of subtleties that make me mainly prefer the art in the original. As one final note about the retouched visuals and art, some very interesting visual details present in the original game were actually completely removed from this new version for some reason; I think all the Zelda theorists out there will know exactly what I’m referring to here.

MM3D mostly looks great, though the art has taken some hits

                It’s difficult to know where to start with the rest of the changes in the game, so I suppose I’ll start at the beginning, with the very first change I encountered, one that made me quite literally bury my face in my palm. Here I was, watching the beautiful and haunting opening scene of Link solemnly riding Epona through the Lost Woods, having a good time and thinking about how this remake was perhaps a good idea after all, and then, BAM! Big dumb tutorial sign. Right in the middle of the path. “You may already know this…”, the sign read, and then proceeded to tell me the basic controls of the game for the small price of shattering my immersion. This was not a good omen for the changes to come. This new trend of shoehorning out-of-place elements into the experience that sacrifice immersion for feeding the player information in an effort to hold their hand is something I encountered throughout my time with MM3D, and all of it was to the detriment of the experience. Another example is some new text added to the “bad ending” of the game if you let the moon fall. Effective, stark minimalism is a strength of the original MM that has been repeatedly stomped on in the remake. My 3D journey through Termina was repeatedly interrupted by too much extraneous information, and this is a perfect lead-in to the next big change I want to discuss: the new Bombers’ Notebook.

                In the original, the Bombers’ Notebook was simply a way of keeping track of the particular NPCs in the game that had detailed schedules across the three days. The notebook has been completely overhauled in the remake, however, to now be a record of just about every single sidequest and hidden event in the game, with mixed results. On the one hand, I like how the notebook acts as a comprehensive adventure log to refer to and a way to look back on and keep track of your progress in the game. It also feels really satisfying when an entry in the notebook is “stamped” after you fully complete a certain character’s quest-line. The notebook itself is set up nicely into two separate sections, one being an NPC schedule that is nearly identical to the original notebook (except it now removes a few NPCs that were there in the original and adds a handful of new ones), and the other being a list of quests that are separated into “ongoing”, “rumored”, and “completed” in an easy to follow manner. In a game with such a large amount of things to do and discover, where it all risks being overwhelming, it’s nice to be able to concisely keep track of everything. There’s also a clever new “alarm” feature, where you can have your fairy companion, Tatl, remind you that you have something important to do at a certain time.

On the other hand, the notebook is very intrusive on several levels. It’s annoying how the experience is interrupted so often for something to be added to the notebook and this process always seems to take way longer than it should. Instead of wrenching control away from the player to sluggishly record the information I just heard in the notebook, perhaps this remake could have taken a page from the smartly-designed mega-JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles (and hey even the original Majora’s Mask, why not?) and instead just had a subtle notification at the bottom of the screen and perhaps only given the full “notebook screen” treatment when first starting a quest and ending one. On that note, I’d also appreciate it if that ending notebook update came after I received the reward for a quest instead of before I get that piece of heart, mask, or whatever else. Oh, I got the “Stone Mask” as a reward? Well, gee whiz, magical notebook, thanks for spoiling the surprise. This immersion-hampering notebook is especially heinous after finally reuniting Anju and Kafei, when immediately after the big scene the game jarringly goes to the notebook screen to slowly update things with some unnecessary text before going back to the game, which really took me out of the experience; I was quite literally almost in tears before becoming incredibly annoyed. I like that satisfying stamp at the end of a quest, but it’s not worth this slow, intrusive process.

The Bombers' Notebook is an entirely different beast in the remake

The gang of Bomber kids around Clock Town are given a bit more usefulness as they now give the player hints for rumored quests, but these hints range from subtle enough to not bother me too much to giving away way too much information. Sometimes the kids themselves give a vague hint, and your seemingly magic, sentient notebook fills in the rest, telling you a specific location to go to. I hate this disconnect; it should be as though Link is writing the information in the notebook himself, or at least the notebook should only record information that Link actually encounters. Instead, the magic notebook (with its new wordy descriptions that sometimes seem out of tone with the rest of the game) just makes the experience feel more artificial. Sometimes the Bombers’ hints are just way too obvious and ruin the whole purpose of wearing certain masks (like Kafei’s Mask and the Mask of Truth) to discover hints on one’s own.

In a nutshell, instead of being a helpful supplemental tool, the notebook now pushes the quests and hidden things in the game down the player’s throat, which goes a long way in diminishing the magic. It’s more exciting and interesting when I feel like I’ve found something really neat on my own that other players may have never discovered, like say following the town Business Scrub down into an underground cavern, and being rewarded for my discovery, than witnessing the same event and having the game make a big deal out of it and making it seem like a major part of the game that every player will likely be directed to. Despite the positive elements of the new, more detailed notebook, its intrusive nature makes me much prefer the more subtle record-keeping of the original notebook combined with other subtle hints already present in the fabric of the original game. These original hints are still present in the remake; the difference is that the player has to work for these by exploring and talking to NPCs and observing their routines, and by finding the Mask of Truth and using it to gather information from gossip stones. It feels better to piece everything together and make discoveries this way, instead of being led by the nose and advised that ‘you’d better do all this extra stuff because the developers worked really hard on it’. Unfortunately, with the new Bombers’ Notebook’s intrusions being completely mandatory and with the way the Bombers annoyingly rush towards Link to feed him hints whenever the player happens to go near them, the remake makes it very difficult to play the game by solely relying on the older, subtler method of hinting. And this is all on top of the returning, hint-giving “Sheikah Stone” that was first introduced in Ocarina of Time 3D (which is luckily very easy to ignore in MM3D and tucked away in a place that many players will likely never visit more than once during their quest; hopefully most players will just forget about the stupid thing).

Not too much information, I hope

The new handholding elements are not that surprising to me given Nintendo’s modern game design credo; what is surprising to me though is how much of the core gameplay was messed around with. A huge part of the Majora’s Mask experience is obviously the masks, and more specifically the three transformation masks that allow Link to turn into a Deku Scrub, Goron, and Zora. Alterations have been made to the way all of these forms play, which range from “ok, that’s pretty cool” to “oh, Goddesses, what did they do to the amazing swimming mechanics???” Ahem. The new Deku Link is pretty much an even split in terms of bad and good: it controls a lot more sluggishly than in the original and oddly stutters when it starts to walk which really screwed me up when hopping across the water, and its spin attack seems to have less momentum and feels less fluid and fun to use. However, firing bubbles with the Deku is much easier thanks to a new crosshair and the game’s gyro controls (which overall work nice; I just wish they weren’t almost mandatory in some sections since aiming with the circle pad on its own is so dang sluggish, much slower than in the original). There is also a new option to look directly beneath Link when floating with the Deku, complete with a target that lets the player know exactly where they’ll land, which is a very helpful addition. Goron Link generally feels better to walk around with and his attacking prowess has been greatly improved, now with much faster and more effective punches. I’m not as much of a fan, however, of how rolling around with Goron Link now requires one tap of the ‘A’ button to get into ball form and another tap to get out. I presume this was changed so players don’t have to worry about holding down the ‘A’ button when rolling anymore, but personally it really tripped me up for a good while before I finally got used to it, and even then I still prefer the much quicker and more instant feeling the original control setup had. But the real topic of conversation here is the doozy they did on Zora Link.

If you’ve played the original Majora’s Mask, I’m guessing you probably had fun swimming around as Zora Link, speeding through the water, doing that dolphin jump, etc. I’m making an assumption here, I know, but in truth I’ve only ever heard praise for the swimming mechanics in the original; in fact, the original Majora’s Mask probably has my favorite swimming mechanics in any video game ever. So of course, the remake’s developers decided to “fix” this too (and by fix, I of course mean “break”). In the remake, the default swim speed for Zora Link is now much slower (and similar to the Zora Armor in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) and the quicker speed of the original (or something close to it) has been quite negligently tied to the magic meter and combined with the magic shield attack which was present in the original (with both now being activated simultaneously by holding down the ‘R’ trigger). Once you very rapidly deplete your magic meter, no more having fun as Zora Link, I’m afraid. And if you don’t have the magic meter upgrade? You’re in for a very slow journey around the Great Bay. Now, before I get into what is so wrong with this change, I will say that I don’t mind having a new moderate swim speed in-between the really slow “doggy paddle” and the fast speed. It did come in handy when I wanted to navigate some tight underwater corridors in the game, and also when I just wanted to take things at a measured pace and look around, and didn’t feel like walking on the bottom. This moderate speed certainly isn’t worth sacrificing an unlimited fast speed, however, and if they were going to incorporate this new slower speed, there are definitely smarter ways they could have gone about it. How about simply requiring the player to hold down a separate button that is unused while swimming to swim more slowly? Or maybe players could tap ‘A’ once to go slow and hold it down to go fast (which might still be a little cumbersome, but would at least be better)? Or at the very least, still allow the player to swim fast when their magic is depleted (instead of just giving them a pathetic little momentary dash) and just take away the magic shield (which, by the way, would make a lot more sense). Besides souring one of the funnest aspects of the original MM gameplay-wise, what really grinds my gears about this change is how much it just doesn’t fit with the overall design of the game (this is another unfortunate trend in this remake that I’ll also talk more about when I get to the boss changes). The Great Bay region is full of huge, open underwater areas designed around the ability to swim fast as a Zora (with the ability to walk on the bottom being helpful for the few tighter underwater areas). The Pinnacle Rock area in particular is such a chore now because it involves navigating a massive underwater pit with this new clunky, stifled swimming mechanic. It is so annoying swimming fast in short spurts in order to conserve my magic shield, which comes in handy when defeating the gigantic sea snakes in this area. Also, might I remind you that conserving time is hugely important in Majora’s Mask? And how making a slow swimming speed the default and a fast swimming speed limited in this game makes absolutely zero sense and is incredibly frustrating? I really hate to rip off the “Angry Video Game Nerd” here (plenty have done that already), but seriously, what were they thinking? I should also mention that even when going fast, Zora Link just isn’t as fun or as easy to control with the 3DS’s circle pad as an analog stick, and rolling Goron Link can also be a pain in the ass in this regard as well (especially during the Goron moon dungeon at the end of the game).

What were they thinking?!

While on the subject of the aquatic portion of Majora’s Mask, I also need to bring up the way this remake ruins the fun of one of the neatest items in the game (I mean, besides the Zora Mask, of course): the ice arrows. The original Majora’s Mask took the ice arrows, a relatively useless (not to mention completely optional) item in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and put a clever spin on them that led to not only some neat little puzzles in the Great Bay Temple but just a fun new toy to play around with. Basically, in the original game, you can fire the ice arrows at almost any body of water to freeze it and create ice platforms to hop around on. As long as you have the arrows and the magic, you can do this as much as you want. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Well, it was. Apparently, the developers of this remake just really didn’t seem to want the player to have too much freedom or fun because they decided to “fix” this element too. Now, instead of being able to freeze the water and make platforms anywhere, specific, nonsensical “sparkle spots” (I can’t think of any other way to describe them) in the water are the only places you can create ice platforms (although bizarrely enough, you can actually make platforms in the water anywhere in the Great Bay Temple boss, Gyorg’s chamber; but this one room is the only exception). Oh, and these spots only appear in a handful of rooms in the Great Bay Temple and nowhere else. In the original game, certain monsters could also be frozen to create stepping blocks of ice, and yup, those monsters now sparkle too, making everything just a bit too obvious (to understate it). When the players gets the ice arrows in MM3D, the game tells them that they can fire the arrows at sparkling things to freeze them. This makes the following puzzle, where one needs to freeze an octorok to reach a high platform, completely rote now. This makes all of the puzzles surrounding the ice arrows completely rote now. The ice arrows aren’t a fun item to play around with in the remake: they’re a banal key used to unlock progress. What was once a cool puzzle element in the original Great Bay Temple is now just mindless target-shooting. Suffice it to say, the fun of the ice arrows in the original game is all about freedom and experimentation. The remake’s developers completely missed the point here and it’s just another way this remake is overall less enjoyable to play. I think the worst thing about this change is that whereas I can maybe see some reasoning behind slower Zora swimming being “easier to control” (which, again, doesn’t excuse the poor implementation of that concept), I can’t think of any logical reasoning behind the ice arrow change, besides just over-simplifying things. But was the ability to create ice platforms anywhere really just too much overwhelming power for players? Did the people testing the remake really just get overwhelmed with confusion when they realized they had this kind of mind-blowing freedom? I mean, really? Was it really that complicated?

I’ve brought it up a few times already, but one of the bigger changes in this remake comes in the form of drastic alterations made to every boss fight (barring the final one, though even that one may have been altered a bit by way of having less attacks). All of the bosses look relatively the same and while Link’s battles with them share elements in common with the fights from the original game, each one has been greatly shaken up, some more drastically than others. I’ve already seen online that these new boss battles are polarizing, with some people loving the changes, others hating them, and many others liking some changes and disliking others. For me personally, the new bosses are almost entirely a step down (surprising, I know). Something I love about the boss fights in the original Majora’s Mask, and why they stand out from other 3D Zelda games, is that they are all very energetic and fast-paced. All of the bosses have multiple ways of going about defeating them (which is something the remake does retain at least) and the majority of them don’t have giant obvious weak-points. They also aren’t quite the basic “stun them with the item, go in for the attack” formula (most of the bosses still somewhat fall into this, yes, but I just mean to say they aren’t quite as formulaic as in most other 3D Zelda titles). Well, Majora’s Mask 3D has something to say about that! The majority of the bosses not only now do fall into a very stale and repetitive formula, but also every single one (again, barring the final one) now has a giant eyeball weak-point that you will frequently be pelting with arrows, over and over and over again. Many of the bosses have also been dumbed down in terms of their number of attacks and ferocity. The first boss, Odolwa, for example, doesn't mess around in the original: he is a force of nature, dancing and chanting around the arena, slicing his gigantic sword in every direction, summoning swarms of bugs and moths, and even conjuring up rings of fire to entrap Link. In the remake, Odolwa just kind of…stands around, before clearly telegraphing all of his attacks (which he has less of). The only good part about the new Odolwa is that Deku Link is actually useful in the fight this time around. My favorite regular boss fight in the original game, Goht, is now an awkward, tedious affair in the remake thanks to Goron Link having to slow down to punch its eyeball or, even worse, requiring the player to occasionally (and in my experience, more often) remove the Goron Mask to slowly lob arrows at the eyeball. In the original game, if you are good enough, you can do the entire Goht fight without ever having to stop rolling as Goron Link. It's a blast in the original; it’s a chore in the remake.

 Shooting arrows at a giant eyeball in a Zelda game: how novel

While the first two regular bosses were certainly changed up, the latter two are basically entirely new battles, Twinmold especially. Gyorg the giant fish now has two very different phases, the first of which is a dull, toned-down version of the original fight. Here, the remake’s brighter and flatter lighting really works to the detriment of the experience and goes a long way in dulling the tense and foreboding atmosphere of the original fight; Gyorg itself is responsible for most of this decrease in tension though, as in the first phase it’s basically just a giant, stupid moving target for Link’s arrows. The second phase of the fight takes things completely underwater, which isn’t nearly as terrifying as it should be. The second phase is fun, certainly more interesting than the first half of the battle, but ultimately it all boils down to a new twist on the very stale rinse and repeat “bomb in the mouth” gig we’ve seen in countless, countless Zelda titles before. The Twinmold fight does its best to make up for my misgivings with the other fights by starting out fantastically with a Shadow of the Colossus-esque first phase against the first sandworm, after which a chest containing the Giant’s Mask appears in the middle of the arena. Link can then transform into a gigantic luchador, ready to take down the second, more aggressive worm and its freaky babies. Instead of being just a bigger version of standard Link, the Giant’s Mask now really made me feel like a giant as I stalked around the arena, lobbing fiery punches at the giant worm and throwing massive boulders at it. This is all enormous fun (HA!) and the battle as a whole is an awesome concept; the way it progresses and the variety it brings to the table feels like an adventure in itself and is exactly the kind of interesting and surprising boss battle I want to see more of in new Zelda games. Unfortunately, the second phase of this battle is harmed by two big problems: it’s unclear how to effectively damage the second worm at first and more detrimentally (and also partly consequentially), the fight drags on for way too long, both of which can lead to severe amounts of frustration. There isn’t much to the original Twinmold fight; the spectacle of the battle is more its appeal than anything really, but like the other original bosses, it’s fast-paced and fun. The new Twinmold battle perfectly exemplifies my overarching central issue with all the new boss fights (with the exception of Odolwa): the bosses have way too much health and just drag on and on and on for far too long, especially Gyorg and Twinmold. This, like many other elements in this remake, just isn’t an aspect that is smartly designed around an experience running on a time limit. The original game’s fast-paced bosses and faster gameplay elements (like Zora Link) are elegant in their execution and allow players to focus on getting as much done in a three-day cycle as possible. Refighting bosses (which is often required to complete all of the sidequests) in the original is also a fun way to test how fast I can defeat each boss; in the remake, it’s more of a chore. I want to be clear: I don’t universally prefer “fast-paced” boss fights, and actually in regards to the more traditional games in the series, I’d say sometimes Zelda bosses go down too quickly, but the pacing of the bosses in the original MM is on point and smartly designed around the core three-day mechanic of the game, whereas in MM3D, the bosses are plodding and unwieldy (and even in a non-timed Zelda game, they would still be tediously paced).

Before discussing a few of the tweaks in the game that I actually do like, I want to briefly touch on the new saving system in the remake. While being able to permanently save at any owl statue now (as well as numerous new additional save statues) is certainly more convenient and can alleviate some frustrating situations like losing progress due to the power going out, the new saving system takes away some tension from the experience because it allows players to create a safety net. My main issue with the new, more traditional saving though is that it can be exploited to avoid having to deal with failures and some truly heartbreaking moments, which I feel are important to the MM experience. For example: during my playthrough of MM3D, I failed to retrieve the Sun’s Mask during the Anju and Kafei quest, and leaving Kafei trapped in Sakon’s Hideout and seeing Anju waiting resolutely in her bedroom for someone who will never come, while the moon was mere moments away from crashing down, was downright devastating and left a big impact on me. But in MM3D, if I or another player had saved right before doing the Sun’s Mask section, I could just reload my last save and try again. Not only does this drain all the tension out of what is supposed to be a very stressful section and lessen the impact of failure, but some players will likely immediately reload their last save and won’t even bother thinking of visiting Anju and having an experience like the one I had, or letting the weight of their failure sink in, which in the end made finally reuniting the two lovers on a separate cycle feel so much sweeter for me. This is yet again another change that affects the immersion factor of Majora’s Mask for the sake of convenience and makes everything feel more artificial; in short, it reminds the player that they are playing a video game and that failure is of little consequence. This same notion can be applied to other quests as well, such as failing to save Romani from the aliens. These are just a few examples, but the new save system can be exploited in other ways as well that just overall dulls the importance of the three day mechanic. Obviously, traditional save systems are not universally negative in video games, but Majora’s Mask is a special case, and such a system is harmful to the immersive nature of the experience. Personally, I played MM3D as I have always played the original and mainly only saved at the end of a play session, which for me was almost always equal to one three day cycle during this playthrough, and I also made it a personal rule that I’d never fall back on a previous save, even if I failed and had to redo something (I barely saved during the middle of a three day cycle anyway, only occasionally in case of unforeseen circumstances like the 3DS’s battery suddenly dying on me or something). So at least the player still has some options in how they choose to experience the game. I do, however, hate how the game doesn’t save after playing the Song of Time and returning to the Dawn of the First Day like in the original (which I’ve heard has unsurprisingly tripped up some veteran players and caused them to lose progress), which always felt relieving in the original and came with a sense of finality, and knowledge that one could never return to a previous three day cycle. With the way I played MM3D, it was annoying for me to have to immediately play the Inverted Song of Time and run or warp to the nearest save point after rewinding time (I would try to conserve as much time as possible in doing so); I wish at least the option to save after rewinding time was left in.

But, despite there being so much I take issue with in this remake, there are a handful of adjustments and tweaks that I found to be overall positive in MM3D, believe it or not. Little touches of convenience that don’t harm immersion and a few smart tweaks are sprinkled throughout the game in moderation. Most notably, the touchscreen interface and all the menus being on the bottom screen, which leaves the main screen uncluttered, as is having more buttons for items (though the two touchscreen buttons are a bit awkward; I used them for masks personally which works out nicely) is great, just as all this is in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. This feels especially great in MM3D though due to the high volume of items, bottles, and masks you carry around and need to utilize. Having quest-specific items be on their own separate screen and not needing to equip them is nice as well, and the process of giving an item to an NPC, a task done frequently in MM, has been streamlined wonderfully. The new world map looks pretty nice too, and I love how there’s a map for every area (from the insides of buildings to mini-dungeons and everything in between) on the bottom screen that can be zoomed in on. In addition, there are simply many other adjustments that cut out tedium, at no cost to the core experience: these include time-saving alterations in the Deku Palace as well as new hookshot targets around Great Bay and the entrance to the Pirates’ Fortress. I also like that the Woodfall Great Fairy upgrades Link’s magic meter now, and the much less useful improved spin attack upgrade has been relegated to the Snowhead Great Fairy. Magic is crucial in MM, and even more so in the remake thanks to the unfortunate change to Zora Link, and so having that big meter early on is very appreciated. Finally, one neat new difference is that Shiro, the invisible soldier, has been moved to the Pirates’ Fortress, which, as the new story goes, he hoped to infiltrate in order to prove his courage and get noticed. This change fits his character nicely, but also allows especially discerning players to conveniently get the Stone Mask in a location where they can get a lot of use out of it. While I certainly wish that this remake had been more faithful to the original overall, I don’t necessarily mind minor changes in remakes like the Shiro one that trip up veteran players like myself in a fun way, as long as they are clever and well-implemented (the superb Resident Evil remake for GameCube thrives on this kind of stuff; that game is such a drastically reimagined experience that I basically consider it an entirely new game from the original though).

Zelda games have time and again made the best use of Nintendo's dual screen idea

I’ve gone over all the major stuff, but there are countless other small changes throughout Majora’s Mask 3D that differentiate it from the original. This review has already gone on for way too long though, and in the interest of wrapping things up as quickly as possible, I’m going to skip talking about all of these other differences in detail. Most of these other minor changes I’m either mixed on, largely indifferent to, or like so many of the larger changes, simply don’t like for one reason or the other, in some cases for the reasons I’ve already talked about: they don’t jive well with the design of the original game and/or they harm immersion and the game’s sense of realism. There is one other change I probably should address though: the Song of Double Time now allows the player to skip ahead to any hour they like, instead of just to dawn or dusk. I know for many players, this change is enough to make them play the remake over the original; for me personally...eh. It fits in the game nice enough and doesn't really mess with the core design too much like many of the other changes, but there are only a few moments in the game at most that I might have used this new feature for (I actually never used it once and forgot it was even an option for most of my playthrough). Since I find that there is almost always something to do in Majora's Mask, I never found "wasting time" by skipping ahead to really be something I wanted to do. Also, for a few events, the anticipation of waiting for something to happen is part of the fun for me and immerses me in the experience more. During the few other rare occurrences when I did find myself simply having to wait around for an extended period of time, I just soaked in the game's atmosphere; watched that aforementioned rain fall or fireplace crackle. Besides things that were altered from the original, there are a few outright new additions to the remake as well. There’s a new, seventh empty bottle received from a new quest involving the three Gorman brothers. This new quest is decent, but its implementation is a bit awkward and ultimately it’s all just a bit unnecessary. There are also two fishing holes that were added to the game, one in the swamp and one at the ocean; I’m mostly apathetic to this addition, and think that Majora’s Mask was the last Zelda game that needed any new extra stuff to do, but at least the fishing gives veterans something new to check out and I will applaud the developers for putting a fair amount of effort into these sections. It’s clever and appropriate how they utilize Link’s arsenal of masks to catch a wide variety of fish. I do have one big gripe with the ocean fishing hole though: it hugely contradicts the narrative going on in the Great Bay, as the fisherman and the Zoras are having trouble catching fish in the murky sea, and indeed the fisherman states that there are no fish to catch. Several NPCs refer to this problem and it’s not exactly a minor detail: it’s a big part of one of the four main curses affecting the four worlds of Termina. Yet in the remake here’s a little section of the ocean teaming with fish at all times, right next to Zora Hall. I once again hate this kind of disconnect and it’s yet another immersion-ruining element thoughtlessly jammed into this remake. This could have been easily remedied as well by simply having the fishing hole be closed until after you defeat Gyorg.

A lot of effort was put into the new fishing holes

To some of you reading this, especially those of you that overall like this remake and the changes that it made to the original Majora’s Mask (which is fine, by the way, as we are all different people; I’m really glad that we don’t live in some dystopia where we all have the same thoughts and interesting discussion is never achieved), you might be thinking that this is all just “a bunch of nitpicks”. First of all, remember that details, even minor ones, are very important to me (especially in a game like Majora’s Mask), and all of these details impacted my experience with the remake. I’ve talked a lot about ‘immersion’ in this review, and while I think immersion and details that enhance it are important in just about every video game, this element is especially important in Majora’s Mask, and therefore the changes in the remake that harm immersion are a big deal. Secondly, remember that Majora’s Mask 3D is a remake; if it was a brand new, original Zelda title, we would not be having this discussion and I would be praising it for being a really, really, really good game. But Majora’s Mask 3D is not original; it is a remake that intended to improve on the original work, and thus stands to be compared to that work, and in this regard I have found it wanting. Therefore, I inevitably have to ask myself: does this remake justify its own existence for me? I would say ‘yes’ at first, if only for the enhanced technical side of the game and extra environmental details, as well as the novelty of being able to play a portable version of the game in 3D (although Majora’s Mask is not an experience that you should be playing on the bus with the sound turned off). Also, the idea that people who have never experienced the original game will get exposure to at least a version of the Majora’s Mask experience because of the remake is nice as well. I would say this very flawed remake’s existence is justified because of all this…except I recently went back and played the original for a little bit, and found after testing several different setups that the Wii Virtual Console release (being played on an SDTV with a GameCube controller) still holds up remarkably well and the game actually looks great with such a setup. When I like the original’s art better, and when the negative changes outweigh the few positive ones in the remake for me, than yes, I have to come to the inevitable conclusion that I’d much rather be playing the original and could have easily passed on this remake. And while new people being exposed to Majora’s Mask is nice, I’m very torn up about them playing a butchered version of it instead of the still brilliant original. If I view the remake as a separate entity, I can appreciate its few merits more and be more forgiving of its shortcomings, but what bothers me is that Nintendo and the remake’s developers believe this to be the definitive version and from now on will likely act like the original doesn’t exist. I want to say that the Wii Virtual Console release of the game (ideally, but not necessarily exclusively, played with a GameCube controller) is the current definitive version of Majora’s Mask, but in truth, I honestly think the true definitive version rests somewhere between that one and this remake, due to the improved technical aspects, added environmental details, and few positive adjustments the remake made with things like item management. Ultimately, however, I don’t see myself returning to MM3D that much, if at all. And you know what? As much as I didn’t particularly want this remake and respect the integrity of the original so much, I’m not happy about that. I wish MM3D was at least as good as the original, more in line with Ocarina of Time 3D and The Wind Waker HD, where I can appreciate both those versions and the originals in a somewhat equal manner. I’d like to appreciate MM3D’s new visuals, improved technical performance, and details and enjoy playing MM on a handheld in 3D, but thanks to so many misguided alterations, I’d just so much rather play the original instead. It really is a shame. Perhaps more troubling though is that in terms of its handholding and its stale boss mechanics (Twinmold excluded), MM3D feels like a regression for the Zelda series, which is such a shame after the smart A Link Between Worlds made such great strides in progressing the series past these conventions that have been weighing it down.

Obviously, the original Majora’s Mask is a work of art that is very close to my heart, but I hope I at least have gotten across the fact that I have very specific, detailed reasons for thinking its remake is largely a bust. I will, however, say that despite it being inferior to the original in many ways in my eyes, Majora’s Mask 3D does ultimately retain the core essence of the original Majora’s Mask, and underneath the coat of cracked paint that has been haphazardly dumped on it, the brilliance of that original classic shines through. In essence, most of the thematic, narrative, and atmospheric elements of MM that are so important remain intact in MM3D, but from a functional perspective, the game is lacking, and many of its alterations unfortunately do bleed into the atmospheric side of the game and harm immersion as well. Ultimately and essentially, Majora’s Mask 3D is a game that is a brilliant experience in spite of many of its very questionable changes, instead of because of them, which is just another way of me saying that the original Majora’s Mask is easily the greater experience and the one I would still recommend to people, in particular the Wii Virtual Console port of the game (which can also be accessed from the Wii Menu on a Wii U via the Wii Shop Channel…which I know isn’t confusing at all, right? Blame the way Nintendo handles these things, not me), which looks better than the N64 version and controls great with a GameCube controller. But if one simply cannot get a hold of the original in any format for whatever reason, or is unwilling to accept its dated technical aspects, then and only then would I recommend Majora’s Mask 3D to somebody.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Wii U) Review

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is a charming little game from Nintendo EAD Tokyo and 1-UP Studio that is sure to be overlooked by many and overshadowed by the Wii U’s bigger releases (like this one). This is both a shame and somewhat appropriate, as Treasure Tracker feels like an indie game; a AAA Nintendo indie game based on the most well-known video game franchise in the world. This bizarre identity is just another aspect of Treasure Tracker’s charm, something the game seems to exude in abundance. Captain Toad is an engaging, atmospheric, and unique puzzle game that thankfully shows that Nintendo is still willing to take some risks with their iconic Mario universe, something we haven’t really seen since the original Super Mario Galaxy back in 2007. It’s nice to see something so unique suddenly emerge from the recently stagnating Mario universe, even if Treasure Tracker does borrow a lot of elements from the EAD Tokyo-developed Super Mario games (that is, all the 3D Super Mario games since and including Super Mario Galaxy).

                If you’ve played the Captain Toad mini-games in Super Mario 3D World for Wii U, than you’ve played the basis for Treasure Tracker. Treasure Tracker is essentially an entire game of those kinds of levels, except a full execution of the concept and a far more fleshed-out experience. The game features an incredibly simplistic narrative that involves Toadette being whisked away by a giant bird (really novel stuff for Nintendo here) and Captain Toad trekking off to save her (and collecting Power Stars along the way, because why not?). But wait! In an innovative twist for Nintendo, this narrative shifts a bit later in the game to Captain Toad being the one captured by the bird (named Wingo) and Toadette taking on the role of the intrepid adventurer tasked with saving him. Eventually, the game switches back and forth between the fun-guy and fun-gal (I’m so sorry) and although (spoiler warning) ultimately the endgame does come down to Captain Toad having to save a damseled Toadette and get the big hero moment, I appreciate Nintendo giving Toadette some time to shine.

Adorable Duo

Beyond the straightforward narrative, the game has a cute storybook-like format where players select one level after the next by turning the pages of a book. The levels themselves are what Nintendo calls “mini-universes”; essentially living dioramas that can be thoroughly explored, manipulated, and viewed from every angle in order for Captain Toad and Toadette to pluck, scour, and track down every treasure within (see what I did there). Besides dioramas, the environments in the game also remind me of something else as well: Lego sets. Also, those little miniature environment toys from the ‘90s like Polly Pocket and Mighty Max. Also, childhood. The miniature worlds have a great sense of charm and it’s an engaging and satisfying process to first view an environment from all angles, figure out what to do, and then conquer each world, discovering every little nook and secret along the way (including the returning hidden Luigi sprites from Super Mario 3D World and also some other neat Easter Eggs). There’s a lot of variety in the level designs as well and the formula is often changed up with something like a minecart ride through a dank cavern (where the Toads can throw turnips at enemies), the exploration of a steam-powered train during a fierce blizzard, or a battle against a gigantic, beautifully-rendered, and whimsically-animated dragon inside of a volcano.

These levels throw several mechanics into the mix throughout the game, such as making ample use of the GamePad’s touchscreen to move certain platforms around, spin large valves that manipulate certain pieces of the environment, and aim with in a first-person view on the minecart levels and also when using a stand-alone turnip cannon that is used to unleash vegetarian justice on the game’s baddies. I appreciate gimmicks like touching and blowing on the GamePad to manipulate platforms in a slower-paced, more methodical game like this than I do in the main series Super Mario platformers, where I get annoyed when this kind of stuff gets in the way of a smooth platforming experience. Overall, this kind of gimmickry works better in a puzzle game like Captain Toad and while none of it is drastically innovative or game-defining, these elements are often used in clever ways and add a certain tactile pleasure to the experience as well as contribute to its overall great sense of charm.

A "mini-universe" in Treasure Tracker

Besides all this, several other mechanics from the EAD Tokyo Super Mario games and the Super Mario series in general show up, such as Beep Blocks, Flip Panels, and Donut Lifts. The Captain and Toadette also utilize a handful of power-ups including the Super Mushroom (serving the same function here as always), the Double Cherry from 3D World, and a new Super Pickax item that can be used to smash through blocks and enemies and shares an animation and theme song with the Hammer of Donkey Kong (and Super Smash Bros.) fame. The Toads can use these power-ups as well as Super Mario Bros. 2-style turnips and their environment to overcome a plethora of foes from the Mario universe as well as some brand new ones unique to Treasure Tracker. It’s actually a fascinating dynamic encountering an enemy in this game because Toad and Toadette cannot jump and also cannot run very fast and therefore a player must find clever ways of outmaneuvering and defeating these creatures which usually aren’t much of a threat at all for Mario. With Mario, most of these enemies are a single quick jump away from defeat, but for the Toads, even a simple Goomba can be a tense encounter. Several different options often exist for defeating a baddie: do you hasten to pluck a turnip from the ground (and hope it’s not just a coin) or do you try to manipulate the environment in some way, such as by falling off a higher ledge onto their head or by luring them into a hazard? With usually only one Super Mushroom at most hidden somewhere in a level, making a mistake can often be costly. This adds a novel spin on the Mario universe and I quite enjoy the “fish out of water” experience. In addition to well-designed levels and clever, new kinds of challenges, like most EAD-developed Nintendo games, Treasure Tracker’s gameplay is impeccably polished and satisfying, and everything from collecting a coin to the satisfying pluck of a vegetable patch to touching the screen to spin a valve just feels great.

                Another area with a hefty coat of polish is Captain Toad’s presentation, including both wonderful animations and beautiful, appealing visual design that often pops with personality. One area where Treasure Tracker really shines in particular for me (and something I’m actually surprised by) is in its atmosphere. Remember earlier when I called this game a triple-A Nintendo indie game? The game really does feel like some strange, mysterious thing at times and I think its short development time actually benefited the game’s minimalistic, interesting atmosphere. For one thing, the game’s art design, despite some occasional levels where objects and backgrounds can look blurry and jaggy at times, is gorgeous and every world is intricately detailed. Most environments are just a cube floating in the sky, but they are often enveloped in flower petals blowing in the wind, enwrapped in vines and dotted with flora, or surrounded by beautiful blue skies, purple and pink twilight, or brilliantly starry skies. The game seems like it’s running on an enhanced Super Mario 3D World engine, with a similar art-style but much more detail packed into each corner of an environment (this could also be due to the fact that the levels are smaller and thus can afford to be more graphically detailed). Some of the environments in this game are truly fantastical and at times I almost wished they were levels in a more traditional Super Mario platformer (these locales are great in Captain Toad, but I would also love to explore expanded versions of them with Mario). One level took me aback with a beautiful nighttime, particle-filled forest scene, complete with chirping crickets. Other levels consist of onion-domed spires and floating carpets amid tranquil skyscapes. Another environment is a self-contained fresh water spring flanked by hollowed-out logs inhabited by cute little ants and complete with a pristine jet of water that shoots up and creates a rainbow. In addition to the regular levels, there are brief story segue portions that allow us to take a stroll through a gorgeous environment before setting up a campsite. These scenes serve no real gameplay function, but they have a wonderful sense of atmosphere and are such a lovely detail that adds a boatload of extra charm to the experience. The game’s largely minimalist soundtrack does a good job of supporting its atmosphere with several ambient tracks that majestically support many of these beautiful environments; most of my favorite levels in the game were accompanied by either this track or this one. The game just has this really interesting, unique, sometimes mesmerizingly enchanting vibe and it’s really hard to put it into words…I’d recommend experiencing what I mean for yourself!

Enchanting

                My experience with Treasure Tracker was overall a positive one, but it also wasn’t without some notable hang-ups. This is a very subjective thing, but for some reason I would often get notably anxious when playing this game. I struggle with general anxiety in my day to day life a great deal and it’s often a mystery as to why certain things in particular trigger it so badly, and thus it’s also hard to put my finger on what exactly about Captain Toad made me anxious as honestly it’s mostly quite an inviting, chilled-out game. However, I think my anxiety at least in large part comes from much of the game revolving around the path forward being obscured from the player and having to shift the camera to get a better view; not being able to see what’s ahead on such a frequent basis put me on edge a lot of the time. Of course, this is a key aspect of the game’s design and I’m not saying it in itself is a flaw or a poorly-designed aspect, but in my subjective experience it made this game uncomfortable for me at times (and in this game’s case, I don’t think “discomfort” is what the designers were going for). On a more objective level, there were certain times where I felt like a good view was simply unachievable and moreover I found myself wishing there was an additional camera view. Let me explain: there are two camera views in the game, a zoomed-out and a zoomed-in one. I found the zoomed-out one to be a little too zoomed-out at times, but the zoomed-in one would likewise be sometimes too zoomed-in and not offer a clear enough view of the action. Therefore, I would have appreciated a third, middle camera option in between these two views, but perhaps this would have been too cumbersome to program given the design of the game. I also got a little frustrated throughout my playthrough because there are no checkpoints in levels, and although the game’s collectible “Super Gems” (which there are three of hidden in each level and are used to unlock future levels, though not all are required to simply reach the end credits) save after being collected once, I’m the type who liked to do an optimal run of each level and collect everything in one run and failing late into one of the longer stages in the game and having to start all over again would get tiring. But it should be said that this was frustration that I brought on myself and wasn’t exactly the game’s fault. On another note, as much as I appreciate some of the game’s more atmospheric music tracks and think they supplement the experience very well, overall the soundtrack is a bit lackluster and doesn’t stand out too much. There doesn’t seem to be enough variety in the music selection and I found myself quickly growing tired of the same small selection of main level themes. None of it is of poor quality, mind, but there’s also not much that is particularly memorable, except for the game’s main theme (which I also got tired of hearing so much) and the remixes from the main series Super Mario games (there are a lot of new versions of songs from the fantastic Super Mario 3D World soundtrack as well as some other tracks from throughout the Super Mario series).

Finally, the game’s bonus levels leave a lot to be desired, and if you’d rather not have them spoiled than I would skip this paragraph. If a player has save data from Super Mario 3D World on their Wii U, they get to play through four levels from that game as Captain Toad, but while this is a novel idea, these levels drag on for too long with the slow-moving Captain Toad and obviously weren’t designed for him. All of the other bonus levels (except for one, which I’ll get to) are simply stages that are recycled from the game’s main “episodes” but with a few twists, such as having to track down all the members of the Toad Brigade and finish the level with them in tow or being tasked to finish a level with a mummified Toad (known as a Mummy-Me) chasing the player throughout the whole stage. These stages offer some mostly satisfying new challenges for previously-visited levels, but ultimately they are just the same level again. At the end of it all is the “Champion’s Road” of this game: “Mummy-Me Maze Forever”, a series of fifty consecutive mazes with semi-randomized layouts (this Mummy-Me Maze concept previously appeared as a bonus game that would randomly appear after completing a level in the game’s normal episodes) that get progressively harder that a player has to complete all while being chased by Mummy-Mes mirroring Captain Toad’s every move. This level was satisfying to finally complete after many, many attempts, but I found it incredibly tedious and was more than ready to give up after just a few attempts. Trust me, you will rage here. I stuck it out though and eventually bested it, but I definitely prefer the aforementioned level from 3D World (or the Grandmaster Galaxy and Special 8-Crown in Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario 3D Land, respectively); replaying those over and over again wasn’t so bad because after learning the level I could get back to where I was in a short amount of time, but Captain Toad’s gauntlet is far lengthier and also relies partly on luck. I usually love the addition of this kind of “ultimate test of skill” level that has appeared in all of EAD Tokyo’s Super Mario games (except for the original Super Mario Galaxy), but Captain Toad’s version is probably the most evil challenge they’ve devised yet. That aside, to be honest, I’m getting sick of the “remix” bonus levels that are in every EAD Tokyo Super Mario game (including the Prankster Comet challenges in the Galaxy games). They are bonus levels, so I can’t complain too much and they do add some satisfying challenges to the experience, but they’re more tiresome than engaging at this point for someone like me who has thoroughly played all of these games. I actually prefer the way the 2D Super Mario games do it: just one final bonus world with around eight original levels that take a lot of skill to get through. As I said, I also typically enjoy the singular “ultimate test of skill” levels that EAD Tokyo brought into the mix.

This game is pretty

                Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is a novel experience from Nintendo and I’d like to see more stuff like it; smaller, unique projects that deliver a new kind of experience. An adventure with Mario enemies and themes but with the titular plumber, the princess, and the Koopa King nowhere to be seen is very refreshing and playing as the often adorable and charming Captain Toad and Toadette duo is an interesting new experience. Treasure Tracker definitely shows its short development time (despite being a surprisingly lengthy game with a lot to see and do), but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as its minimalist approach is a big part of its charm and its “indie feeling” lends a unique experience to Nintendo’s arsenal. Captain Toad’s overall design and concept is quite unlike anything I’ve experienced before (besides, of course, the handful of Captain Toad levels from Super Mario 3D World) and it’s nice to see that Nintendo’s internal developers can still come up with something so fresh, even if the experience does still feel a bit too similar in ways to the EAD Tokyo Super Mario platformers a lot of the time, and borrows a lot structurally from those games. While I’m growing tired of the EAD Tokyo formula (as fantastic as most of their Super Mario games have been), this game is still an experience I enjoyed and one that also managed to deliver something novel. Captain Toad is a little morsel of delight that has a surprising amount of depth to it and is certainly a worthy treasure to add to your Wii U collection…*sigh*, I did it again…please don’t think too poorly of me.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Wii U…duh) Review

This review is going to a bit more informal than usual; originally I wasn’t even going to call this a review, but more just a “thoughts and impressions” kind of thing. I’m not going to explain or cover everything in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U in detail and am going to assume the reader (i.e. you) already has some knowledge of the game and the game’s content in this case. Above all else, this is mainly just about the aspects of the game that particularly stood out to me. With that out of the way, here are my thoughts on the newest Smash experience.

My experience with Super Smash Bros. dates back to the original game on Nintendo 64, which I fondly remember playing after school when it first released and also with friends many other times. It was such a surprising and novel game back then, and even though at the time I had never played a Metroid game and certainly had no idea who the hell Captain Falcon was, I had a blast nonetheless playing as Kirby and Samus Aran, unlocking everything, and doing all those “Break the Targets” and “Board the Platforms” levels. Later on Super Smash Bros. Melee cranked the series up to 11 and established the mold that the franchise would take the form of from then on. Super Smash Bros. Brawl built on what Melee established, not quite being another huge leap forward, but simply cramming more into what Melee had while also adding several new elements. Now, with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, it’s pretty much that same game again, except stuffed with more characters, more stages, more music, new modes and uber-polished gameplay that merges Brawl’s casual party game approach with Melee’s more technical skill-based approach. The result is…well, Super Smash Bros., now with the Duck Hunt Dog and Mega Man. That is to say, it’s one part polished, unorthodox fighting game crammed with stuff that is best enjoyed with friends and one part Nintendo museum. I think for me at least, however, the novelty of this series has worn off. I was excited about the game when gameplay was first shown off and loved every second of those character reveal trailers and all the speculation that went along with the game’s pre-release hype, but as the game’s launch got closer and closer, I found myself a bit apathetic. I was going to pick it up day one, but wasn’t necessarily overly excited for it and honestly sort of got sick of hearing about it after a while. Personally, I get much more excited for a new Metroid or Zelda game than for a big crossover that aims to make me nostalgic for those experiences. There’s just not much mystery when it comes to Smash anymore, especially thanks to the wonder (and the bane) that is the leaky internet. But I digress. While Smash Wii U has certainly had less of an impact on me than any of its predecessors, it’s still certainly a well-made game with a lot that I admire about it and a lot that I am fond of (and not so fond of) within it.

Multiplayer is still one of the most important aspects of Smash Bros. and thanks to the inclusion of up to eight-player battles, the game is now more a party pleaser than ever before. Online works better than in Brawl (honestly, this is mainly going by the word on the street since I barely used Brawl’s online, but I’m aware that most unanimously agree that it was shit), but unfortunately every single mode barring For Glory 1v1 was met with varying degrees of lag when I tried it all out, some of it hilariously unplayable and some of it manageable but still far from ideal. Unfortunately, if just one person has a bad connection, it ruins it for everyone. Luckily, 1v1 works mostly great and I’ve been able to get in a hundred matches here, mostly getting my ass kicked, but also winning a passable amount and having some fun encounters with strangers I will likely never encounter again. Although I should mention that, weirdly, my most recent 1v1 session was met with lag in almost every match I played; I don’t think this was on my end since I have a wired connection, but it’d also be a weird coincidence. But luckily and most importantly, online with friends in my experience works flawlessly as of this writing. I play with two friends and we all have good connections and I can recall maybe one instance of brief stuttering but otherwise every match has run as smoothly as if we were in the same room (it should be noted that every match we’ve played has been a stock battle with all items turned off). It’s great to be able to jump into a match with friends and not have to always gather together (because who wants to see their friend’s stupid faces, amiright? I kid, I kid).

Chaos!

As for everything else in Smash U…sigh…ok, I’m not going to go over it all in detail, but mainly just point out the stuff I notably like and dislike, because there’s a lot of stuff here. First off, and this should go without saying, the character roster is massive and it is spectacular. Besides being able to have a sparring match between Mario, Sonic, Mega Man and PAC-MAN, all the newcomers are excellent additions to the roster and each is as unique as the last. Villager and Wii Fit Trainer are hilarious and creative inclusions, and others like Little Mac, Bowser Jr.+ the Koopalings, Palutena, and Rosalina and Luma are all great additions that make sense. Having a little known character like Shulk will hopefully increase exposure to the hard-to-find Wii gem Xenoblade Chronicles (which is getting a port to the New 3DS later this year, although I’d still recommend playing that game on a big screen, which suits the game’s epic scope more) and Duck Hunt is the craziest, funnest surprise character the series has seen yet. As for the stages, I generally like all the new ones, which are vibrant, detailed and meticulously crafted fighting arenas. There do seem to be too many overly gimmicky stages, however, and an option to simply turn off hazards like the Yellow Devil of Mega Man fame on the Wily Castle stage would have been ideal (the option to choose a flat final destination variant of each stage is a nice, if imperfect, compromise though). Disappointingly, there are less brand new stages here than in Brawl and more returning stages than ever before. I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with this (it’s not only about always having more) if it weren’t for my other problems with the stage selection. This is my personal taste, but some of the choices for returning stages here are…eh. I would have gladly seen creative and memorable stages like the Wind Waker Pirate Ship from Brawl (which would have made perfect sense, since The Wind Waker HD just came out on Wii U a little over a year ago) return instead of the bland Mario Circuit stage from Brawl (which feels out of place next to its shiny new replacement one from Mario Kart 8), two nearly identical Animal Crossing stages, and that Kid Icarus level from Brawl that nobody likes. There’s more stages than ever before, but the selection feels smaller than in Brawl somehow, thanks to the prevalence of returning stages but also because there’s a lot of “sameiness” in the stage selection (two Skyworld stages, two Animal Crossing ones with a near-identical aesthetic, two Mario Kart ones, two lava Metroid stages, two Wuhu Island-based ones, etc.). However, I do love the variety that stages such as Gaur Plain from Xenoblade Chronicles and the Duck Hunt arena add to the selection. Ultimately, I feel that Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS is a culprit here, as I would have loved to have gotten some of that version’s new stages in HD and also some of its returning ones.

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I passed on the 3DS version and wish it never existed (I did spend a good chunk of time with the 3DS version’s demo though). All it seems to have done is rob the Wii U version of content and I hate having this newest Smash’s content split between two versions. It makes Smash Wii U feel less comprehensive due to its general lack of Nintendo’s handheld history, and I like Nintendo’s handheld history, I like it a lot in fact…but I don’t want to have to buy a watered-down version with an inferior control system to celebrate it. This is a selfish choice and I recognize that many who don’t own a Wii U appreciate the handheld version and I can understand its portability appeal, but for me personally, I’d rather Smash Bros. stay as a single home console release.

Characters!

The next main point for me to hit on is the game’s soundtrack, which is a massive 400+ plus songs, with a great number returning from previous Smash titles, but also with a wealth of new remixes, new original songs, and “new” unremixed songs that weren’t in past Smash games as well. Similar to stages, there seems to be less new music remixes here than there were in Brawl, but with nearly 150 new remixes and plenty of other great music it’s harder to complain here than with the stage selection. Still, it does seem like a lot of content in this game has been reused from past titles, which makes this newest Smash Bros. inherently feel a little less new than past titles, and less like its own game and more like a huge expansion on what came before. That said, I love the overall comprehensive nature of the soundtrack and have had a blast just listening to the in-game sound test and editing my music favorites list and fiddling with the My Music feature, which lets players set how often songs play on every stage (all of which is very, very appreciated). Several of the new remixes rock: some of my favorites include the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time “Gerudo Valley” remix and Spirit Tracks “Full Steam Ahead” remix, the “Duck Hunt Medley”, every single Mega Man remix, and just about everything Yoko Shimomura, Yasunori Mitsuda, and Yuzo Koshiro worked on. Other remixes are not so much my cup of sleepytime herbal tea with a touch of milk and sugar. I admire artists being creative here but I think a bit too many liberties were taken with some songs, and in some cases wish the original track was included instead (luckily, in many cases both a remix and the original track are included, which I appreciate). Truth be told, even if I can appreciate a good remix, I almost always prefer original songs to their remixes and this couldn’t be more true in cases such as the “Try, Try Again” remix from Mario and Luigi: Dream Team, which isn’t necessarily bad, just much inferior to the original in my opinion (Shimomura’s only blemish here, and for my money probably ever, so we’ll let it slide). When it comes to song selection in an individual series, there seems to be a lack of variety in many cases, with an overwhelming focus on endlessly remixing the most iconic themes from each game. It makes sense to remix the most recognizable theme from a series for Smash Bros., but as someone who is very intimate with the likes of Zelda and Kirby, it pains me to know of all the other fantastic tracks that are being ignored in favor of yet another Legend of Zelda “Main Theme” cover or “Green Greens” remix (as good as these remixes often are). But nowhere is this more apparent or annoying than in the tiring seven remixes of the freakin’ Donkey Kong Country “Jungle Hijinx” theme that’s we’ve all heard one zillion trillion times before. This wouldn’t be so offensive to me if these three hundred versions of the same damn song didn’t take the place of the countless other possible inclusions or remixes from the varied and fantastic soundtracks of the Donkey Kong Country games (sure, we get a couple of other songs, but most are just taken from Brawl and even then there are not a lot). Three of these “Hijinx” remixes are from past Smash games, so those can be excused, but the other four being included at the expense of something new cannot be. Most face-palm worthy for me personally is the fact that two songs were chosen from the sublime masterpiece that is the Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze soundtrack and one of them is the goddamn “Jungle Hijinx” remix again, which only appears as basically an Easter Egg in like three bonus levels in Tropical Freeze. This…just makes me cry; like, it literally hurts me inside. All right, all right, I’ll stop being overdramatically whiny. There’s tons of awesome music here and I also haven’t mentioned how many smaller and lesser known games are represented in the soundtrack, many with new remixes, which is really cool and will hopefully make some people curious about these underappreciated titles.

                I’ll try to run down my thoughts on the rest of the main modes really quickly. Master Orders and Crazy Orders are excellent new additions, great for a quick play session and both with their perks and I hope they stick around for the inevitable sequel. Event Match mode is back and still a blast, with even more events than in the previous games and a new grid-like progression system which I approve of. Then there are the 140 varied “Challenges” to tackle for various rewards, which can be an addicting task, at least until you reach the later, super difficult tasks, most of which I don’t even care to attempt. Stadium mode is back with all the Multi-Man Smash stuff and Home Run Contest, both of which are a nice distraction as always. There’s also a new Target Blast mode in Stadium that can actually be kind of fun if you give it a chance, but it’s no replacement for the “Break the Targets” mini-game in the past Smash titles, especially in the original Smash and Melee, where every character had their own individual target level which took advantage of each fighter’s unique skillset. But with an ever-increasing character roster, I can understand why they stopped doing this in Brawl (which just had five target levels used by all of the fighters) and in Smash Wii U. I’ve perhaps spent the most of my time with Smash U in the Vault portion of the game: perusing trophies, setting up my own special matches in the versus mode using CPUs and saving replays and screenshots in the Vault (Samus vs. her Dark Samus color alt., an epic battle between Mario and Bowser, a nostalgia-fueled throwdown between a bunch of NES veterans, etc.), listening to the game’s extensive soundtrack, and sampling all of the “masterpieces”: brief, timed samplings of many of the classic games that the fighters come from (even if I’ve personally played most of these titles already, I enjoy the inclusion of these demos and think their existence makes a lot of sense). Finally, there’s the new board game mode, Smash Tour, which is inoffensive to me but a party mode in what can already be a riotously fun party game depending on how you play it feels a little redundant and unnecessary.

Menus!

There are two more things that I want to give particular attention to. The first is the game’s Classic mode, of all things, which hasn’t seen much change since the N64 original until now and honestly that’s how something called “Classic” should stay in this case. To be blunt, I’m not a fan of Classic mode in this game, which has seen a massive overall. It’s frustrating and it’s just kind of dull. I don’t like having to bother to slowly move my character’s trophy between matches to choose my next fight; this is just tedious and doesn’t add anything to the experience for me. I hate how there is such a focus on five to eight-fighter battles as well. For starters, this limits the amount of stages one is going to see; oh yeah, I forgot to mention that playing in matches with above four fighters cuts the stage selection down to about a third of what it normally is, with the selection becoming more limited the more fighters there are, which is quite unfortunate…but thanks to a patch being released as I write this, more stages are apparently being unlocked for eight-player Smash, which is excellent news! Besides this, while eight-player battles can be fun with a group of intelligent human players, playing against random CPUs with items cranked up and Pokémon flying everywhere is just a mess and I almost never had any fun in these situations. But above all, I don’t like the difficulty system in Classic mode for the same reason I didn’t like it in Kid Icarus: Uprising (Smash U director Masahiro Sakurai’s previous game, which pioneered the same difficulty system). If you haven’t played either game, basically there is a difficulty scale (in Smash U’s case, literally a scale) that goes from 0.0 to 9.0, with the ability to set the difficulty to 0.1, 0.2, and so on. You bet more gold for the higher difficulties but get better rewards for completing matches. It’s a novel concept and I like the idea of risking a bunch of gold for better rewards and then losing those rewards if I fall in battle. What I don’t like is how if I get knocked out of a match, in addition to losing some of the rewards I’ve acquired, the difficulty level gets knocked down five points, so if I was trying to complete the game on the highest difficulty of 9.0, if I lose once, the game automatically bumps me down to 8.5 and then to 8.0 if I lose again and so on. What makes me not want to even bother going for the rewards one receives on the higher difficulties is that the final boss comes with a ridiculously unfair difficulty spike and like a gajillion forms that one needs to learn the patterns of in order to get anywhere. But a player only encounters certain forms on certain difficulty levels, so continued failure means I have very little time to learn how to beat these phases. Basically, I don’t stand a good chance at understanding how to properly defeat these foes unless I replay Classic over and over on the highest difficulties, wasting time and gold. And as I said, Classic is boring, so doing that is boring as well. I prefer the old Classic (preferably Melee’s variant): straight and to the point, just fight after fight (and not a bunch of chaotic six to eight-fighter bouts), with a few mini-games and twists thrown into the mix and a battle against a fantasy incarnation of your twisted child creator’s hand (and perhaps its demented twin as well) at the end.

The other thing I wanted to give specific attention to is the lack of a story or adventure mode here. I’m well aware of why Sakurai chose not to include a story mode this time around (and in my opinion, his reasoning is...flawed, to say the least), but I loved the Adventure Mode in Melee and always hoped that it would evolve in future games. I generally enjoyed The Subspace Emissary in Brawl but it was ultimately forgettable thanks to an onslaught of mostly generic enemies instead of recognizable Nintendo ones and likewise a bunch of mostly generic locations instead of ones from Nintendo games. This is a crossover game, a game all about fan-service, and I don’t want to fight generic puppet monsters in a bland forest; I want to fight Stalfos’ in the Lost Woods. The cutscenes were cool though. But anyway, I don’t necessarily need another giant adventure like The Subspace Emissary (although something akin to it, just not so generic, could be grand), but just something like Melee’s Adventure Mode is great and nicely breaks up the single-player aspect of the game as well as adds a lot to the Smash experience in my opinion, so much so that Smash Wii U feels inherently lacking and incomplete without some kind of adventure mode, despite having probably more stuff to do than in any Smash game prior.

MEGA MAN!

For the inevitable Smash 5 (whether Sakurai directs it or not, and I certainly wouldn’t fault him if he chooses not to), I hope Classic mode returns to form and an adventure mode of some kind returns. Besides new characters, new stages, and new music there’s not much I can think of that they can do with this series. It’s pretty much another Mario Kart at this point: Nintendo’s big money-maker that always delivers a fun, polished experience, but doesn’t really evolve or change all that much from game to game. I forgot to talk about the character customization in the game and the Stage Builder by the way. In short, character customization is a neat addition that is fun to play around with, but I’m not sure how practical it all is since its usage online is limited and without a copy of the 3DS version, I don’t know of a way to bring my customized characters to friends’ games. I do like the way this game handles the customizable Mii Fighters, but they too are limited in the same ways as I just mentioned. As for the Stage Builder, it’s nice that it’s there and the ability to freely draw landforms with the GamePad is neat, but the user interface here is incredibly cumbersome, the options are extremely limited, and ultimately this feature is still far, far from being all that it could be (also, similar to my complaints with The Subspace Emissary, I’d rather have Nintendo game-themed items and backgrounds than generic ones, please).

At the end of the day though, despite my nitpicks and complaints, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is a colossal undertaking of a project, and Masahiro Sakurai and his team deserve a great wealth of respect and applause for bringing this beast together in such an elegant way. It’s a finely-polished, finely-tuned experience crammed with content and is a worthy celebration of the many games that inspired it. It’s hard to believe what a juggernaut the Smash series has evolved into since its N64 roots (although I do still find great appeal in the quiet, weird atmosphere of the N64 original). Something I love about Smash Bros. is just getting lost in Sakurai’s maze of menus, remembering fond experiences with so many wonderful video games, and learning about characters and games I’ve never had any experience with or rekindling fond memories for certain games or series that I’ve lost touch with. I’m now more interested than ever in playing a Fire Emblem game (Fire Emblem Awakening in particular) thanks to Robin and Lucina both being boss and all the sweet music from the FE series present in the game (again, particularly from Awakening), and the fantastic Mother music remixes as well as the EarthBound masterpiece demo make me realize how much I really need to get on that whole “finally playing through EarthBound” thing. I haven’t played a Pokémon game in over ten years, but reading about all of these weird creatures I never caught from later games (post the original Sapphire Version, the last one I played, not counting starting LeafGreen and barely getting anywhere in it) and listening to all the great music from the series makes me question whether it’s time to dive back in. I know I’m being manipulated here; I know this is one of the major points of Smash Bros.: just one big, fun advertisement for Nintendo’s games. I’m fully aware, but given the amount of polish and care and charm in this game, I’m ok with it for now. It’s really all the details that make this game such a treat. Just about every animation, every voice clip, and every stage background is lovingly detailed and full of personality, not to mention painstakingly true to the source material. Easter Eggs like the Kid Icarus “Palutena’s Guidance” conversations are just an added treasure hidden among the layers upon layers of Smash. Memorable situations like an eight-player choreographed aerobics session with a bunch of Wii Fit Trainers I engaged in with friends at a party and communication via a Princess Peach duel high above Skyloft with another human being I randomly encountered online demonstrates the power of the experience that this game’s developers worked so tirelessly to deliver. And deliver they did: although Smash will perhaps never be as hype-inducing or as novel as it once was for me, it’s still a special and worthy experience.