19 days after getting it, I've beaten it.
Between tiny snatches throughout a day (at stoplights, while cooking, etc) or else breaks between schoolwork marathons or before bed, it's kind of surprising how quickly my progress added up.
The last time I played Majora's Mask, on emulator some 3 years ago, I thought it would be the last time. By the end of that playthrough I was actually quite sick of the game and had come to loathe my sense of need to complete it, such that even though I hadn't gotten the Fierce Deity's Mask I decided not to even bother. I also thought it had been the pinnacle of the experience -- I
told myself that it was the pinnacle of the experience, because what could possibly be better than playing it with the benefit of emulator fast-forwarding and quicksaving? Then Nintendo pulled this out on me and I'm so glad I was wrong. (As for those emulator features I thought were so important back then, the lack of them wound up mattering not much at all.
)
That said, there was something about the game that was just
different this time around (beyond the obvious changes), in a way that I can't say is entirely good or bad. Everything was just ...
smaller. Perhaps it's the psychological effect of the smaller screen, or else the cumulative effect of the enhanced notebook and ever-present map, but the whole game just felt so much more contained and manageable than it did last time, even though last time was itself probably at least the third time I'd played through the game. "Manageable" is good for obvious reasons, but it also loses something -- a sense of epicness, a sense of too-big-to-handleness that inspires awe. The temples did not daunt me on this playthrough, in fact for the first time I had this moment where I just kind of had the entire ocean temple in my mind and I realized how simple it actually was. I got through each of them faster than ever before (usually just a fraction of a cycle), except for Stone Tower Temple which took as annoyingly long as ever.
The enhancements to the notebook were great for letting me find things I missed on previous playthroughs (case in point: I
never thought to check on the troupe leader in his room during the second day in previous playthroughs, and only learned about it thanks to the bombers rumor system) but also did a lot to detract from the world's sense of mystery and liveliness (case in point: no need to go looking for quests, I can just wait for the bombers to bring them to me). I never felt compelled to just follow someone for a cycle like I might have done on previous playthroughs, and started to see the world more as a set of tasks to complete than as a bundle of mysteries to explore.
But, having already experienced the game as this big mysterious thing more than once now, being able to play the game in a way that feels more
complete than ever before is a welcome change.
I'm already planning my next playthrough. Given how completely
done I thought I was with the game 3 years ago, that feels plenty ironic to type. For old times' sake and as kind of a challenge to myself I played this time the way I always used to play, cramming as much as possible into each loop, keeping several threads going at a time, and for my next playthrough I want to do it differently for once, taking advantage of this new edition's more precise time-skipping so I can focus on one task at a time. I'm also curious to see if I can beat the game faster -- or rather, by how much, because obviously I will with the previous playthrough so fresh in memory. That I even
want to play the game again given how I felt about it after the previous playthrough years ago says either a lot about how different my mindset is this time or, more likely IMO, how much new life this version has breathed into the experience.
Yea, glory, what a beautiful game.
I thought I was going to get it the first time I defended her wagon, only to be given nothing more than the Romani's Mask. So I did it again on another loop, and got a golden rupee, but still no hug! :( 
Rosenakahara wrote:Also now that you have a new 3dsXL: play xenoblade, its awesome.
