5) The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Following up the iconic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a tough task for anyone. After all, here was a game that not only sold a bunch, but ended up becoming a cultural touchstone for the industry as a whole.
Its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, does do a lot of interesting things to make the title stand out from its predecessor, such as the time traveling mechanic, but not everything is a hit. For starters, with only two years to create the game, a lot of assets like character models are reused, and in some cases outright replicated in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
There’s also this idea that the game’s hub of Termina is a parallel world to Hyrule, but this theory is never expanded upon. Nor do any of the characters like the Skull Kid or the Moon have their backstories fleshed out: they’re simply there to cause trouble for Link, compared to Ganon from previous The Legend of Zelda entries who had deeper motivations.
On top of this, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask embraces a linear perspective when it comes to time travel, meaning Link is literally traveling back to the past whenever he plays the Song of Time. This is perfectly fine, but it also means that a lot of the emotional weight given to sidequests like Anju and Kafei is lost as Link will always be able to save them, no matter how dire things get.
Very cool stuff, but not quite consistent.