xX M i A s M a
In the vast yawning void.
Woah there, let's not be so brash. Allow me to retort to some of your criticisms.
First of all...while I could see the time limit thing being read as annoying, I never really felt pressed for time. Usually I would do everything leading up to a temple in one three day period, reset, slow down time, then attack the temple...leaving me about a day and a half when I defeated the boss. Plenty of time.
To me it wasn't implemented to force players to speed run the game, that would have been idiotic. I agree. It was implemented to do something unique: It gave the player the change to relive the same 72 hour period over and over and over. While this sounds boring, I can assure you it's not. The world is rich with story. There are a metric fuckton of events that only took place at a certain time on one of the three days, and a couple long quest threads that spanned the entire 3 days. It felt like being trapped in some sort of temporal hiccup, I loved it. Also, when you defeated the boss of a certain area, the surrounding region sprang back to life and opened a number of extra things to do. Bosses respawned, but could be re-defeated to force these changes again.
The application of masks was brilliant as well. Each had it's own function. Some were gifted with incredible utility, some where pretty benign. There were three that changed you into either a Deku scrub, A Goron warrior and a Zora Prince (or something) which kept gameplay diverse for me. They were all a blast to search for, it kept me busy for hours.
I feel obligated to mention Majora as well. In my opinion, Majora was best Zelda villain. The baddest of the bad. Before you grab your pitchforks, hear me out. Ganondorf was my former favorite, but it's easy to see he was motivated by the power to control. Majora tried to destroy the world for fun. Ganondorf is an evil force, but Majora is Satan.
The moon never bothered me either. The face was a little goofy, but the fact that you could see this moon approach the surface of this world bit by bit by bit kept the story close. You were constantly reminded of the plight of this world (which by the way could have been a dream, it's never really explained).
I can understand why people consider it a lesser game, it's completely left of center...but it was/is by far the most unique set of ideas in the Zelda universe yet.
I'll conclude by saying that I disagree with you sir, but I respect your candor.
/rant.
