Culture

Platform: Nintendo 64
It's become a cliché to criticise each new Zelda release as being just like all the rest. “Yawn”, they chorus. “You start off as some sort of fey-leaf elfin dude in a forest wearing green pyjamas. You find the wooden sword and shield, hack some plants and ride on a horsey solving contrived temples with a magic boomerang and a hookshot”. I sort of agree with that sentiment, but I would have a much easier time criticising Twilight Princess if any other game did large-scale temple-style puzzles better than the superficially repetitive series does. That said, it's a large chunk of the reason Majora's Mask is my favorite. For the most part, the less loved of the two Nintendo 64 games forsakes the formula.

 
Stark differences are obvious from the start. The game imposes a fairly hardcore three-day-in-game-time limit on the player, which translates to about 54 minutes. Immediately it's less kiddy, and the game's style follows suit. The art direction is what I imagine a hypothetical incredibly creepy Miyazaki movie to look like; the threat of a horrifying grinning moon looms over the whole game, threatening to crash down into the earth if the solution isn't found in time, and the deku scrub you transform into after wearing the appropriate mask might be the saddest looking creature I've ever seen.
 

The protagonist, Link, retains his ocarina from Majora's much more famous predecessor and using the quintessential “Song of Time” you can, at the last moment or earlier, rewind back to the first day. This undoes the majority of what you had achieved, but leaves you with your masks, banked rupees and learned songs. Seeing all the good that you, the player, had achieved being undone by your own forced hand is actually really poignant, especially when you return to see the re-frozen Gorons.