Hyrule Warriors: Majora's Mask Pack – First Impressions

After the Twilight Princess DLC for Hyrule Warriors was quite disappointing, I'm enjoying the new Majora's Mask DLC a lot more.

First of all: I got Fierce Deity Link. I got my most wanted character and he turned out great. While Young Link is used as the medium, it's more like the Great Fairy, where a weapon turns out to be a character of its own. Basically you get two characters in one, though both of them are just variations of Link.

But I do like the Focus Spirit mechanic. It makes a lot of sense, since in Majora's Mask the Sword Beams of Doom were limited to magic as well. And I have to admit that it's probably better than having Fierce Deity Link as his own character, because otherwise they would have to make him a lot weaker than he was in Majora's Mask. Now Young Link gets used for the weak part and Fierce Deity Link looks a lot more impressive in this contrast. You get to wreck havoc with these crazy sword beams, which makes the Master Sword look like a toy. It's amazing and fun and they did it right.

Which makes all of this even better is the C1 mechanic, where Link plays his Ocarina, which turns your SP into Magic. In the "Rack up your KO count!" missions you can basically infinitely stay in Fierce Deity Mode because of that and in other missions you get to use Magic a lot more often than normally. It's an unique mechanic, which makes this whole moveset work really well.

It's also overpowered, as it should be... and I think that Koei found the right solution for this character, which makes me happy. There are only some minor complaints. They did miss that Fierce Deity Link is actually a lot larger, because here he just has normal size. They could have at least make him one head larger or so. And the Kokiri Sword feels also weird, since it doesn't get its upgrades. But I guess it's similar to the Knight's Sword, which Link also uses on Epona or with the Great Fairy. It's just that Young Link didn't get a real default weapon yet. However, it would have been nice to have Tatl talk for Young Link instead of Proxi. But I guess it makes sense story-wise, since he couldn't have the Fierce Deity Mask until after the events of Majora's Mask.

Also, overpowered as Fierce Deity Link is, it actually feels right to keep him as an extra. With Twili Midna I didn't really like that she didn't have any missions or collectibles, but with the Fierce Deity it kind of feels right to have him as this overpowered extra, much like the Fierce Deity's Mask was in the original. And Twili Midna, Young Link, and Fierce Deity Link are all just variations of existing characters, so I guess after all it's not so bad, how they handled the DLC characters.

It certainly also is a good thing with Tingle. If you read some of my Tingle posts on this blog, you know that I really hated him in the past, but grew to like him over the years. And his appearance in Hyrule Warriors certainly does him justice. It's absolutely hilarious and has lots of nice references like the different balloons based on his spin-off games.

But I understand when other people hate him, especially since he got in over Skull Kid. And he looks very odd in this game, mostly because the rest of the roster seems very cool and mature. Well, there already was Agitha as the oddball, but even she kind of fit in nicely. Tingle looks just out of place now... but where he came from, there are many other odd characters in the Zelda series and they probably had to start somewhere. I kind of hope that in a sequel they give Tingle his own design and make the current Majora's Mask variant a costume. He might fit in a little bit better than.

Now off to the Termina Map...

After the torture that was the Twilight Map, I'm relieved that they didn't go for the insane and frustrating damage multiplier again. Missions still can be very tough, as they should be so late in the game, but so far it doesn't seem like a tiny scratch can ruin your A-rank. (Though, I could be wrong about that. I tried missions at Great Bay and Ikana and seemed pretty awful again... the whole concept of not losing more than 10 Hearts is really what ruins the fun in this game.)

I also really enjoy the mechanic of this map. If done wrong, a map reset would have been awful, but they did it right. It's very balanced, you can basically complete the entire map without the moon crashing on you if you stay efficient. And it also gives the whole map a better sense of direction. Finally, those dungeon missions have a real purpose and you basically follow the original game's flow. And now the final level, where you fight Ganon, seems like a real goal, because it deactivates the timer. On previous maps it was just there and didn't feel like an accomplishment.

What's also really nice are the new competitive missions, that's a great idea. It reminds me even more of Unreal Tournament, which is a good thing, I like the sports. This also could be used for a multiplayer versus mode, if there ever would be one.

So, overall I'm enjoying this map quite a lot. And it's just a shame that the unlockable costumes don't seem to be worth it this time around...

I admit that they can be quite funny, but they really just took everyone's default costume and slammed a mask in their face. You don't get to use the mask with the other color variants or anything. The idea of the masks is nice, but in a sequel they need to keep it separate. So, a character can have both costumes and masks and you can combine them. This already makes a lot of sense for Cia, where they had to create three variants of all her costumes.

But... I love that at least Link also got a full Fierce Deity Link costume. I know that quite some people wanted Fierce Deity Link to be only a costume, but it's awesome to have both. They could have called this the Fierce Deity Pack.