The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is one of my all-time favorite zeldas! Every aspect of this game gets a very high rating from me (except, of course, the difficulty) and it should be no surprise to others that have played this magnificient piece. The unique style brings a twist to the zelda franchise, making it one of the most debatable. It truly deserves recognition and I think it is a little underrated. For one thing, most people know which one they prefer: Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask. But I don't have a clue when I weigh the pros and cons. So here is a little review in my perspective:

Back Story:
Link just got sent back his younger self after (or chronologically speaking, before-but I'm not getting into that-) he defeated the evil Ganon in his adult self. He went to venture off out of Hyrule, "looking for a friend." That friend, many assume, is Navi the fairy. Link is wandering around on Epona in the woods and gets disturbed and later knocked out by two fairies. The fairies are "accomplices" to a rather infamous and the main enemy of this game: The skull-kid. The skull-kid (who is wearing Majora's Mask) goes through Link's items and takes his precious Ocarina of Time! Link then wakes up only to find the skull-kid riding away with the two fairies on Epona! Link grabs on but soon falls off and chases after him. Link then falls into a really big pit where he finds the skull-kid, where he magically changes you into a Deku-Scrub! The skull-kid runs off with one of his fairies, but accidentally leaves the other one behind. It turns out they are siblings, the girl named Tatl, and the boy named Tael. Link is stuck with Tatl (who is pretty much always mean and complaining). Tatl is now the "replacement fairy" for Navi, which is a complete bummer. So what if Navi had a little annoying voice, Tatl's attitude is incessant and cacophonous. After going through a little bit of caverns, you meet a mask salesman who makes Link a deal. If Link finds his precious mask (Majora's Mask) and his ocarina, he will return link to his human form. But Link only has 72 hours. Link then walks through the next door and comes out and finds himself in a new land called Termina. He is in Clock Town, the center of the land. After many trials and tribulations for Link to get his ocarina back (which involved Link going to the top of the tower in Clock Town and confronting the skull-kid {who is trying to end the world by bringing down the moon to earth}, only to get your ocarina and hear Tael say that there are four areas-swamp, mounatin, ocean, canyon-that Link needs to go to so he can "bring those who are there here"), Link turns back time with a song he remembered and goes back to the first day. He then goes to the mask salesman to get turned back into a human and receive a mask that alows him to turn back to a Deku whenever he wants to. However, Link did not get his mask back, so in order to stop the skull-kid and get Majora's Mask, Link must go off to the four (and yes, it's only four) dungeons in each compass direction to bring whatever is there to the skull-kid to beat him up and ultimately save the world. What a mess.

Gameplay:
So the set-up is a lot like Ocarina of Time, with the graphics a little bit ,ore improved, but visually it relates to its predecessor quite often. The button configuration is set up the same, along with the menu. Link has equiped some epic flips whie he is in mid-air, but it's all relatively the same. You are young Link, whcih at first may be slightly disappointing, but later you get used to it and it never really becomes a big deal. Now, because there are only four dungeons (which may be a complaint to some people), you aren't really going to be spending most of you're time in them. Because there are only four heart containers, that makes this zelda game to have the most heart pieces than any other (including twilight princess). So you might be spending a lot of time doing that and other sidequests. And that's the thing. This game has so much more to it if you go through the sidequests. If you really don't care about it and just want to get through the game and not explore the land (I don't know what kind of zelda fan you are if you don't like to explore, I mean, this is an adventure game), you will probably get through this game fast and be disappointed. That is not to say, however, that the dungeons and the main plot is uninteresting, either. The dungeons may be a little weird and feel unnatural to you at first, this game does take some getting used to, but playing around in different forms and being in unigue and original enviroments brings out a whole new feeling, while the classic solving-puzzles and exploring feel from any other zelda is still there. And I do not want to spoil anything, but the last dungeon is absolutey astounding and incredible. It is without a doubt one of my favorite dungeond in the history of zelda, it's that amazing. So the gameplay is turned around, with a few numerical and circumstancial differneces that sure do feel new, but does not stray far from that nostalgic zelda taste that is sure to satisfy.

Presentation (includes depth, story, sound, graphics):
The graphics, as I said, are nothing disappointing, but nothing to adore. They are there and just like OoT, also Link's hair is longe. As for the story, it is much more important. As each new release of a zelda comes out, the more important the story seems to be. The plot for this one is absolutely original. The situation you are thrown into is unlike any other zelda and has a lot more you can find out about. There may not be as much stuff that you have to do, but there sure is a heach of a lot more that you can do. To be truly honest, if I didn't get half of the rewards you get for completeing the sidequests, it wouldn't matter much to me. The reward for me is learning the story, helping the people and feeling what they feel. I know this sounds very corny, escpecially for a video game, but it's what not very many other video games can do. As a bonus, Majora's Mask has many of the same people from Ocarina of Time, but they just have different occupations and different lives, mixed in with some new characters, all like it's in an alternate reality.
As for the music, this game has some ineresting pieces, not as great as Ocarina of Time, I'll give it that, but some weird pieces that are still unsatisfying. The thing is, to me it is obviously not as good as OoT, but it still works and there are still some memerable and some emotional songs in this game, and it works just fine with me.

Overall:
Majora's Mask is an underrated game. I've seen my share of both people who were simply unsatisfied with it and liked OoT better, but I've seen people who say "Of course Majora's Mask is better." One reason in my opinion of why that is could be because the people who view it as a game say OoT was better. But people who view it as a lesson, a moral, an adventure, a whatever their minds thought it to be, said it was fantastic. Or it could simply be this game had high expectations and it was too different for people to take, but it all really comes down to opinion. In my opinion, if I had to tell someone a paragraph about this game before they played it without hearing anything else, I would say this: "Many of the sidequests have so much emotion and meaning put into them, the apocaclyptic situation of "the end of the world" really brings out the soft side and gives so much meaning to all of these characters. You may spend an entire "cycle" of three days trying to help people with problems and look at it after you're done and realize it's all going away. After you play the song of time and return back it's back to the way it was. You can decide to help them again or move on, but sooner or later, you will have to move on. But the way to stop all of the problems and misfortunes is to move on to ultimately beat all four dungeons and the final boss and stop the distruction of the world so every problem is solved. So every story has a happy ending." In my perpective, everyone should at least start to play this game with an open mind. But the truth is, out of the best video game series ever, I honestly do not know which one is the best. But what I do know is that this and all of the other games will be treasured in my heart for the rest of my life.