i'd write a big long preface here but that's fucking boring, so a few things i should note:
... actually, lemme get into that point right quick, before I continue.
the short version is that i just like 'em better. trust me, i've tried playing both ocarina and majora via both of their official releases, but certain points really just stuck out to me as not fun. things like 20fps and clunky item management/usage on the N64, or the midlly uncomfortable form factor of the 3DS (as well as the changes i hear were made to majora). i give my dearest thanks to the team behind the ship of harkinian (OOT) and 2ship2harkinian (MM) PC ports. without them, i probably wouldn't have been able to have a truly comfortable experience with these games.
does this unfairly skew my opinions about these games?
probably.
do i care in the slightest?
not a chance lmfao
with that out of the way,
ocarina is an interesting game to me. few individual parts of it stick out to me, so i'll be spending this section discussing a bunch of vaguely disorganized thoughts on the game as a whole, plus the way OOT broke my fucking heart in two.
ocarina of time is not a difficult game by any metric. the hardest it ever got was a puzzle or two briefly stumping me, and the time i (by my own stupidity) ran out of magic fighting ganondorf. most enemies have very simple patterns, and even the ones that are supposed to be difficult (side-eyeing iron knuckles here) can be easily circumented with the simple solution of backflip into jump slash.
and that's fine.
that's good, even.
i love ocarina of time's simplicity. to those not used to puzzling, it challenges you without putting you in too far over your head. and combat, while it can be mildly difficult at times, always feels manageable. i would argue this is one of ocarina's strong suits.the single gripe i have might sound like it contradicts what i just said, but i would argue otherwise: ocarina never properly tests your skill at the sort of z-target dance style of combat you're doing with a solid chunk of the game's enemies. this isn't inherently bad, since ocarina's boss fights are essentially mini puzzles in disguise, it just disappoints me a little.
speaking of things that annoyed me a little that i still strongly feel positive about, the ocarina from ocarina of time itself is pretty cool. i love it as a game mechanic, and i love playing the ocarina just for fun. by the end of my playthrough, i was whipping it out to blast a song in an npc's face whenever they annoyed me. gotta hit 'em with the good ol' 
to make myself feel better about things.
making frequently-used songs only three-note patterns was one of the better decisions made for the ocarina, because good lord was i having a terrible time trying to remember the longer warp songs. the 3DS remake lets you remind yourself of how songs go on the touch screen whenever you whip out the ocarina, and while i think something like this "song index" would have been cool for ship of harkinian, i totally get not including it. imagine designing the ui for that without destroying the point of using the ocarina...
also, it strikes me as kinda fucked up that the song of time, arguably the most important ocarina song, feels kind of underused in OOT. it's used to open the door of time and solve a few... time block??? puzzles??? but that's about it, from my memory. thankfully majora's mask ends up expanding on this later, but this ain't about that game.
one last gripe: mirror shield, what happened to you,,, why can't you reflect projectiles,,,,,,,
okay anyway,
time travel in ocarina hits a little too close to home for me. i'd already been spoiled on a few things before playing, like the town filled with redeads, but nothing could have prepared me for the return to kokiri forest.
imagine stepping away for a few minutes and suddenly, nobody recognizes you. you've aged seven years in an instant, yet your friends and family all stayed the same. they all wonder where you went, and they say it to your face. you've been forced to move on, but home hasn't.
you've grown up too fast.
i had to take a minute when i realized what was happening. it all hit a little too close to home.
after kokiri forest and its temple, i didn't think about it for a while. i spent most of the rest of my playthrough in awe at how the familiar had changed, and at the new places i was able to explore as adult link. all goes well (save for running out of magic against ganondorf once), until the very, very end.
until link was sent back seven years, before his adventure had even really begun.
until navi left him, his only persistent friend disappearing once she served her purpose.
for the world, this was a happy ending... but for the hero of time?
it's just lonely.
i can't help but wonder how someone could possibly cope with this. returning to people who might know you, but know nothing of what you've been through. people who couldn't understand even if you try to explain it to them. people who just kept living after you made what, to me, feels like the ultimate sacrifice.
my memories, alongside people's memory of me, are what make me who i am. the idea of living in a world where that experience never mattered just feels... wrong. it puts a pit in my stomach that i can't quite describe.
on the topic of dread, i suppose it's a good time to switch gears and talk about
majora's mask is a game that gives me more questions than answers, and i'm all here for it. i generally have more detailed thoughts about majora's mask and its world, as i'm more familiar with it thanks to grinding out all the heart containers and bombers' notebook sidequests. but again, i'd like to get some broader thoughts out of the way first.
most of my general gameplay thoughts on ocarina also apply to majora. i do greatly enjoy having my entire inventory available to me at once, though. i understand why the child and adult inventories were seperate in OOT, but it just didn't feel good to me... and link getting essentially his adult arsenal back in majora was a ton of fun. having the bunny hood and the hookshot in the same moveset is such a lifesaver. there is a bit of item bloat in majora, but it never really felt that way thanks to items in the inventory being organized in a way that, in my mind, makes more sense.
combat is roughly the same as in ocarina, which is expected and also perfectly fine. it's especially fine that fights aren't as time-consuming when you remember the time limit.
oh yeah, the time limit! who could forget about
there is not a single inch of majora's mask that i can say feels entirely safe from the all-consuming dread of the moon's imminent fall. even at its most peaceful, its most uplifting, its most carefree, nothing can take away your knowledge of clock town's fate. for a while, majora's gameplay loop slowly started to become emotionally exhausting. looping back and seeing my progress undone, and my relationships ripped away, like it was all for nothing.
i was feeling this especially hard by the time i reached the game's midpoint in the great bay, but one sight took me right out of it:
mikau's grave.
for the uninitiated, mikau is one of the characters who lends link their power in the form of a transformation mask as they perish. the aftermath of obtaining mikau's mask shows link standing before a grave that wasn't there before. presumably, this is one link built himself. or at the very least, it erected itself when link obtained mikau's mask as the "puzzle complete" jingle played in the distance. something like that.
and unlike most things in majora's mask, mikau's grave is always there as a new cycle begins, so long as you've soothed his soul and obtained the zora mask.. no matter how many times you reset back to the first day, no matter how many times you revisit the great bay, mikau's grave persists.
it's probably just omnipresent as a means to make sure you always have the zora moveset tutorial around. but to me?
mikau's grave was the first sign that i was truly making a difference in the world of majora's mask. the first sign that, despite all odds, there might truly be hope for termina's future.
you might see it as a little silly to have such a sentiment about a tutorial in a video game, but coming back and seeing that grave set right where it was last cycle made me completely stop just to write about it on discord.
it's only just now hitting me how important this part of majora's mask really was to me... finding that one light in the dark like i did. and it's only just now hitting me that this very realization might be one of the most important things about majora's mask: finding hope in the hopeless.
things might seem terrible. and they definitely are terrible. but it's not over.
every three-day cycle in majora's mask starts out roughly the same. score an easy 100 rupees in east clock town, stock up, forget to play the inverse song of time, and get to work! that work usually takes one of three forms:
to my own surprise, my favorite variety of these are the first and third. i love the dungeons of majora's mask, but i love its world even more... a shocking contrast to my view of ocarina of time, where its dungeons were the highest point for me instead of exploring the world. maybe it's because termina is far more painless to explore, thanks to its smaller field and overall more dense segments.
there are so many unique little areas that i think deserve their own spotlight, but i don't think i exactly have the juice to give them all an extended spotlight, so to rapid-fire these areas:
those aside, i started to find a certain comfort in the routine after a while. in a way, i guess it almost felt like i lived in clock town myself, watching the days go by and seeing things and people change in (accelerated) real time. meeting people, making memories, making peace... almost makes me wonder what a true 3-day, 72-hour majora's mask experience might be like. could you truly save everyone in three real days?
speaking of saving everyone, i suppose now's a good time to talk about
you probably know the basics of how zelda dungeons work, so i won't bore you here. instead, i'll be dedicating a short time to talking about some of majora's temples and mini dungeons that i really liked. i'm not even gonna try to hit everything, though, 'cause trying to gas up pinnacle rock is beyond my creative ability.
the deku palace is a wonderful little test of what you've learned from playing with deku link. two of his major abilities get tested here: the bubble attack, used to snipe guards on platforms you want to reach, and launching from deku flowers, which is deku link's special movement mechanic. the grounded half of the deku palace is only particularly useful for getting the magic beans you need to access the upper half, but there's still a heart piece in there for completionists that don't mind doing hyrule castle guards all over again.
being able to see the entire area above and watch the platforms float by is a nice little nudge that there's something up there, even if the player doesn't know of its importance yet. not sure why human link can't just climb up the ledges at the end of the right maze, though. they're obviously a height that he can and has climbed. does he just suddenly have an aversion to climbing random objects now?
the way from here to woodfall temple after learning the sonata of awakening is fairly simple, albeit a little time-consuming. i like the touch of needing the sonata to actually make the temple appear - this is a detail that the game follows through on with each of its dungeons, but of them all, i like woodfall temple rising from the water the most. just barely above watching that huge goron totally fucking bite it in snowhead.
woodfall temple is, like, 90% vibes. until you get within half a mile of an enemy. then the music and vibes are gone.
there isn't much interesting puzzling to speak of, though i do appreciate the way this temple loops back in on itself like, three different times. it's good at testing your skill with deku flowers, and it gives you access to the bow (one of the most useful dungeon items in the game), but aside from that it's not very special. so instead, i'll use this space to talk about one of my favorite new mechanics in majora's mask: stray fairies!
there are fifteen stray fairies hidden all over each temple, and collecting them all allows you to reform the area's great fairy and get a bonus from her! these bonuses are all returning from ocarina of time, so they aren't too special to returning players... but are you really gonna say no to the super spin attack? didn't think so.
unlike most temples' bosses, odolwa can be defeated using just about any tool in your kit. he has a surprisingly large variety of attacks, too, making him a fun boss to return to after your toolkit's expanded some! no notes, odolwa's awesome.
the pirate hideout is basically just a pirate-themed rerun of the gerudo fortress from ocarina of time. swap carpenters for eggs and thieves for pirates, and you've got your mini-dungeon. it's still fun, though! you get the hookshot here (which has an awesome redesign compared to its OOT counterpart), and the exploration is more involved than its ocarina counterpart. you have to sneak in through an underwater entrance and do a few simple puzzles to get all the way into the hideout. it's good stuff! though, it was around this point that i realized getting the gilded sword immediately after finishing snowhead maybe wasn't the best idea. i'm pretty sure that most combat encounters are balanced around the kokiri sword or razor sword, since all of my fights with the gerudo pirates ended in a couple jump slashes. it's a cool-ass sword though, so i'm not really complaining.
as an added bonus, if you're ever in need of making a quick buck and you've exhausted your other options this cycle, you can get like, sixty rupees deep underwater in the outside section.
i don't have a lot to say about ikana castle's design as a dungeon, but i wanted to give it some praise for how it teaches you to use the mirror shield's (very briefly used) combat capabilities! light deflected by the mirror shield can destroy undead sorts of enemies on contact, and the way i found out was by killing an enemy by complete accident with it. i honestly have no clue if the game ever formally teaches you about this, but given that there are two different rooms where you can watch it happen and make the connection, i assume that's the intended way to learn.
also, fuck those birds outside. little bitches had me climbing back up the castle at least a couple times.
frankly, i don't have very many thoughts about stone tower temple itself. i enjoyed the wind gusts for deku link, and the hunt for its stray fairies was a wonderful time! but really, the stone tower temple's highlight was the flipping.
i'll be totally honest and say that flipping the temple doesn't actually do a whole lot for stone tower temple as a dungeon... but that doesn't make it feel any less rewarding to take advantage of. little breadcrumbs are left all over the place, and flipping completely recontextualizes some rooms. the bridge room is totally dry when it's upside down!
also, i'm a huge fan of being granted the giant's mask for being able to withstand fighting one of the most mildly annoying enemies in the game. being able to totally wreck twinmold with minimal effort was incredibly fun, and it felt like such a fun reward for completing one of the game's longer dungeons!
in the end, all good things must come to an end.
reaching the ending of majora's mask really did feel bittersweet to me, knowing link would once again be left to continue on and wander... but this time, i had some hope for the little guy. to quote the happy mask salesman in that scene, "whether a parting be forever or merely for a short time... that is up to you."
having this game tell both you and link that goodbye isn't forever got to me a little bit. anyone who's friends with me will know that as of writing this, the quote from above is currently my status on discord, haha... but really, this message feels so important to me. i know the hero of time's fate was effectively sealed by twilight princess... but i'm still holding out hope. maybe some day, some version of the hero of time will see a happy ending.
i'm rooting for you, little guy.
at this point, i'm kind of running out of mental energy to write this, but... if there's one takeaway from this whole thing, it's that the zelda 64 duology are fucking awesome and you should play them if you haven't. i know i've spoiled a fair amount here, but i promise you, these games are absolutely worth experiencing despite that.
play ocarina of time.
play majora's mask.
and cry like a baby about it the way i did.
i promise you, it's worth it.