Reviewing Monsters: The Legend of Zelda - Majora's Mask

I don't think it's an exaggeration for me to say that the Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a strong contender for my favourite Legend of Zelda game of all time. Its graphics is sure outdated now, and even the 3DS remake doesn't really bring it up to current HD standards or whatever, but I really do still love this game. I'm not here to talk about the gameplay or the story or the vibe of the game as a whole... but it's still basically my favourite in terms of the trippy world-building, the gameplay mechanics, the storyline, and the very dream-like vibe of whatever is going on.

To the uninitiated, Majora's Mask works off of the same N64 engine that Ocarina of Time ran on, so the developers were able to re-utilize a lot of the combat mechanics and general assets from that game, allowing them to focus more on designing the story and how everything else fits together in the game. And you don't have to play Ocarina to play Majora's Mask... but it sure really feels like such a more complete experience.

We've covered them all when I covered Ocarina of Time, but due to being kind of a sequel game, Majora's Mask features a lot of returning enemies from Ocarina of Time. Some (like the Peahat) are cheeky little easter eggs hidden here and there, but for the most part, the following creatures all return -- Skulltula, Golden Skulltula, Deku Baba, Withered Deku Baba, Leever, Guay, Wolfos, Wallmaster, Mad Scrub, the various Bubbles, the various Keese, Dodongo, Peahat, Freezard, Tektite, Like Like, Stalchild, Poe, Big Poe, Shell Blade, Octorok, ReDead, Gibdo, Beamos, Armor, plus minibosses Iron Knuckle, Big Octo and the Four Poe Sisters.

That's a lot of enemies that are returning, but Majora's Mask still adds a bunch of brand new enemies in the game, and let's go through them!

This review, by the way, was a pretty long time coming. I put it off for easily more than two years. Better late than never, though!


Chuchu
Three Chuchu variants appear in the game, and it's very, very interesting that this is the Chuchu's first appearance. In other Zelda games the Chuchus tend to go for a more 'cute' look, with the most enduring look being this one from Wind Waker, although thanks to the immense success of that game I imagine BOTW's Chuchus to be how most people imagine the creatures looking like as the default. The original Chuchus, on the other hand, are these sad blobs of slime with giant, sad grins and sad-looking eyes on slug-stalks. They just look so utterly pathetic, and they're weak and quite literally exist for Link to beat them up to take the treasure that are visibly displayed inside -- Green Chuchu drop magic potions, Red Chuchu drop hearts, Yellow Chuchu drop arrows... while Blue Chuchus just kind of suck. I feel like a 'slime' enemy was the one that's perhaps the most missing out of the fantasy monster tropes in Ocarina of Time, so having the Chuchu introduced not just in this game but to the franchise as a whole is very welcome.


Bad Bat
We'll get this one out of the way first, because... shit, they're basically just larger Keese with a slightly different model. I think the difference in the gimmick is that Bad Bats like to hide in trees and cave walls and then swoop down at you, but otherwise they function similarly to Keese, sans the ability to channel elements.


Giant Bee
Oh hey, it's a giant bee! A very pixelated one at that. Not much to say here, Majora's Mask has these little bees that will attack you if you disturb their nest. Bees and hornets terrify me, and I approve that many video games put them in as threatening enemies. We'll be getting the 'regular animals' out of the way first.


Moth
FUCK these things with a rusty rod. I don't tend to talk too much about how hard or how annoying an enemy is in-game when doing these monster reviews, but seriously, fuck these hell moths of doomy doom. They will basically swarm around Link if he carries a stick on fire. Makes sense, right? Moths are attracted to fire... but they will straight up steal Link's fire and there's no real way to kill them other than to waste one of your preciously limited bombs, and they basically act as a little annoying way to 'time' these light-a-torch puzzles. Neat in concept, horribly irritating in execution.


Takkuri
Look at these ugly bastards, with their exaggerated and cartoonishly large bald heads, weird puffy ears and nasty-looking eyes. The designers really want to emphasize what utter rat bastards the Takkuri (they borrow their names from the Japanese word for 'purse snatcher') are -- they're not content to just peck and attack you like the Guays (who also appear as the 'basic' bird enemy) but the Takkuri will straight up swoop in, steal one of Link's items, and fly off. Sometimes it's just rupees, which are money and that's annoying but not disabling if you can't get it back... but the Takkuri might also very well steal either your sword or one of your empty bottles and just spirit it away. While we never see what goes on behind the scenes, whatever item that the Takkuri steals will end up in Clock Town's Curiousity Shop. Is there like, some mysterious underground fencing system going on in Termina, where evil robber birds are able to pawn the things they sell?


Mini Baba
Sort of a variant of the Deku Baba, which the game designers honestly correctly recognizes as one of the cooler enemies in Ocarina of Time. Hey, people making Breath of the Wild 2? Less generic humanoid blin-clone enemies and more weirdo creatures like this, thanks. The Mini Babas are implied to be like, an immature version of the Deku Baba, since all they do is have their flower-mouths jut out of the ground and clatter and try to chomp on Link. They don't have the serpent-like stalks that their larger siblings are known for!



Bio Deku Baba
Of course, we don't just get a weaker version, but also a stronger version! The Bio Deku Baba inhabits watery areas almost exclusively, and they hang upside-down from lily pads, with little stick hands that allow them to wiggle around. A good chunk of the game involves Link transforming into a Zora (a fish man!) so we have a bunch of new water-themed enemies. It's an aquatic carnivorous plant, it's something like a bladderwort! Hilariously, if Link slices off their stalks, they will sprout googly eyes and will crawls around with their little stick-figure hands, making them into very hilarious-looking little Pac-Man like enemies with adorable googly-woogly eyes. Extremely comical, and I love it.


Snapper
Not much to say here, the first area (and the one with proportionally the most new enemies) is the Southern Swamp and Woodfall Temple, the main major areas you first go into. The Snappers are just kind of cute snapping turtles with adorable eyes and a nicely-textured shell, and I absolutely love the little GAG-WAG soundbyte they make when they are about to attack. Unlike real turtles, the Snappers attack by retracting their head and limbs and spinning around like a goddamn Beyblade towards Link. Early on the only way you can beat the Snapper is to transform into Deku Scrub Link, hide inside a flower and then shoryuken the Snappers from beneath when they spin above where Deku Link is hiding. Later on, the Snapper become more and more of a convenience once Link has obtained the bombs or the Goron form. This is what I really like about pre-BOTW Legend of Zelda games, where some enemies that are originally troublesome to defeat ends up being so much more easier to take down as you unlock more and more powers.


Dragonfly
I genuinely can't find a good picture of the Dragonfly online, and I have no idea how to screenshot my 3DS. But suffice to say that Termina's Dragonflies are nothing like real-life dragonflies, but are more like some bizarre wasp-like creature with a creepily lizard-like head. Instead of stingers, their tails are actually electrified. It's such a weird creature, and looks pretty threatening since they're a bit larger than Link's Deku form, but your fairy buddy Tatl makes it clear that they're actually harmless, and will only really be harmful if you try to fly around without clearing all of the Dragonflies in the area first.


Hiploop
The enemy called 'Hiploop' in all Japanese Zelda games have all been translated as the 'Helmasaur' in the 2D and have all looked like reptilian dinosaurs. In Majora's Mask, however, the Hiploops are... weird beetles with petal-like wings and a blue helmet over their face? It's very weird-looking, and I do really like how they look with their two glowing eyes and their cute little buggy animations. Just like traditional 2D Helmasaurs, the Hiploops always inhabit narrow pathways and platforms and will try to knock Link off, and, of course, it's their butts that are the most vulnerable.


Carnivorous Lily Pad
Alternatively called 'Wicked Flower' since there isn't an official name for a non-Tatl-targettable enemy, I want to give a little nod to these guys that litter the Woodfall Temple. Link will have to jump and transverse a bunch of lilypads on the surface of ponds and rivers... but then sometimes you'll have these obviously-bad-news Lily Pads that will chomp you and spit you out into the damaging acid-water that they grow in. The only way you can hop on them is if you turn into your Deku Scrub form, and apparently these Lily Pads don't mind the pitter-patter of little plant feet! I like them, they've got an eyeball at their center.


Real Bombchu
"Real" Bombchu is a bit of a joke that needs you to kind of play the game to get, because in both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, one of the items available for Link to use is the 'Bombchu', a bomb shaped like a mouse that will skitter towards the enemy. (Chu, as anyone who has played Pokemon will tell you, is the onomatopoeia for the voice a mouse makes in Japan.) So in Termina apparently Real Bombchu exist! They're just squat rats with bombs on their tails and a hilariously over-the-top manic looks on their faces. They just charge at Link and blow themselves up. Kind of a hilariously weird addition to the game for sure.


Boe
Hahaha, what are these things? The first time you meet a Boe is the Black Boe variant in Woodfall Temple, when you fall off a ledge into one of the darker levels... and then like a whole dozen of these glowing red-and-yellow eyes appear and they are just these wispy black blobs that jump and attack you. Tatl just tells you to 'calm down and attack it, there's just a lot of them'. I'm not sure what they're supposed to be, the name doesn't tell us much. Are they shadows? Ghosts? Furry spherical creatures? The White Boes, at least, are a bit more easy to tell what they are, they're snow-blobs, and they spawn in the snowy areas of the Snowhead Region.


Eeno
The Snowhead Region doesn't actually have a whole lot of new enemies, mostly just reusing assets of older ice-themed enemies (Ocarina was meant to have an ice-themed area, but they ended up reducing it to a short dungeon instead, so there were a lot of assets to use), but the ones that they added are neat! The Eeno are honestly really memorable mostly because of their very sad looking faces, and I do like that they're basically just blobby snow-masses with arms that chuck snowballs at you. The larger versions will split into three smaller Eenos upon death. Pretty neat enemy!


"Them"
As part of a little side-quests involving defending Romani's Ranch from what was supposed to be 'aliens' or 'ghosts'. It's a fun mini-game that revolves around a parody of alien encounters, where Link's investigation of the missing cows of Romani's Ranch leads him into finding that the aliens (which descend from a red star) are these bizarre, floating ghost-like creatures with a weird quasi-triangular heads, zombie hands and searchlight eyes. Link fights them in basically a 'base defense' minigame, and these alien-ghosts can only be beaten with arrows. I thought they were just weird Poes back when I first played Majora's Mask, but turns out they are based on a real-life alleged alien encounter, the iconic Flatwoods Monster, a design that has been proven to be surprisingly popular in some Japanese media. Majora's Mask never really explains what aliens are doing in Termina, or if they are really aliens and not just weird ghosts or whatever... but honestly, it just adds to the bizarre charm of 'what is going on' in Termina.


Deep Python
After the swamp-forest area, and the ice-themed Snowhead Peaks, the third major area is the Great Bay, a beach that leads to a lot of water-themed locations. And so we have a bunch of new aquatic enemies! My favourite has to be the Deep Python, which, granted, have heads that look more like bizarre beaked dragons or something, but behave more or less like moray eels. There's one area where it's just this deep underwater chasm with the giant pythons slowly coming in and out of caves like moray eels. Need!


Skullfish
Oh hey it's a skeleton fish! Nothing much to say here, making a creature into a skeleton is a very, very easy way for audiences to go 'gotcha, it's an evil creature'. Zelda, interestingly, never has any real monster that's a proper 'necromancer' or whatever. Undead monsters just spontaneously exist exist. Skullfish are the 'weak' enemies of the underwater areas, dying to everything in Link's arsenal in his Zora form.


Desbreko
Desbreko is an even bigger undead fish, actually large enough to chomp down on Link. They're not that much difficult than the Skullfish, but they are actually a decent fight. I like the more detailed fish head and fins, and how it manages to look so much more threatening with a different head. Apparently, according to the wiki, Desbreko's Japanese name (Death Pleco) borrows from Plecostomus, a genus of... catfish? Those weird sucker-mouthed fishes that you use to clean moss in your aquarium? Yeah, that wasn't what I was expecting.


Dexihand
One of the cooler-looking enemies is the Dexihand, which are all underwater, and I absolutely love the very thin, tapering fingers on this thing that end in E.T. style bulbs. I also really like how the arm moving up towards the hand is stylized to look like it didn't grow properly. Since they are underwater they might just be mutated seaweed that resemble human hands, but at the same time it is Zelda so having them actually be creepy disembodied human hands or ghosts would work just as well. They function like less annoying Floormasters/Wallmasters, their fellow hand monsters. Instead of teleporting Link to the beginning of the dungeon, though, the Dexihand just grabs Link and bashes him into the seafloor.


Nejiron
The fourth and final area is a desert area filled with a lost civilization, most of which have been turned into skeletons... nevermind, I guess in Majora's Mask, we actually do have an explanation for the undead! Not all the enemies in the Ikana Canyon are skeletons, though. We also have the Nejiron, whose names mean 'twisted Goron'. Nejirons initially resemble Gorons with spindlier limbs, but have far more dopey eyes. They attack by rolling at Link and can be bombed to hell. It's kind of a weird enemy, I really don't have much to say here.


Garo
More interesting are the Garo, which are strange, hooded figures with two glowing eyes, and weird, almost puppet-like legs sticking out of that giant, hooded cloak. And they dual-wield curved blades... or are their arms simply just be blades? They are the ancient enemies of the Ikana kingdom before the Ikana were wiped out, and what little we see of the Garo paints them as this noble people with their own strange code of honour. I do really like that before each Garo fights Link, they summon a small arena made out of a wall of flames to keep the battle one-on-one, and apparently it's "the Garo Way" to die without leaving a body. It's one of the few times where Link straight-up fights and kills non-boss enemies that are explicitly stated to be sentient and alive and not ambiguously maybe-it's-smart-like-a-dog-or-a-monkey in the way that the -blin style monsters were shown to be in other games.


Death Armos
The Armos reappear in this game, and the Death Armos basically gets revamped to look more like a knight with a sword and a shield instead of the monstrous, vaguely Tiki-head-looking regular Armos in the N64 games. This also has the bonus effect of making the Armos look like some of their 2D appearances! The Death Armos only shows up in the Stone Tower Temple, and are so tough that, well, you need to aim your arrows at that specific spot on its chest, causing it to flip upside-down and render it vulnerable. Not much to say here, although I always do like it when monsters have one or two stronger variants that you meet in the story.
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And that's it for the first batch of Majora's Mask monsters. Majora's Mask doesn't have a lot of bosses and the dungeons rely more on length than amount to fill in time, but I do have enough to say about the overworld bosses and minibosses too. So see you guys next time for the rest of Majora's Mask monsters!