Throughout the history of the Zelda franchise, there have been a lot of opposing battles regarding style of the series. For example: 2D vs. 3D, cartoony graphics vs. realism, and now motion controls/touch-screen controls vs. traditional controls. All interesting topics, but one I haven't really seen is an actual thread that specifically focuses on one of the bigger battles in the series, at least from my point-of-view: Whether Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask is the better game, and why. It's been brought up in threads before, but it wasn't the main focus of the thread; I wanted to make a thread with that specific focus, so, here it is.
I've already reviewed both games (OoT and MM), but basically, I want to break a few things down and give thoughts based on the two games in comparison to one another in one thread, broken down into different sections. I'm also interested in the community's thoughts on this whole game debate; it's okay to just say which one you prefer or like better, but please, no one wants to see any "OoT is the best because it's OoT!" or "MM is the best because it has masks!" posts. Because those are terrible reasons.
Anyways...
I'm gonna start by saying, and I'm pretty sure most of you know this by now, that I feel that Ocarina of Time is the better of the two games. But that's not to say it does everything better; Majora's Mask certainly improved some of those features, as I mentioned in my review. But why do I feel that way? There's a few factors. One of those would be dungeon count and quality; Inside the Deku Tree is a very bland and boring dungeon, but afterward, the dungeons are for the most part (except perhaps the Shadow Temple) unique and challenging. So let's exclude Inside the Deku Tree and Shadow Temple, and that leaves you with six dungeons of good/great/excellent quality. Yes, I'm including the Water Temple, because while switching boots was annoying in the N64 version, it's still a clever and challenging dungeon in and of itself. Whereas you have Majora's Mask, with a grand total of... ... four dungeons? That's it? And the Woodfall and Snowhead Temples weren't even that good. Woodfall was alright, one of the better first dungeons in the series, but nothing special; Snowhead was somewhat fun, but again, nothing special. Now, Great Bay Temple stands out as a very unique dungeon, and is perhaps the best if not the best water dungeon in the series (Ancient Cistern is currently challenging that spot). Stone Tower Temple is a unique dungeon and better than the first two, but I feel as if it's an overrated dungeon; they could have pulled off a similar effect just by making it a multiple-level dungeon that was never flipped, and then there were the instances where you'd miss a chest and have to flip it again by playing that damn Elegy of Emptiness three times.
Another factor where OoT I feel did better than MM was in the story department. Main story, at least. MM spins an apocalyptic tale, and when you look about at the various inhabitants of the world and see their daily lives and their preparations for the end, it's dark, it's moody, and it's emotional. Then there's the mystery of Ikana. Here, MM excelled. But that's the side stuff; much of this can be ignored when you focus on the main story. Okay, so, there's a guy who sells masks, he wants a mask that harbors an evil demon inside it, the Skull Kid stole it and is wreaking havoc, trapping away the Four Giants, and dropping a moon on the world? That's an excellent premise, but it never seems to be narrated well enough. And it has no real twists; one might try to say "How about Majora's Mask using Skull Kid as a pawn?" Yeah, sorry, saw that coming. Ocarina of Time was much stronger and much more driving in the main storyline; it was weaker with its side characters, though here and there you'll find an interesting story, and if you dig even deeper, some things you overlooked take on new significance. But MM does those parts better, so back to the point: I prefer a good, strong, driving main story, which is what OoT had. I found myself more concerned with determining what Ganondorf had done to the individual races and peoples of Hyrule (in two time periods, in some cases) and finding a way to stop him once and for all; who could forget when you opened the Door of Time and took the Master Sword only for Ganondorf to appear and take the Triforce, rubbing it in your face that you let him in to get it? Then you fought him and defeat him, only for him to drop the tower on you and then return as a giant monster. It may have been a lame final boss fight, but that final stab to the face felt pretty satisfying. And it was great to gradually pick up on bits and pieces of Ganondorf's backstory; they hardly said much about Majora at all, and while mystery is fine, never giving a true explanation in-game or in another game is kind of disappointing.
The final thing may be more subjective to me (not that the above two points are subjective), but it involves the overworld. No, not overworld design or layout. More like the utilization. Hyrule Field and Termina Field are nothing special. Hyrule Field is large, pretty, and adventurous, but suffers from a lack of objectives, enemies, and secrets (holes in the ground don't count); Termina Field adds a few more objectives and gives you enemies to fight, but it's small, claustrophobic, and feels like random objects were scattered everywhere and called a field. So basically, neither overworld is very good. And while I've said that, well, let me quote it: "It also does do a better job of feeling like a world in general, and in fact improves the strong parts of OoT's overworld." But I also said this: "I would have liked a little more overworld interaction between each area instead of disregarding the previous ones for the rest of the game," and while it does squeeze in more secrets, I stand by it; I enjoyed navigating the overworld of Ocarina of Time through the various pathways between areas, especially how some connected to each other. Fell off the Gerudo Valley bridge into the river? You end up in Lake Hylia! Little things like that, and what I enjoy is being able to go back to an area you've explored before later on for some new goal, especially in the older time period; this was a concept that was vaguely similar to the Light/Dark World concept I love so much, and so being able to see what happened to the various peoples of the land seven years later had a pretty profound effect on me. Whereas in Majora's Mask, once you complete the main objective in one part of the overworld, you are pretty much never forced to return, except for Powder Kegs. Sure, you can go back for 100% completion, but you're never required to. I guess one can write that off as story-justified, but as a gameplay mechanic, I don't really like it that much.
These are the major strong points that contribute to my preference of OoT over MM. There are so many other factors between each game though where one game does it better than the other, or equally, so that does not mean that because I prefer OoT, that every single aspect about the game is better than in MM; I've said so up above. If I could make a chart without resorting to HTML coding, I would use that with several different aspects and whether OoT or MM does them better, or if it's a tie. I'm gonna try to make as thorough a list as possible of aspects each game shares, then check off which game is superior in that aspect, or if they're even. So here we go...
- Story - OoT
- Dungeons - OoT
- Overworld - MM (I only said utilization of OoT's overworld was better)
- Bosses - OoT
- Minibosses - MM
- Physics - About equal, though I feel the horse mechanics were slightly worse in MM than in OoT
- Items - OoT
- Characters - MM
- Music - OoT (by a small margin)
- Sidequests - MM
Eh, that should be good for now, I suppose; covers the basics pretty well. So basically, the games are fairly equal to each other, but with different strong points; OoT just had more strong points that appealed to me more than MM, although MM's aren't negligible by any stretch of the word. In fact, as I conclude, I suddenly get the impression that the preference between Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask might be more psychological rather than because of actual game design, since both have such varying aspects from each other that different kinds of people will like more than the other. Not to say I'm a stranger to subjectivity; I'm more than familiar with it. But after analyzing the two games in more depth, they're pretty much so evenly designed on the average (I gave both a score of 8/10 after all) that choosing between them all just comes down to one's preference. I mean that's pretty much true of the entire series, but perhaps even more true between these two games.
But that doesn't mean we can't try to sound intelligent while explaining why we like one more than the other. 
