Welcome to Termina

So Link finds himself in the land of Termina, doomed to perish under the weight of its own moon in a matter of seventy-two hours.  The unfortunate events keep piling on top of us, don't they?  Either way, a character we could have done without his return, the Happy Mask Salesman, has come to Termina to stalk us.  The game begins by taking away our humanoid form and makes us a deku scrub with no other option (hey, thanks...sarcasm is not sold seperately.  when I first played through this game, this in of itself made me detest the game.)  I mean, seriously, do you want your players to detest you from the start of the game?  I'd have switched the orders of the forms a bit so that you get a useful form, the suckish form, and then finally the coolest form...whereas this game goes from suckish to nice to awesome (and nice and awesome are able to alternate into a humanoid).  Well, the first part of the game is designed to introduce us to the doomsday element of the game by making us stay around for the three-day cycle in order to gain access to the Skull Kid's chamber (after a series of errands, of course...we need to be productive while letting time fly.  there's plenty to do in Clock Town, after all).  Here we gain magic power (Deku Link's victory pose at this is humorous), become a member of a top secret organization (kind of) and ascertain a useful item or two.  What makes this game hard is it plants you in a non-Hylian world (so there's nothing familiar for you) off the bat and doesn't give you much direction - you must make most of the decisions yourself (unlike most Zeldas, where the game leads you to where you need to go next via plot or an irritating fairy), and you must make them quickly because while the game has 72 hours, each hour translates to about a real-world minute. 

Speaking of fairies, this time around instead of Navi (who I think was awesome, even if she did shout "Hey!" all the time, she was an awesome companion for Ocarina of Time's Link) you have Tatl, a fairy who is seperated from her brother and I suppose "master" the Skull Kid.  You think they'd have difficulty topping Navi's "Hey!" but no.  This little bugger has a bell.  While she isn't as demanding that you pay attention to her, she's still pretty bad.  Still kind of helpful (I think Navi was more helpful, but still cryptic enough not to give everything away) she's actually a major plot element in contrast to her previous element, who served only as a side-kick, really.  (Zelda's role was far more crux in Ocarina of Time than Navi's).

So our first mission is to get the Ocarina of Time back so that we can SAVE.  This also turns me off to this game right off because you have to keep playing unless you want to start the whole thing from the very beginning.  The Song of Time is the only way to save, and when you do, everything that's numerical, you lose it.  Well, that's another great feature isn't it?  Yes, it makes sense given the nature of temporal laws.  But I digress.