It is indeed the hardest Zelda game, but since then Nintendo made them easier which I am not too happy about... BUT they did improve the dungeon quality by several times.

Miyamoto once mentioned that 7 out of 10 people who bought Ocarina of Time on N64 gave up at the Water Temple and never beat the game. So no you're not alone.

I'd consider Majora's Mask the hardest of the 3D games. It's dungeons aren't harder than Ocarina's, but some of it's bosses are and more importantly it's harder to figure out where to go and what to do next. Which is curious, because the game's more linear that Ocarina was. For the first-timer, it's also pretty difficult to find each mask or collectable and complete every task because some are pretty well hidden or are quite complicated to complete. When I played the game for the first time on N64, I remember being stuck big time. Took me a while to finally understand what I needed to do next. It's a game where you really need to talk to everyone. A lot of NPC's give clues to certain things. The Song of Inverted Time, which a necessity, is expleined by one of the scarecrows in the Trading Post or the Observatory along with the Song of Double Time for example.

While the hardest 3D Zelda game, it still has nothing on a lot of the 2D games, the NES games, especially the second, are terribly difficult (though give an amazing sense of accomplishment finally beating them having only used the tools that would have been available to you in the '80s; your NES, the cartridges and the manuals and the incomplete map that came with Zelda 1) and I'd say the Oracle games, which are pretty hard actually, A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening are also more difficult than Majora's Mask.

I've always thought MM was a bit harder than the other games in the franchise, but that has never bothered me! Zelda 2 though? That's a different story..

It's a game where unless you get a walkthrough and pause every 5 min to keep up, you will NOT 100% it.

What was great about that time period was that we were a gang of kids that played it at the same time and had time to explore it. None of us had english as our first language either so we would only occationally know words in the text and try to guess any meaning from it. It was an awesome mystery solving experience.

Things like the inverted Song of Time is actually masterful game design. You don't need it to complete the game at all, but damn it feels nice to find it. The three godess spells and the ice arrow in ocarina are the same, you don't need them but it feels soo good to find them. That's why I hate the newer Zeldas, they don't do that kind of discovery anymore.

The puzzles though. Those are fucking broken in Majoras Mask. We spent more time trying to get into the final temple than the rest of the game.

Dont try then N64 or GC version. :)

But yes, it's little hard, probably hardest Zelda after ALTTP.

I beat this game by myself when I was in middle school on the N64... I think I was better at games then lol before I knew about Gamefaqs.com I actually would beat things by myself. But anyway I really think the water temple was the hardest thing in any Zelda game if you can beat that you can beat majoras mask.

I beat this game without help back in the day. Wind Waker, playing it this year, I used guides all the time. Part of me feels it's because WW's challenges like the Triforce Quest, seem cheep to me while MM seemed logical once you understood the time mechanic. But I think part of it is MM fully captured my imagination and I wanted to explore every nook and cranny while WW was a pleasant journey but one I wanted to wrap up before too long.

The hardest part about the game for me was figuring out which masks to trade. Yeah, the game was very tough.

Thank god is on the 3DS VC. I can cheat to deat to beat Zelda 2. BTW, amazing game. Hopefully the next installment takes in consideration a lot of it like the challenge, dungeon design and towns. HD towns.