Majora's Mask vs. Lightning Returns?

Both feature an in-game clock counting down to the end of the world and both features you trying to prevent that. The question is: which one of these two games did it right?

I personally prefer MM's handling of the whole limited time/end of the world thing simply because you can go back and reset the "timer" which then makes it a non-issue. LR has a sense of urgency to it which forces you to consider how to better spend your time.

@crimsonbrute: yeah that is pretty much it, you feel a little rushed in LR and you can't finish the game in the original 13 days as you aren't strong enough to do so.

Personnaly I did prefer LR

majoras mask.

One is regarded as one of the greatest games ever, while the other one of the worst ever.

A time limit in an open world RPG is nonsensical. I my opinion it's a smudge of bad game design on otherwise great games: I hated the idea in Fallout 1, hated it in Majora's Mask, and I am sure I would hate it in FFXIII/3, not that I'm in any rush to ever play it.

@Black_Knight_00: To be fair, Majora's Mask has one of the cleverest implementations of a time limit that I've ever seen in a game.

You start the game with this initial shock of only having three days, and your natural response is to slow things down as much as possible. Once you get over the fear of the end of the world though, and once your skillset expands and new shortcuts become available to you...you literally do master time itself, gleeing skipping forward through the days and speeding things along as much as possible. That transition from victim to master is one of the many reasons why the game is a masterpiece.

Right, and conceptually I can agree, but as a game mechanic I think it actually works against the drive to explore the world. One could argue that the 162 minutes you get after receiving the time inversion song are more than enough to go out and do anything you need to, and that's true, but i personally always found time limits disrupt my fun. I like to take my time in every game and feel no pressure whatsoever to be where the game wants me to be. That's the essence of open world for how i play games, and a ticking clock just breaks it for me.