Best Action Games Like The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask

The best action games like The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask are Ocarina of Time, Deathloop and Elden Ring. Below are 5, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to action costs you.

Why Action Is a Good Answer for The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask

Filtering to action means you want the fighting to carry the game rather than the story or the map. It is the right filter when what you actually miss is how something felt in your hands.

What you get: Combat you get better at. Action games put their design budget into the moment-to-moment, so the thing you are doing in minute two is the thing you are still doing in hour twenty, only better.

What made The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the action part of that answer, and only the action part.

5 Action Games Like The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask

  1. 1. Ocarina of Time

    The game it reuses and reacts against — play it first.

  2. 2. Deathloop

    A loop where knowledge is the only progression, in a shooter.

  3. 3. Elden Ring

    For the same willingness to be genuinely unsettling.

  4. 4. The Minish Cap

    If you want more 2D Zelda after it.

  5. 5. Death's Door

    Compact adventure with a similar melancholy underneath.

What This Filter Leaves Out

Pacing and world. Action games rarely have the quiet stretches or the writing that the adventure and RPG picks bring, and a few of them are shorter than they look.

Specifically, these are strong answers for The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask that are not action games, so they are not on this page:

  • Outer Wilds — The other great time-loop game, and the best of them. Play it knowing nothing.
  • The Sexy Brutale — A repeating day full of people on schedules you have to learn.
  • 12 Minutes — Time loop as a domestic thriller, small and tense.

The full list is on games like The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask — 9 picks, no genre filter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best action game like The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask?

Ocarina of Time. The game it reuses and reacts against — play it first.

Are all of these on the Nintendo 64?

No. The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask released on the Nintendo 64, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.

What makes a good action game?

A small set of verbs and a game that keeps finding new questions to ask of them. The weak ones add buttons instead; the strong ones make you better at the ones you already have.

Are action games always hard?

No, and difficulty is a poor proxy for depth. Some of the hardest action games have very few decisions in them, and some of the deepest have a difficulty setting that lets you meet them halfway.

How are these chosen?

By hand. Each pick was written for the full The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is action — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.

Other Angles on The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask

More Action Games Recommendations

Or read the action guide for where to start in the genre generally.