It feels like it has been forever since I have reviewed a Nendoroid and because I missed out on the first wave of Kirby Nendoroids, I pre-ordered Link from amiami.com and have it now to review before most people have been able to get the figure.  I count myself lucky and while most of the reviews I have seen are glowing of this figure, I think it has some downsides that you should know before buying.  Awhile back on the site, I called Nendoroids kind of a hybrid between an action figure and a statue, because while there is articulation, it is always limited and I think this is very true for this particular Nendoroid.  Ir easy to get swept up in the cuteness and all the accessories and look past some of the drawbacks, but in this review I’ll be talking about both.

Box – The design for this Nendoroid is the same as previous Nintendo ones that I have reviewed and the only real difference is the purple color which fits Majora’s Mask well.  The box is surprisingly the smaller size and this is impressive considering how jam-packed full of accessories it is.  Like the Wind Waker Link Nendoroid, the cardboard background is not useful for displays and is just the same color as the box.  This is a disappointment and one of the things I haven’t liked about the Zelda Nendoroids when compared to the Mario ones.  The backgrounds are great for pictures and just really nice to have.

Accessories – Nendoroids always come an impressive number of accessories, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that this figure probably has the most out of all of the Nintendo Nendoroids to date.  Normally, I’d list the accessories that a figure has, but this one comes with so many that I’m going to go through each one piece by piece and show you examples of the poses that you can create with them.  I did not combine many of them together in the pictures to help you see each one individually, but know that it can also be done (especially with Tatl).

The small and somewhat annoying fairy is actually the perfect place to start.  She is quite large in comparison to Link, but Nendoroids are not to scale so this is not a huge deal.  Tatl has a nice clean paint job that mirrors her model in Majora’s Mask and her wings have a nice design in them which is hard to see in the picture, but look like real insect wings.  Tatl is versatile and will go with basically any accessory so this is a really nice one to have.

Another staple that you would expect with Link is his sword and shield.  The sword is the simple Kokiri one you have early in the game so it isn’t quite as impressive as a sword from later in the game could be.  The shield looks excellent and has really nice, crisp paint.  There are two poses shown on the box and to be honest, it is hard to do much more with these accessories.  I will discuss this in more detail later on, but with the limited arms set, this Nendoroid has limited pose-ability, especially when it comes to swinging his sword.  The two suggested poses do look nice however as you can see in the picture above and one later on in this review.

One of the accessories that I was most excited to see is the potion and it is surprisingly small and cute to see Link use.  While it is relatively easy to have Link holding the potion in front of him or for him to look like he is about to drink from the potion, there are a couple of downsides to it.  One is that the cap is not removable so it looks a little silly when Link is close to taking a sip.  My potion has a large air bubble in the middle which can be seen on both sides.  This also makes the potion look less nice and is the kind of defects you don’t see from Nendoroids.  Hopefully, I just had bad luck and this is not a common issue with this Nendoroid.

Another set of accessories I was curious to mess around with were the masks that transform Link in the game.  These masks are tiny though thankfully, the details look nice.  Unlike in the game (and the animation you see every time Link puts on the Goron, Deku, or Zora mask), they do not cover Link’s face and don’t look especially good up close to it.  Instead, it looks best if he holds it a little away or underneath his face.  While they add even more display options to the figure, I think overall, these masks are limited in their usefulness by their size.  The Zora Mask in particular is hard to position on Link’s hand and doesn’t look very good.  The masks are not terrible by any stretch, but for some reason I still feel disappointed by how limited they are.

That brings us to the larger sized masks which both are excellent.  The Bunny Hood fits on Link’s head snugly and easily and looks really great.  While Link can only be shown running one way because of the single extra leg, this is probably one of my favorite poses and looks for him.  Unfortunately, the Bunny Hood does not seem to fit on other Nintendo Nendoroids.  Neither Luigi or Wind Waker Link looked good with it on.  The Bunny Hood is very common in Smash Brothers and would have been a great accessory to be able to share with other links.  The true highlight is Majora’s Mask which is really big and has incredible paint.  It really does look eerie in the pictures I’ve taken.  Fortunately, it is easy to put on and it doesn’t attach directly to the face so there are no worries about damaging the figure.

The only extra expression we get with this Link is a yelling face, which fits the sword and shield accessories well and is a nice counterpoint to the smiling Link.  One more expression would have been great, but with all of the other accessories we get and the fact that Link isn’t as expressive in Majora’s Mask like he is in Wind Waker, I can’t really complain about that.

While the amount of poses and displays these accessories can be used for is truly impressive, the arms and legs are a major downside to this figure.  While it comes with one leg and four different arms, this does not give you as much flexibility as you would like.  The problem is that each arm and leg has specific purposes and so when you want to use a particular accessory, you need to use that matching arm.  One of Nendoroids’ mottos or slogans is that they are “Cute to look at, fun to play with and great to collect” and I think both of the Link Nendoroids fall down in the fun to play with department.  Wind Waker Link can be damaged fairly easily when you play around with him and Majora’s Mask Nendoroid has you either checking the manual or going through the hassle of trying multiple arms out until you find the right one.  I don’t want to complain too heavily about this or make it seem like the figure is not great, it is actually pretty neat, but this is one reason why I think the Mario and Luigi Nendoroids are more fun to own and mess around with than either of the Zelda ones.

Paint Details and Paint Transfer – Something I haven’t mentioned, but I’m sure you could see in the pictures is how great both Link’s eyes and hair look.  The shading on the hair really is outstanding and quite frankly, looks better than in the game!  Unfortunately, the Link that I purchased does have a minor paint issue here and there which is surprising for a Nendoroid.  Fortunately, it is not so much that the paint bleeds onto other colors, but on his belt buckles, particularly the gold part, the top and bottom part of the buckle do not have enough gold paint.  This is the hardest part to paint on the whole figure and I appreciate that Good Smile didn’t allow the gold paint to bleed onto Link’s tunic, but it would be have been nice to see a little more paint applied there.

One other thing to be aware of that I think is unavoidable and not a huge deal is that the pegs for Link’s arms go into his green tunic shoulder pieces and the green paint transfers to the pegs.  I have only messed around with the Nendoroid for this review and put him in the various poses for this review and each of the pegs now has a little bit of green paint showing on the lighter, skin-colored pegs.  This is not a huge deal because nobody sees the pegs anyway, but it is an uncommon issue with Nendoroids and it is good to be aware of if you pick this figure up.

Closing Thoughts – While writing this article, I have realized that I’ve gotten better as a figure reviewer since the early days of this site.  I have watched early reviews of this Nendoroid on Youtube and most are glowing.  It is easy to become awed by the accessories Nendoroids come with and forget about the issues or downsides they have and I tried to avoid that in this article.  I actually like this Nendoroid considerably better than the Wind Waker Link because of the stronger accessories and huge array of display options.  While this Nendoroid has some downsides, I think it is definitely worth the money to any Zelda or Majora’s Mask fans.  Link and Zelda may be better suited to an action figure line like Figma, but there is still a lot of fun to be had with this figure and there are so many display options that you’re unlikely to grow tired of it any time soon.  If nothing else, the Nendoroid is likely to be the only figure that lets you show off Tatl or the masks from the game so easily and effectively and that is why I can recommend this figure.