Mother 3

Of the three video game factions, Nintendo fanboys seem to be the most vocal about what they want. Once a Nintendo fan starts complaining about the lack of an English release of Mother 3 or the absence of a Kid Icarus sequel, it is hard to get them to stop. However, what many fans seem to forget is the quality of the games in question to begin with. In the case of Mother 3, the Japan only release seems reasonable, given the overall quality of the game.

Unlike the previous games in the series, Mother 3 begins peacefully. Lucas is visiting his grandfather in the mountains, the only major battles being mock fights with the local fauna. Within minutes, the first major theme of the story is established: technology versus nature. This topic has been done to death in numerous other games, films, books and other mediums (Star Wars, Final Fantasy VI, the Bible, etc.), and Mother 3 does not do anything differently or better than anything else offering the theme. However, one thing that many “technology versus nature” stories did not touch upon was how technology affects one’s sense of individuality, something that Mother 3 does, and does well. The citizens of Tazmily Village, at the beginning of the game, are completely devoid of not only technology, but also the concept of currency. However, once Fassad introduces technology (and currency) to the small village, the identity of each person slowly ebbs away, climaxing when the entire town moves to the ultimately hollow New Pork City.

Another thing that Mother 3 does right is the emotional aspect of the story. If you approach this game with the right mindset, there is a good chance you will cry for the tragic events that befall some of the characters. On the other hand, gamers have always loved the Earthbound series for its humorous side, and this entry is not different in that aspect. The only problem is that this can interfere with the serious tone of the story, making players feel confused as to whether they should be laughing or weeping.

In addition, the story contains very few references and allusions to the previous games outside of things like PSI and naming the player (not the character, the player). Sure, notable elements like Pokey (now Porky), the Franklin Badge, and a recurring parody band are in the game, but other important factors, like Giygas, Magicant, and the Eight Melodies, either appear near the end of the game, or stay absent altogether. Sometimes, they are replaced with similar features, like the startlingly well-implemented Seven Needles replacing the Eight Melodies. In addition, the ending is poorly put together, especially for the buildup immediately preceding it. Without spoiling anything, Mother 3’s ending requires sifting through A LOT of unneeded dialogue.

Similarly, the gameplay is somewhat unsatisfactory. Like a few other JRPGs, random battles have been eliminated in favor of making contact with the enemy to initiate combat. This system works fine on its own, but the spell learning system can significantly hurt it. Instead of just learning spells at prefixed levels or when a certain number of ability points have been acquired, non-story important spells are learned at random intervals. A character begins to learn a spell when they start feeling feverish. This results in the character being unable to run, making enemies harder to avoid and interrupting the flow of the game noticeably. These forced encounters will make you more acquainted with the game’s battle system, however. The basic premise of the system is to deal extra damage by tapping the A button in rhythm with the music. This is much harder to accomplish than one would think, for several reasons, the biggest one being that you are not tapping to the music. Instead, the A button must be hit to the tune of each enemy’s heartbeat (which, to be fair, is often in tune with the music itself). The only way to hear the enemy’s heartbeat is to put them to sleep, meaning that all regular encounters devolve into the same strategy: put one enemy to sleep, beat similar enemies down, and then beat the final enemy. There is a training mode that can adjust you to an enemy’s heartbeat, but this fails to correct the main flaw of the battle system. The only difference seems to be in boss battles, which mostly consist of using anything to change everybody’s stats, beating the enemy up with the best PSI, and healing when necessary.

Character selection does not help the situation. From Chapter 4 onward, the members of your party cannot change at all. They may temporarily leave, but they will always be there. Oddly enough, the possibility of a fully customized party is killed by the uselessness of every other character in the game. The only other character who can join the party is the monkey Salsa (for a brief period), and he can only do a single point of damage at best. Mother 3 also features non-playable party members who join for brief periods (like Dragon Quest IV), but they are even less helpful. They spend most of their time performing random actions that in no way affect the battle, rarely attacking or doing anything to help.

Speaking of Dragon Quest IV, Mother 3 ironically shares a large amount of similarities with the game, for better or for worse. For example, both games feature a chapter system with a different protagonist per chapter, a lack of sidequests, an emotional storyline, and an abandoning of previous traditions. The games even share their third chapters almost verbatim, Taloon becoming Fassad. Yet whatever Mother 3 does, Dragon Quest IV does better.

Nevertheless, there are certain things that Mother 3 manages to do as good as Dragon Quest IV, sometimes better. For example, the game’s soundtrack is respectable. There is a high variety in music styles, ranging from military march to samba and (predictably) 8-bit music. Despite this, a notable portion of the music seems to be the same song with a few tweaks. The most notable example is Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s version of Smashing Song of Praise. In the source material, it goes by many names: Anthem of Destruction, Misplaced Revenge, Wasteful Anthem, etc. Yet none of them features any noticeable or significant changes over the other.

The only part of the game that does not have any major flaws or anomalies is the graphics. Unlike other RPGs, which usually focus on maxing out what the hardware can do graphically, Mother 3 uses a simple style that also maxes out the GBA hardware. Characters and environments are vibrant, like a cartoon, and like a cartoon, they are also well animated. The amount of actions each character has rivals that of Final Fantasy VI. Some people may think the graphics are technically inferior to the SNES game Earthbound, but Mother 3 manages to look much better than the previous two games ever did.

In spite of this, Mother 3 only amounts to an average game. Anything that this game has done, other games (sometimes movies, TV shows, books, and other mediums) have done better. The “technology vs. nature” theme has been done uncountable times; Enix RPGs have been employing emotional storylines for years; even Super Smash Bros. Brawl has better renditions of this game’s music than the game itself. Those looking for a memorable RPG for the GBAs will have no trouble finding games to fit that role better than this.