Review: Mother 3
Monday, December 8th, 2008
I’d nearly forgotten to review this one! First, some really quick background. Mother 3 is a Japanese game, the sequel to Mother 2 (released as Earthbound in the US for the SNES), and there is no official Nintendo translation. Skilled fans tinkered with the game and made a patch for the game to change all the Japanese to English. I used this patch and ran the game in a GBA Emulator in my down-time at work with the volume almost all the way down. It was a little odd, but I finished it. So now, on to the review!
The game starts with the game teaching many of the mechanics of play, running especially, and some combat too. The plot kicks off on a pretty dark tone with important people dying, fires, disaster, the works. The story is the heart of the game, and I don’t want to give away anything at all, so I’ll focus on the other stuff. Don’t get me wrong, the plot is engaging, and the events and dialogue are humorous when they need to be.
As an RPG, combat gets you from point A to point B. It’s pretty straightforward in this game too except for one thing. If you can time your button presses with the beat of the music, you can get multiple-hit combos for extra damage. This mechanic is not required, but it will give you a slight edge. On an emulator it’s a bit difficult due to the precise timing required, you can train yourself for the delay, but I still only got one 16-hit combo ever.
I wish I could speak better about the music, but as I had the volume turned pretty low, I couldn’t fully appreciate it, but from what I heard it was good.
The game-scripting was pretty top-notch too. Only once or twice were there times I couldn’t progress because I didn’t do a particular task to trigger an in-game cinematic. One I particularly remember was an area I knew was inaccessible, so I looked literally everywhere else attempting to locate a way around it. The solution was simply to walk up to the obstruction, thus triggering the next event. Boooo.
Animation was excellent, and I can’t swear by it, but certainly cool if it’s there, but the walk cycle speeds for characters of different heights were different! A very nice touch that adds depth. I thought the spell effects in the combat system though were a bit flat. Maybe I’m spoiled by 3D, but I remember the effects in Mother 2 being more ambitious and hefty.
Oh, something that almost ruined the game for me. After defeating the last boss, a cinematic plays and then fades to a ‘The End?’ screen with no credits. And that’s it. I looked around the Internet to see if there was anything past the ambiguous ending, but turned up almost nothing. One tidbit I found, and this doesn’t give away anything, just “walk around” while on the screen. Things pick up again and you get a real ending. Pissed me off though.
Again, I won’t go into details, but there is an explanation in the game that answers a “why?” question. It’s not satisfying at all, and smacks of laziness. The problem with the answer is that it had no chance of enhancing the story - it could’ve been glossed over and there would have been no damage. Sometimes a plot hole is just a plot hole, but patching it up is harmful.
All in all a decent game, not as entertaining as Mother 2 in my opinion, but still good.