Introduction:

Sometimes you come across people who love a game for reasons they can't explain, but it's not one of those cases where they like it for the sake of liking it. Their reasons are there, but they rely too much on personal emotion to be accessible by others. Mother 3 is one of those games to me, much as Earthbound was. I can recognize the flaws within both games, as major or minuscule as they are, and I can still, at the end of the day, call them both one of the greatest games I've ever played, which for Mother 3 is an accomplishment, since I don't know a lick of the Japanese language, and yet the game connected to me, it grabbed a hold of me, but not forcefully, I let it grab a hold of me and I let it show me the wonderful adventure that it contained. Now, let's delve into the meat of this review.

Story:

The game has a fantastic and emotional story. There are many scenes where you can feel the raw emotion that your character must be experiencing. The base of the plot is that an army known as the Pig Army is causing trouble on the Nowhere Island (possibly Islands, I'm not sure of which it is) by destroying and disrupting nature. This includes setting a forest on fire and also the modification of animals with mechanical parts, such as the first boss of the game, which is a caribou that is now half cyborg due to the Pig Army. The game is split into chapters, with the first three chapters detailing three different perspectives of the story, while the main quest begins in the fourth chapter, and except for a few additions and subtractions of characters through chapters four to eight, the main party is introduced by the end of Chapter Four. The story focuses around a family of five (well, four, but their dog counts as a member). These people are Flint, the father, Hinawa, the mother, Lucas, the younger son, Claus, the older son, and Boney, the faithful and cute family dog. The story is quite dark, detailing with death and loss, but it has its lighter side and never becomes too dark and dreary. It's very real, as in a certain scene in Chapter One; you can truly feel sorry for your character as he learns of terrible news. The final chapter of the game is in my opinion fantastic and will probably excite many Earthbound fans and contains an amazing final battle followed by an interesting finale. It's really a great story, and I was nearly moved to tears near the ending, and the game is in Japanese! Totally amazing that a game designed in a language that I do not understand can move me to such moments.

Gameplay:

This is Earthbound with an expanded battle system, an actual menu screen as opposed to the Dragon Quest/Warrior style that Earthbound used, and an easier system of item navigation. Oh, and a dash button. What do I mean by all of this? Well, I'll go through it step by step. The expanded battle system refers to the use of beat based combos that are done by properly tapping the A button to a certain beat in the music. Everything else the battle system is basically what you were used to in Earthbound. You use PSI; you have the Rolling Hit Points Counter that adds franticness to the battles and also the ability to heal a character that has taken fatal damage. Instead of losing HP instantly, it rolls downwards, giving you time to react to damage and be able to heal characters before they are killed. It's really quite fun and is very much wanted. The menu in Mother 3 is different than it's predecessor. Instead of hitting "A" and being brought up commands in a small box such as Items, PSI, Status, and such, you hit the Start button and it brings you to an actual menu screen, where you have five buttons lining the top. Items, Equip, Status, PSI, and what appears to be a Sleep Mode. It's pretty much self-explanatory if you've played RPGs. PSI is Magic. That's really the only difference between your choices and another RPG's. The items are better implemented in this game compared to Earthbound. In Earthbound, key items took up inventory space of your actual party members, which could lead to some storage issues. In this game, key items are stored separately, which is nice as anything. When exploring your items, you're given a short description of the item (which is useful for English players, if you see HP60 or HP120 in the description, you can kind of guess what the item is for, huh?) and a picture. However, you're not able to see pictures or the information in battle, so you will have to memorize some Japanese characters if you're English in order to properly play. Which is sort of hard, some symbols look like others but there's a small detail changed, it's annoying, but it's not the gameplay's flaw, I mean, if I could speak Japanese (which the game is in, hence it's market is that of Japanese people) I'd be flying high. Outside of battle, you can move about terrain quicker with the use of the dash. When standing in place, hold B until your character(s) squat, and then release it to start running until you hit something. Obviously, you can steer while in a dash. Also, there is indication as to when you learn new PSI in this game. PSI capable characters will start to sweat outside of battles when a new technique is coming. You are unable to dash during this period. I'm not quite sure what indicates when a character will sweat, although it's probably influenced by level.

I give the gameplay: 9/10

Graphics:

Colorful and well animated while following the unique style that Earthbound crafted. Mother 3 will bring you to a variety of different places, from a burning forest near a small rural village, to a monstrous tower in the midst of an urban city, and these areas all contain their personal charm, from the simplicity of the rural village to the crowded area of the urban city. The sprites in the game animate well and contain much more animation than this game's older brother and it certainly is very nice to watch in motion. In battle, backgrounds are colorful, vibrant kaleidoscopes and the enemy sprites, while lacking any motion, are quite nice, ranging from small mice holding a piece of cheese under their arm to a strange man with trumpets erupting from his nostrils. If you liked the graphics of Earthbound, you'll find this game's to really grow on you. It may not be as pretty as some other Gameboy Advance RPGs, but it's certainly beautiful in its own way and there isn't really a true bad part about the graphics.

I give the graphics: 8/10

Sound:

Certainly an extremely high point to what makes this game great, Mother 3 boasts an impressive, and I do mean impressive, soundtrack that consists of 250 songs. Yes, that's right, I said 250 songs. The music has some fantastic instrument sampling, from guitars, to drums, to French horns. Instruments will sound like the instruments they are intended to sound like. A huge high point to the music is the amazing sound player that is included with the game. You can go into the sound player and listen to any song in the game. You can form playlists and favorites list of the songs. I believe it is possible to set songs to loop. It's like an MP3 player of sorts, and it's really impressive. The music is touching at times, invigorating at others, strange sounding at others, many different emotions and feels are provoked by the music. The sound effects are serviceable. There's nothing special about them, and nothing really noteworthy of description.

I give the sound: 9/10

Replayability:

The game suffers from linearity due to the chapter system and I find this to be the only flaw that I don't consider minuscule. The game lasted around 20 hours for me on my first playthrough, and I would certainly play through it again, trying to better that time and also accomplish more (for example, I was quite low levelled at the end of the game and I missed a deal of secret enemies). It depends on if you can get past playing through the same scenario again with no real change and no real freedom, if you can, then I can certainly see you playing the game again with no protest from yourself.

I give the replayability: 8/10

Challenge:

You can heal any illness or revive characters at the Hot Springs that exist everywhere in the game world. The game can be difficult, especially at some boss battles, but it's certainly not impossible or unfair, especially if you can get a good grasp on your combos.

I give the challenge: 8/10

Value:

I'm finding the value a little hard to rate. The only way to get it, is to import it, or just buy it off of ebay, and since it's still kind of new, you shouldn't have a hard time finding it.

I give the value: 7/10

Conclusion:

Overall this game is one of the best, if not the best, RPG ever made. I think Mother 2 is slightly better than this game, but Mother 3 doesn't disappoint. The game will make you very attached to the characters and when the game gets dark at the end you will feel for them! I think you will find the game to be humorous, but also spiritual in a way. The game is very deep and you will enjoy playing it. Please import this game as soon as possible! It is worth the 10 year wait and is playable in Japanese!

Written By: Adam
E-Mail: adamgach@gmail.com

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