The Back Catalog: Mother 3
So between nights of debauchery and days of gaming at the Midwest Gaming Classic I managed to pick up a copy of Mother 3. This is somewhat of a feat, as Nintendo loves your money and hates you very much. So the acquisition of this game involved finding the import copy (thanks Dan!) and hunting down the fan translation.
After the preliminary questing, purchasing, and downloading, I was finally ready to play the game. At least the effort was worth it.
Mother 3 feels just like Earthbound from the very beginning. From the character art to the music to the goofy humor, Mother 3 almost feels like another chapter of the SNES game than a standalone title. And that’s primarily a good thing.
For those who aren’t familiar with the series, Mother 3 is a fairly linear JRPG. Combat plays out in the form of still sprites with colorful backdrops and funky beats while you select your character’s actions. Magic is called PSI, and things are set in the present(ish) rather than the traditional fantasy realm, but that’s about it for major differences. What makes the Mother series stand out is the tweaks that have been made to other elements of the standard JRPG formula.
Probably the first thing a new player will notice about Mother 3 is the way these mechanic tweaks drastically change gameplay. For instance, combat is turn-bsed, but health damage rolls off a player in real time. This means that a potentially lethal hit might do only a tenth of the listed damage if the enemy is beaten quickly, and can lead to a frantic button-mash fest as you try to drop a healing spell on a mortally-injured comrade before his counter rolls to zero.
Inventory is limited, but so is combat. One can’t pull the Final Fantasy tactic of buying 99 of every healing item, but the party’s psi powers can manage through 80% or more of the game. The last 20% means you’ll be actually maintaining an inventory, instead of lugging around an enormous item warehouse in case of that one status effect. Some of the low-magic characters are built to thrive off the inventory, using bombs and healing items instead of PSI attacks.
Also missing from Mother 3 is the ridiculous grinding found in many traditional JRPGs. I stopped to level up for a bit once in the entire game, and that process took me about 15-20 minutes. This makes the game shorter, certainly, but also ensures you’ll enjoy the game you do play. There are grinding opportunities, and levels go way higher than what I finished the game at, so overachieves can feel free to level up to ridiculous degrees.
The primary new feature in Mother 3 is the rhythm-based combat system. Basically the premise is this. Every bad guy has their own theme, and each theme has a rhythm section. If you hit the ‘A’ button in time with the rhythm, you get extra hits on the bad guys (up to 16). As far as this feature goes, it serves to weed out the more nefarious means of procuring Mother 3. You need a GBA or a DS to tap this out. A keyboard simply will not work. YouTube Mother 3 Mr. Passion for an example. Or if John or Hilden throw it in.
[John says: "Here you go!"]
Story-wise, Mother 3 succeeds with the epic save the world plot by intermixing it with goofy humor and never taking itself too seriously. There are no brooding heroes who look like women and no overly dramatic choirs. This is generally a good thing. There is drama in Mother 3, whose storyline is surprisingly dark in contrast to the previous game and the style of this one. The story, like Earthbound, is also relatively short. The game is over in about 20 hours, which again pales in comparison to most JRPGs.
Now comes the “is it worth it?” bit. That depends. If you’re like me and absolutely loved Earthbound, you’re going to find a lot to enjoy here. However, given that this costs ten to twenty times what most GBA titles are running for currently, I could see people shying away from this the same way the might with Ninja Five-O, Final Fantasy VI, or the other rare GBA titles. Given the budget, on the go nature of portable gaming in general, and the fact that Nintendo has dropped all GameBoy support entirely from the newest iteration of the DS, GBA titles are being relegated to rare, matchbook-sized finds on ebay or in obscure little shops. If I were going to Penny-Arcade it I’d describe the furtive, haunted search for these games, scurrying from shop to shop, forming eldritch bargains with porcine creatures in exchange for small collections of bounty.
At the end of the day, I never regretted my purchase. But then I also keep my zoftig DS around, along with my GBA catalog. If you’re not into retro games, or JRPGs, or fun, you might want to give this a pass. Otherwise it comes highly recommended.
Related Posts
Tags: earthbound, Mother 3, Nintendo DS
