When I first booted up Mother 3 I honestly wasn't expecting much. I was wrong. This game quickly foamed to the top of my favorite games list. It's quirky, fun, intriguing, and, oddly enough, heart-breaking.
Mother 3 is spread out into eight decently lengthened chapters, with the entire game taking about 40 hours to beat; depending on how good you are at RPGs. Though this is usually the reason I stray away from RPGs the story in more than engaging enough and manages to keep you hooked all the way through. Each chapter has its own flow and way of working both around and inside the narrative which makes it easy for both short bursts and long play sessions.
The story of Mother 3 is very simple when you look at it from the top but can get very deep very quickly. Without any spoilers, the main premise of Mother 3 goes like this: Everyone that we see throughout the game lives on a series of islands-the Nowhere islands- and at the beginning everyone is happy. There is no money which means there is no greed which means there has never been nor will there ever be bad people. This all changes though when we meet an outsider of the islands named Fassad who only wishes to bring his happiness to the islands. Most chapter of Mother 3 have you mostly play as different characters. Chapter 1 has you playing as Flint in the search for his missing family, in Chapter 2 you play as the lovable, limping thief-in-the-making known as Duster, and in Chapter 3 you take control of the small and cute monkey known as Salsa in his quest to save his girlfriend. In the rest of the chapter you more or less take control of a single party of characters and you really get to explore the world.
A Mother game wouldn't be a Mother game without its hilarious and intuitive battling, though, and in this installment it is as amazing as ever. You still have PSI (magic powers) and various weapons but whenever you do a normal attack you can now hit the A-button to the beat of the song that's playing to pull off long strings of combos to rack up extra damage. The beat, however, can change depending on which enemies you fight and what music is playing at that time of battle. This has you memorizing certain songs for certain beats you can combo moves off of. If you forget a song, though, Duster even has a move dedicated to finding the beat of a song.
I can't talk about any game without talking about the graphics. And this game has plenty of them. It definitely takes a page from other Gameboy Advance games at the time and goes for a simple-pixel style with higher resolution areas and backgrounds, which I definitely appreciate. And though I love the graphical style, it just doesn't quite feel like a Gameboy Advance game. Though this is most likely just because it is emulating the style of the previous installments, I can't help but think they could have gone bigger. The music in this game is also one of my favorites of all time! It blends a lot of different styles of music together but keeps a central theme of the area or battle type you are in. Like when I'm fighting a guitar it would have a blues riff going on in the background. Or when I'm fighting someone involved in the "Pigmask Army" it will always have some kind of rendition of Porky's Theme. Its the little things that count.
This game has quickly become my favorite video game of all time and I recommend it to not just RPG fans but fans of video games in general.
I absolutely fell in love with Mother 3. It was perfect.
For those who have beaten it: that ending tho
Mother 3 is spread out into eight decently lengthened chapters, with the entire game taking about 40 hours to beat; depending on how good you are at RPGs. Though this is usually the reason I stray away from RPGs the story in more than engaging enough and manages to keep you hooked all the way through. Each chapter has its own flow and way of working both around and inside the narrative which makes it easy for both short bursts and long play sessions.
The story of Mother 3 is very simple when you look at it from the top but can get very deep very quickly. Without any spoilers, the main premise of Mother 3 goes like this: Everyone that we see throughout the game lives on a series of islands-the Nowhere islands- and at the beginning everyone is happy. There is no money which means there is no greed which means there has never been nor will there ever be bad people. This all changes though when we meet an outsider of the islands named Fassad who only wishes to bring his happiness to the islands. Most chapter of Mother 3 have you mostly play as different characters. Chapter 1 has you playing as Flint in the search for his missing family, in Chapter 2 you play as the lovable, limping thief-in-the-making known as Duster, and in Chapter 3 you take control of the small and cute monkey known as Salsa in his quest to save his girlfriend. In the rest of the chapter you more or less take control of a single party of characters and you really get to explore the world.
A Mother game wouldn't be a Mother game without its hilarious and intuitive battling, though, and in this installment it is as amazing as ever. You still have PSI (magic powers) and various weapons but whenever you do a normal attack you can now hit the A-button to the beat of the song that's playing to pull off long strings of combos to rack up extra damage. The beat, however, can change depending on which enemies you fight and what music is playing at that time of battle. This has you memorizing certain songs for certain beats you can combo moves off of. If you forget a song, though, Duster even has a move dedicated to finding the beat of a song.
I can't talk about any game without talking about the graphics. And this game has plenty of them. It definitely takes a page from other Gameboy Advance games at the time and goes for a simple-pixel style with higher resolution areas and backgrounds, which I definitely appreciate. And though I love the graphical style, it just doesn't quite feel like a Gameboy Advance game. Though this is most likely just because it is emulating the style of the previous installments, I can't help but think they could have gone bigger. The music in this game is also one of my favorites of all time! It blends a lot of different styles of music together but keeps a central theme of the area or battle type you are in. Like when I'm fighting a guitar it would have a blues riff going on in the background. Or when I'm fighting someone involved in the "Pigmask Army" it will always have some kind of rendition of Porky's Theme. Its the little things that count.
This game has quickly become my favorite video game of all time and I recommend it to not just RPG fans but fans of video games in general.
I absolutely fell in love with Mother 3. It was perfect.
For those who have beaten it: that ending tho
