Mother 3
If you loved EarthBound, you’ll love Mother 3. That probably seems obvious, but I mean you have to have really loved EarthBound, to the point of not feeling that it could be improved upon at all. As someone who loves the creative side of EarthBound but is more lukewarm on its gameplay, my first impressions of Mother 3 were quite positive. It’s clear from the outset that it’s going to be just as endearingly weird as before, but also that its storytelling capabilities are impressive, its soundtrack is going to be phenomenal, and its art style has been polished into something more consistent. “All it needs to do is introduce something to keep the combat interesting and avoid the constant design mistakes of its predecessor, and this will be a classic,” I thought after the first hour.
“…Oh,” I thought after the next five. “Oh no.”
Not only does Mother 3 retain all of EarthBound’s bad habits – unbalanced encounters, fluctuating party size, and RNG mechanics taken to extremes – it actually exacerbates them. You only get to fight with a full party for about a third of the game. Not only is combat much shallower with only 1-3 characters, but the ubiquitous chance elements become downright oppressive. When the narrative finally allows four playable characters to coexist, the gameplay becomes worthwhile as something other than a medium for comedy, though it’s still not remotely disciplined. It’s the kind of auteur game design that’s really good at brainstorming interesting ideas but forgets about the second step where you’re supposed to refine and eliminate ideas that don’t work. So, for example, characters learning new psychic powers is preceded by a “feverish” status effect that does nothing but prevent sprinting in the overworld, for some reason.
The most significant new feature is also a perfect example. It’s a brilliant-on-paper system that allows you to chain together additional attacks by matching a rhythm that’s unique to each battle song and its associated enemies. But the game doesn’t tell you what that rhythm is unless you inflict an RNG-dependent status effect that you don’t even have access to half of the time. Since the mechanic’s inclusion is probably responsible for the soundtrack’s enormous scope and variety, I appreciate its presence, but I’m not sure if it could have been implemented any worse. I probably should have expected this, given that none of the praise I’d heard for Mother 3 was for its gameplay. And for what it’s worth, I agree with all of the praise I’ve heard – the game’s ability to alternate between hilarious and heart-wrenching is legendary for a reason. But Christ, is it ever annoying to actually play.