For a little backstory: Before playing the "Mother" series, I always thought Mother 1 was just a prototype earthbound. So naturally, when I started playing the series, I started with 
Earthbound, and then moved on to Mother 3. I finished both of those games, and they quickly became some of my favorite games ever. 

 After finishing Earthbound and Mother 3, I was HOOKED. I needed more "Mother,"  so I looked back into the first game in the series. I played it for 30 minutes and quit because there was a random encounter every 5 SECONDS. 
  
 Now about Mother Encore: Since I only played the first 30 minutes of Mother 1, I really have nothing to compare this to other than the second and third games in the series. And all things considered, this game is about on par with both of them, in terms of mechanics. The quality-of-life features in this game make it actually enjoyable for the game it's based off of. Random encounters are done away with here, it is now much like Earthbound and Mother 3 (or the latest Pokemon games), where enemies are alerted to you and follow you. One really nice feature that wasn't in Earthbound is that items that enemies hold now drop on the ground if you don't have room in your inventory. The Sprite work is honestly incredible, and while it removes from the gloominess of the original.. I think I prefer it, at least as of now. As for the story, it's pretty cool so far! It's slow, but so was earthbound. I roughly know how it goes, but I'm interested to see how they switch it up in Mother Encore. 

 Overall, I'm very excited to see where they go with this. It's got a nice "Mother" charm to it, which, as a fan project... is a pretty difficult task. 

The original Mother is an incredibly important game to me, and I don't think this will outright replace it, but I find this fan reimagining to be oddly refreshing. Not just for what it does in pursuit of staying true to the original, but in what it tries to do new within the framework of the original game. Mother 1 has good "bones", but what's aged it and often turns people off about is the overall hostility of the world.

Said hostility is partly why I find the original so compelling, but I do appreciate that there's been a clear and conscious desire to replace the raw, numeric cruelty with tangible adventure game elements. Some of it feels a bit awkward, but I assume it's still early days for this project so any missteps are easily forgivable and potentially fixable at this stage.

I really hope this sees a full release because I'm absolutely captivated by what they've done here. It's got a different feel to it, but the feel is charming in its own way, and I think that's probably more than most Mother fan projects have going for them.