After playing some games I'd never played before recently, I went back to playing games from my childhood (but in Japanese this time) with Mother 2! Earthbound was a game I played a TON growing up and always really loved. It's been a good few years since I played it last though, so I was excited to see the original version's text and get a new perspective on the overall quality of the game. It took me about 2 and a half days, so I'd reckon about 25 hours in total (I don't think the Wii U counts your play time for software like the Wii did?), and I didn't need to use a guide or anything because I just already knew my way through the game from how much I played it when I was little XD
So the story of Earthbound/Mother 2 is one that I've always felt is more the sum of its parts rather than the whole. The overall narrative is a story about how you are always ultimately your worst enemy, and that only by overcoming your inner reservations and inhibitions will you be able to become something larger than yourself. The four main characters of the story, Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo, are very light on characterization and have a very small amount of dialogue between them. Ness is definitely supposed to be a stand-in for the player character, but the whole party effectively plays this role with how little character they each have to them. However, there is SOME character there, and especially with how other characters talk to Ness, talk him up as this big figure of prophecy and this chosen child, and with how familiarly his friends and family talk to him, I don't think they do a very good job of making a "player avatar" character. Ness lies somewhere in-between a player avatar and a character of his own, and I believe this ultimately really undermines the "you're your own worst enemy" message for the player that the game ultimately has.
However, where Mother 2's writing really shines are in the myriad of vignettes that you encounter as you go through the story. So many colorful characters of roles both big and small, as bombastic as the silly (and VERY obviously Blues Brothers-inspired in the Japanese version) Runaway Five, to just simple NPC's walking around town with a quirky line to say. Mother 2 is packed with wacky and irreverent humor and charm that will turn of some, certainly, but will be very quickly endearing to others... at least in the first half. By the time you finish up Fourside, the story really gets bogged down in the overall plot of Ness being this chosen child, and the game's second half is far less interesting than the first. I remembered it being this way before I did this playthrough, and this replay reconfirmed that opinion. However, I will definitely add that the Japanese original does have a sense of humor and charm to it that the English version approaches but does not surpass. The only exception being enemy names, which are often quite dull in Japanese (the main wordplay around them often amounting to "it's an English word and/or an oddly specific description in Japanese") compared to the puns in English.
The gameplay of Mother 2 is really a pretty shameless copy of Dragon Quest, although there are MANY other beloved RPGs of this era, as with the 8-bit era, that that description can also be applied to. The way every character has their own inventory, each one fills a kind of specific role in a balance of different kinds of magic or special tool items, the first-person battle perspectives. The only truly remarkable innovation of the combat system is the way your health scrolls up and down instead of moving all at once, so a dying ally is actually in the process of dying (or healing), so can be saved with a heal before they actually get KO'd. Mother 2 is very much a sister game to Far East of Eden as far as its cultural memory goes: a DQ clone whose sense of humor and irreverent use of setting made it an enduring bit of culture among Japanese gamers.
Compared to something like FF6, another 1994 SFC RPG, the UI is honestly really fluid and brilliant, and Mother 2 is a fantastic first RPG for people new to the genre (something it succeeds at little better than Mario RPG, imo). This was the first time I'd played through the game really utilizing the L-button as a catch-all inspection and talking button and that is just SUCH a clever bit of design I can't get over it. Inventory management between party members can be a bit of a chore at times, but the menus move so quick that it really just goes as slowly as you'll make it go.
The game has some pacing and difficulty curve issues, with some bosses early in the game being very hard where most bosses are quite easy, and some later game areas like Magicant that force you to use only one party member yet again remind you just how not-fun having only one party member is just for the sake of a neat setting to explore. The game also has some points where the signposting just is not very good. I used to get stuck in Fourside ALL the time as a kid because there are just suddenly so many dialogue flags you need to trigger before plot elements can progress. Using the Hint Shop and just talking to everyone you see will get you past most of these, but not all. The game's signposting is about as good as it could be for 1994, but it's still rough enough in retrospect that it's worth mentioning here.
Verdict: Recommended. Mother 2/Earthbound is a game that a lot of people don't like, and I think that's a totally fair attitude to have towards the game. It has some pacing issues and the writing really doesn't carry the whole way through like it really needs to, so only the competent yet fairly bog-standard combat system is really there for a good portion of the game. There is little on the SNES like it, for sure, but I think a lot of this game's appeal lives and dies by its writing, and if you aren't captured within the first few hours/areas, chances are this is a game you're gonna have a hard time pushing through to the end on. It's a game that has a really unique and shining personality, especially among RPGs that made it to the West for that era, and there is a lot to enjoy if you're into what the game is delivering on.
So the story of Earthbound/Mother 2 is one that I've always felt is more the sum of its parts rather than the whole. The overall narrative is a story about how you are always ultimately your worst enemy, and that only by overcoming your inner reservations and inhibitions will you be able to become something larger than yourself. The four main characters of the story, Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo, are very light on characterization and have a very small amount of dialogue between them. Ness is definitely supposed to be a stand-in for the player character, but the whole party effectively plays this role with how little character they each have to them. However, there is SOME character there, and especially with how other characters talk to Ness, talk him up as this big figure of prophecy and this chosen child, and with how familiarly his friends and family talk to him, I don't think they do a very good job of making a "player avatar" character. Ness lies somewhere in-between a player avatar and a character of his own, and I believe this ultimately really undermines the "you're your own worst enemy" message for the player that the game ultimately has.
However, where Mother 2's writing really shines are in the myriad of vignettes that you encounter as you go through the story. So many colorful characters of roles both big and small, as bombastic as the silly (and VERY obviously Blues Brothers-inspired in the Japanese version) Runaway Five, to just simple NPC's walking around town with a quirky line to say. Mother 2 is packed with wacky and irreverent humor and charm that will turn of some, certainly, but will be very quickly endearing to others... at least in the first half. By the time you finish up Fourside, the story really gets bogged down in the overall plot of Ness being this chosen child, and the game's second half is far less interesting than the first. I remembered it being this way before I did this playthrough, and this replay reconfirmed that opinion. However, I will definitely add that the Japanese original does have a sense of humor and charm to it that the English version approaches but does not surpass. The only exception being enemy names, which are often quite dull in Japanese (the main wordplay around them often amounting to "it's an English word and/or an oddly specific description in Japanese") compared to the puns in English.
The gameplay of Mother 2 is really a pretty shameless copy of Dragon Quest, although there are MANY other beloved RPGs of this era, as with the 8-bit era, that that description can also be applied to. The way every character has their own inventory, each one fills a kind of specific role in a balance of different kinds of magic or special tool items, the first-person battle perspectives. The only truly remarkable innovation of the combat system is the way your health scrolls up and down instead of moving all at once, so a dying ally is actually in the process of dying (or healing), so can be saved with a heal before they actually get KO'd. Mother 2 is very much a sister game to Far East of Eden as far as its cultural memory goes: a DQ clone whose sense of humor and irreverent use of setting made it an enduring bit of culture among Japanese gamers.
Compared to something like FF6, another 1994 SFC RPG, the UI is honestly really fluid and brilliant, and Mother 2 is a fantastic first RPG for people new to the genre (something it succeeds at little better than Mario RPG, imo). This was the first time I'd played through the game really utilizing the L-button as a catch-all inspection and talking button and that is just SUCH a clever bit of design I can't get over it. Inventory management between party members can be a bit of a chore at times, but the menus move so quick that it really just goes as slowly as you'll make it go.
The game has some pacing and difficulty curve issues, with some bosses early in the game being very hard where most bosses are quite easy, and some later game areas like Magicant that force you to use only one party member yet again remind you just how not-fun having only one party member is just for the sake of a neat setting to explore. The game also has some points where the signposting just is not very good. I used to get stuck in Fourside ALL the time as a kid because there are just suddenly so many dialogue flags you need to trigger before plot elements can progress. Using the Hint Shop and just talking to everyone you see will get you past most of these, but not all. The game's signposting is about as good as it could be for 1994, but it's still rough enough in retrospect that it's worth mentioning here.
Verdict: Recommended. Mother 2/Earthbound is a game that a lot of people don't like, and I think that's a totally fair attitude to have towards the game. It has some pacing issues and the writing really doesn't carry the whole way through like it really needs to, so only the competent yet fairly bog-standard combat system is really there for a good portion of the game. There is little on the SNES like it, for sure, but I think a lot of this game's appeal lives and dies by its writing, and if you aren't captured within the first few hours/areas, chances are this is a game you're gonna have a hard time pushing through to the end on. It's a game that has a really unique and shining personality, especially among RPGs that made it to the West for that era, and there is a lot to enjoy if you're into what the game is delivering on.