This review contains spoilers
I don't like JRPGs. There are a handful of exceptions, but as a genre I find the design tropes boring if not straight up bad. The first half or so of Mother 3 had me convinced that it was different, and if it kept to that course it may have ended up as my favorite in the genre (or close to it). Unfortunately, the latter half leans hard into JRPG tropes and seems to miss the point on many things that I thought it was brilliant for doing in the first place. I've struggled with putting into words my issues with this genre of game, but finishing this Big and Important one that's been on my backlog forever seems like the best time to try and do it.
I think the biggest issue I have with this type of game is the balance of combat. Having a large amount of options in menu-based combat quickly gets overwhelming, so strategic input from the player is usually limited. In most JRPGs there's really no other type of skill involved, just patience for grinding. On the other hand, if the game is too easy then the combat feels like a chore, and I often find myself wishing games like this were just story-focused walking sims. Failing usually isn't fun, and just leads to repeating the same content, so it's a fine line to tread of staying engaging and not turning into a "mash A through combat" game, but also not being so difficult that becomes annoying, forces every player into a single broken strategy, or worst of all leads to grinding. Typically the best parts of these games are the boss fights, well crafted experiences where you get to see and hear something new, and at least in good cases a new unique strategy is needed/helpful for winning. Bear with me, because I can already hear the groans of people reading this, but Undertale is a great example of what I'm looking for out of an RPG. Unique combat experiences that aren't really focused on stats or gear, but more so showing you new ideas and then moving on to the next thing. I realize that I'm writing about playing Mother 3 for the first time in 2022, and many later games including Undertale took inspiration from it, but I want to talk about the ways in which it succeeds and fails at that in my experience.
Early on there are many cool ideas here for how to spice up combat, from the rhythm battle mechanic to the health counters. Enemies are varied and amusing, and the boss fights feel like tight, well-crafted experiences. Later on this falls apart somewhat, but for a while I was loving this. I think it succeeds in large part due to the structure of switching between character perspectives (which I also loved for the story, but I'll get to that later). This not only introduces you to new party members and mechanics often enough that they don't get stale, but these shorter, linear chapters allow the developers to keep a tight grasp on the player's state. The balance of JRPGs often feels like it's at odds with the near universally present XP systems and upgradable gear, and Mother 3 solves that for a good chunk of time by controlling what you're given access to without feeling restrictive. It also helps that each of these characters you play as has a unique theme and take on the mechanics of combat. These separate, smaller stories are intriguing both in narrative in gameplay, and seeing how they come together later is a great driving force for the first half of the game.
Unfortunately, this didn't last forever. The second half of the game (which I'm defining as after the timeskip at the beginning of Chapter 4, it's probably not actually half of the time the game takes but it's a clear dividing point in the game design and story) opens up with an explanation of a currency system. I was already disappointed, as I was enjoying the lack of one. Items before this point were kept simpler, and knowing exactly what you'd have access to surely helped with the balance. Adding currency and shops serves the narrative, but adds unnecessary complexity to the gameplay balance. I could see the argument that it being unnecessary and an annoyance even ties into the story's themes, but I think the game makes that point well enough without the gameplay ramifications. I'm sure it's easy when designing a game like this to just say "other games did it, right?", but Mother 3 demonstrates in its opening chapters that it understands how tightly designed a game can be without that. This idea underlines my thoughts through the rest of the game, "why did they change this after doing it so well earlier?" The rhythm combat and HP counter mechanic lose importance and start to feel dull. The former because there's too many enemies that you can't put to sleep to learn the rhythm or it's just not worth it to do so, and the many of the songs became too complicated for me to keep up more than a few beats. The counter mechanic becomes an annoyance with larger HP totals when you're often sitting there waiting on a heal to finish before letting the enemy attack, or you're trying to mash out commands before a party member dies but the textboxes take too long. You can buy weapon upgrades at shops, but when this is worth doing isn't very apparent until after the fact. Refighting bosses earlier in the game would skip some of their dialogue/cutscene on repeat attempts to speed it up, and at some point they just give up on doing this. Inventory management becomes a chore, and the Inventory Guy is never nearby when you need him. There were some bosses later in the game that I just had to grind for because even using the best strategy at my current level wasn't enough. The separation of save points and hot springs for healing makes little sense when there's no hot spring near a pre-boss save point, encouraging you to just die on your first attempt. There's so many things like this where I thought this game was better and it just falls backwards into the same problems I have with so many other games.
That's certainly not to say this is a bad game, I enjoyed my time with it a lot even in most of those later parts. It does have a ton of content to show you that's all very charming and funny, and I can totally see how this helped spawn the subgenre of CharmPGs, but it feels more genuine in a way that many of those don't. In addition to this charm of the style and writing, the music was a big driving force in my interest to play this, as well as my motivation to continue playing throughout. I don't have a whole lot to say about it other than it's hands down the best soundtrack on the GBA. There's also some cool divergences from the main gameplay, which even if they're hit (the lab section) or miss (underwater) I admire the attempt to mix it up and didn't have a better spot to mention that.
I largely have positive things to say about the story, but it does stumble in a couple of places. Moving away from the perspective shifts of the first half entirely is a mistake in my opinion. On top of enjoying it for the gameplay, I think it would have greatly benefitted the pacing to have some more of these sprinkled throughout the back half as a break from the full-party gameplay with the normal group of characters. Porky's introduction and importance to the story are also questionable. Most people playing this have probably played Earthbound, but I found it too tedious to stick with. I don't know much beyond Porky being an antagonist in that game as well, but taking this story on its own he's introduced too late (and mostly explained through an exposition dump) and just kind of distracts from the main narrative in my opinion. It would have been fine just leaving Fassad and the Masked Man as the main antagonists. I also wish there was more time spent in New Pork City, the last chapter of the game there is pretty rushed and that probably doesn't help with Porky feeling underdeveloped. There's also a story disconnect between the halves of the game with the focus on the Egg of Light, which is hardly used once it's obtained, and its importance only explained later in the exposition dump I mentioned. I also think Lucas as a main character is a little too bland and too much of a self-insert or blank slate character. I prefer main characters in RPGs that are well defined and let you roleplay as them, and there's really none of that with Lucas. There's also a lot of positives to the story as well though. I did love the perspective changing between chapters while that was going on and it was a great way to introduce the wide cast of characters. Even if this isn't kept up, bringing back characters that were out of the story for a while still benefits from those early sections. The variety in locations and scope of the story is impressive and fun. I mentioned above, but the writing is consistently charming and funny. The ending was also pretty well executed and emotionally touching, and the use of musical motifs tying into the story there was cool even if it was probably more notable at the time than it is today with many more games trying to do that.
While I've got a lot of smaller complaints and this game isn't as perfect as I thought it might be for a while, it's still one of the best experiences I've had with a JRPG. It was actually fun enough for me to finish, which I often don't end up doing with these. I was a bit sad when it was over, as this had become a regular before bedtime game for me and was very comfy to play an hour of at the end of the day. I hope I got my message across of what I think this and future games could do better, but over time I imagine my annoyances with this will fade and I'll be left with the positive memories of this experience with it.
I think the biggest issue I have with this type of game is the balance of combat. Having a large amount of options in menu-based combat quickly gets overwhelming, so strategic input from the player is usually limited. In most JRPGs there's really no other type of skill involved, just patience for grinding. On the other hand, if the game is too easy then the combat feels like a chore, and I often find myself wishing games like this were just story-focused walking sims. Failing usually isn't fun, and just leads to repeating the same content, so it's a fine line to tread of staying engaging and not turning into a "mash A through combat" game, but also not being so difficult that becomes annoying, forces every player into a single broken strategy, or worst of all leads to grinding. Typically the best parts of these games are the boss fights, well crafted experiences where you get to see and hear something new, and at least in good cases a new unique strategy is needed/helpful for winning. Bear with me, because I can already hear the groans of people reading this, but Undertale is a great example of what I'm looking for out of an RPG. Unique combat experiences that aren't really focused on stats or gear, but more so showing you new ideas and then moving on to the next thing. I realize that I'm writing about playing Mother 3 for the first time in 2022, and many later games including Undertale took inspiration from it, but I want to talk about the ways in which it succeeds and fails at that in my experience.
Early on there are many cool ideas here for how to spice up combat, from the rhythm battle mechanic to the health counters. Enemies are varied and amusing, and the boss fights feel like tight, well-crafted experiences. Later on this falls apart somewhat, but for a while I was loving this. I think it succeeds in large part due to the structure of switching between character perspectives (which I also loved for the story, but I'll get to that later). This not only introduces you to new party members and mechanics often enough that they don't get stale, but these shorter, linear chapters allow the developers to keep a tight grasp on the player's state. The balance of JRPGs often feels like it's at odds with the near universally present XP systems and upgradable gear, and Mother 3 solves that for a good chunk of time by controlling what you're given access to without feeling restrictive. It also helps that each of these characters you play as has a unique theme and take on the mechanics of combat. These separate, smaller stories are intriguing both in narrative in gameplay, and seeing how they come together later is a great driving force for the first half of the game.
Unfortunately, this didn't last forever. The second half of the game (which I'm defining as after the timeskip at the beginning of Chapter 4, it's probably not actually half of the time the game takes but it's a clear dividing point in the game design and story) opens up with an explanation of a currency system. I was already disappointed, as I was enjoying the lack of one. Items before this point were kept simpler, and knowing exactly what you'd have access to surely helped with the balance. Adding currency and shops serves the narrative, but adds unnecessary complexity to the gameplay balance. I could see the argument that it being unnecessary and an annoyance even ties into the story's themes, but I think the game makes that point well enough without the gameplay ramifications. I'm sure it's easy when designing a game like this to just say "other games did it, right?", but Mother 3 demonstrates in its opening chapters that it understands how tightly designed a game can be without that. This idea underlines my thoughts through the rest of the game, "why did they change this after doing it so well earlier?" The rhythm combat and HP counter mechanic lose importance and start to feel dull. The former because there's too many enemies that you can't put to sleep to learn the rhythm or it's just not worth it to do so, and the many of the songs became too complicated for me to keep up more than a few beats. The counter mechanic becomes an annoyance with larger HP totals when you're often sitting there waiting on a heal to finish before letting the enemy attack, or you're trying to mash out commands before a party member dies but the textboxes take too long. You can buy weapon upgrades at shops, but when this is worth doing isn't very apparent until after the fact. Refighting bosses earlier in the game would skip some of their dialogue/cutscene on repeat attempts to speed it up, and at some point they just give up on doing this. Inventory management becomes a chore, and the Inventory Guy is never nearby when you need him. There were some bosses later in the game that I just had to grind for because even using the best strategy at my current level wasn't enough. The separation of save points and hot springs for healing makes little sense when there's no hot spring near a pre-boss save point, encouraging you to just die on your first attempt. There's so many things like this where I thought this game was better and it just falls backwards into the same problems I have with so many other games.
That's certainly not to say this is a bad game, I enjoyed my time with it a lot even in most of those later parts. It does have a ton of content to show you that's all very charming and funny, and I can totally see how this helped spawn the subgenre of CharmPGs, but it feels more genuine in a way that many of those don't. In addition to this charm of the style and writing, the music was a big driving force in my interest to play this, as well as my motivation to continue playing throughout. I don't have a whole lot to say about it other than it's hands down the best soundtrack on the GBA. There's also some cool divergences from the main gameplay, which even if they're hit (the lab section) or miss (underwater) I admire the attempt to mix it up and didn't have a better spot to mention that.
I largely have positive things to say about the story, but it does stumble in a couple of places. Moving away from the perspective shifts of the first half entirely is a mistake in my opinion. On top of enjoying it for the gameplay, I think it would have greatly benefitted the pacing to have some more of these sprinkled throughout the back half as a break from the full-party gameplay with the normal group of characters. Porky's introduction and importance to the story are also questionable. Most people playing this have probably played Earthbound, but I found it too tedious to stick with. I don't know much beyond Porky being an antagonist in that game as well, but taking this story on its own he's introduced too late (and mostly explained through an exposition dump) and just kind of distracts from the main narrative in my opinion. It would have been fine just leaving Fassad and the Masked Man as the main antagonists. I also wish there was more time spent in New Pork City, the last chapter of the game there is pretty rushed and that probably doesn't help with Porky feeling underdeveloped. There's also a story disconnect between the halves of the game with the focus on the Egg of Light, which is hardly used once it's obtained, and its importance only explained later in the exposition dump I mentioned. I also think Lucas as a main character is a little too bland and too much of a self-insert or blank slate character. I prefer main characters in RPGs that are well defined and let you roleplay as them, and there's really none of that with Lucas. There's also a lot of positives to the story as well though. I did love the perspective changing between chapters while that was going on and it was a great way to introduce the wide cast of characters. Even if this isn't kept up, bringing back characters that were out of the story for a while still benefits from those early sections. The variety in locations and scope of the story is impressive and fun. I mentioned above, but the writing is consistently charming and funny. The ending was also pretty well executed and emotionally touching, and the use of musical motifs tying into the story there was cool even if it was probably more notable at the time than it is today with many more games trying to do that.
While I've got a lot of smaller complaints and this game isn't as perfect as I thought it might be for a while, it's still one of the best experiences I've had with a JRPG. It was actually fun enough for me to finish, which I often don't end up doing with these. I was a bit sad when it was over, as this had become a regular before bedtime game for me and was very comfy to play an hour of at the end of the day. I hope I got my message across of what I think this and future games could do better, but over time I imagine my annoyances with this will fade and I'll be left with the positive memories of this experience with it.