I struggle to think of a phrase more appropriate to describe Mother 3 than it being a “bold sequel” to what came before it. Earthbound is a wonderful game and one dripping with originality and inspiration- but going into it as someone who played Beginnings first made it very apparent where there was overlap. Mother 3 did not give that experience, constantly surprising me how different and unique this game was from the rest of the trilogy- for better or for worse. I don’t want this review to end up being a comparison to past games or fan reception versus my own, but I find this game hard to talk about in a vacuum given it is a sequel, is in a series that I adore, and has a cultural footprint unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. That being said, this game was a little bit of a tough sell for me despite the undeniable highs.

When recounting my time with this game, I have distilled my gripes with it into two (major) grievances with both the gameplay experience and the story it tells. Will these be hot takes? Maybe? Probably? But I do certainly know they are how I felt. Humor me for a bit here if you are interested, starting with the gameplay frustrations.

If you take a glance at anything about my profile here it should be pretty apparent that I am about as far away as possible from the “dislikes turn based JRPGs” crowd that I see all too often. Dragon Quest is my favorite series, I’ve played and loved all 10 turn based mainline Final Fantasies, the list goes on. That is to say my annoyance with this title does not come from a simple sentiment like that, but rather how the experience is delivered to you and executed. In other words- structure. Being blunt, I think this game is structured in a poor and not particularly fun manner. The first ~four chapters are very largely focused on a single character, one that changes per chapter, and isn’t given much freedom in the gameplay experience. Having a party of one per battle is not an inherently bad idea in turn based RPGs, but it runs the risk of repetition and monotony dangerously close- and it succumbs to it pretty harshly here. Every battle boils down to just whackin’ away at an enemy until you finally kill it. Over, and over, and over. I like simple, but when there isn’t an ounce of strategy, every challenge thrown at you is negated by simply hoarding some extra food, and the extremely linear world and dungeon design leaves no room for error- it gets exhausting. I don’t like to say statements like this typically, but it really felt like the game was just wasting my time for a lot of this game's first few chapters. What extenuates that feeling is how every chapter gives you a new character to control. I love the concept of that as it gives some cool variety and perspective on the world and story, but in a gameplay front it really kills any last bit of fun since you don’t even get the satisfaction of progressively watching stats increase and characters grow when you have to start anew so often. I get what this game was going for here, being a more focused and contained narrative in a smaller, tight knit environment, and there are elements like seeing how familiar NPC dialogue or geography changes over time that I think are fantastic- but when you squeeze that into a role playing video game it lends itself to a very dull game experience. Once you get control of Lucas and the game really ‘starts’ the gameplay experience definitely improves. There isn’t much mechanical deviation from Earthbound aside from a kinda lame timing based hit thing that I never found to be very consistent or interesting, but I think Earthbound is fun so I don’t have all that much to be cynical about. Heck, there's even a pretty solid challenge with some of the bosses too as it progresses which was neat. However, the linearity permeates this game from start to finish, and I found that to be a bummer. It just makes the world feel more like a theme park ride rather than a world, and I find that much less compelling. Ideally a story should be heightened by the gameplay, and vice versa, but I couldn’t help but feel like the gameplay was being stripped of a lot of its qualities in favor of storytelling, and when 2/3s of this series has demonstrated that it's more than possible for a healthier relationship- I think that it sticks out even more. When I played Earthbound Beginnings and Earthbound, I blasted through those games due to how much fun I was having. It was a legitimate absorption into those worlds, and it was awesome. With Mother 3, it took me much longer to see those credits, and it was due to me not really being excited to play. If you needed an anecdote to tie all my points together here, there you are.

Before I tear into a few aspects of this games’ story, I want to put a disclaimer here to ensure you keep in mind that I largely like this game and its story. I’m not trying to bully it or try and convince anyone to feel the way I do, because I know people adore the story presented here. I am simply a fan with some criticism, so bear with me here. I have a few nitpicks of varying size that span the length of this game- I didn’t really care about the small stories told in the first few chapters and wished they expressed those story points in a more natural and less padded manner, I thought the ‘mystery’ of the masked man was painfully obvious, and there are definitely some areas that could’ve used a bit more fat trimming, and the quirky Mother dialogue and silliness did not mix well on a few occasions with the more serious tone- but that is not my main gripe here. My biggest complaint comes from the end of the game in chapter 8. I will not be nice here- the twist that Pokey/Porky from Earthbound just.. shows up and is the big bad of this game is lame. Like I was genuinely really annoyed and soured by it type lame. I love the atmosphere of New Pork City and how it visually expresses the (admittedly kind of random and underbaked) themes of industrialism and its impact on people, but this reveal really took a lot of steam out of me. I don’t mind a little bit of tasteful fan service in the games I play. The sailing theme in Dragon Quest XI being the same theme from Dragon Quest IV? Cute and fun. An optional side quest in Final Fantasy Tactics where you can recruit Cloud Strife? Neat little bonus if you go out of your way. Making the main antagonist of this game abruptly be spun into a character from a previous game for no reason and expecting me to find that satisfying? Sorry, but it crashed and burned the second they pulled that rug from under me. If Mother 3 is anything, it is a game that is very creative and very much a passion project. Everything about the game is a product made out of a desire to be uniquely itself- and it resorting to violently jingling keys in your face at the end is about the worst possible way to conclude something so itself. Maybe people found this twist cool because they got to see a familiar face again, but I found it incredibly lazy and pandering- among being unsatisfying, boring, and just not tasteful. The fact that this major story thread is solely expressed to the player by a ((mountain)) of random exposition like 2(?) hours before the game is over really highlights how bizarrely out of place and uninteresting it all is. I love Earthbound to death, but having to slowly ride your way down a stream surrounded by all the famous iconography from the game while Pollyanna plays is just the laziest way to get a reaction out of a player in my opinion and I really wish they used the effort to give the games story a satisfying, original, and fitting ending that serves the actual characters better. Once Porky is out of the way though, credit where it's due with a strong final few moments.

Those are some big walls of text where I complained like a little crybaby- not unlike Lucas himself at the start of the game- but I think that despite those huge and frankly detrimental missteps, this game is still pretty good. I’ll be nice to it now, don’t worry.

When Mother 3 works, it really does work. The atmosphere at the very start of the game, tucked away in the log cabin as a little kid and a genuinely lovely little family is brilliant- and I immediately cared about pretty much everyone. I remember very vividly Hinawa said right at the beginning “Good morning, Mr. Sleepyhead Brende,” and while just a tiny little line of dialogue, it resonated deeply with me simply due to how endearing it was. I love Hinawa, and I think the story given to the protagonist as a result of what happens to her is a fantastic setup for a tale of growth, and it largely succeeds at its intention in a way that is compelling and moving. I also think the cast is really good in general. Kumatora is such a fun character, and her explosive but truly kind personality was a wonderful highlight of the experience. Duster isn’t quite as interesting to me, but I think he is still really endearing and I love his quirks like limping around and all his tools. The side characters are pretty great too, with the Magypsies all being a standout for me for how eccentric and silly yet heroic they ended up. Boney also gets a shoutout because he is a funny dog. While I don’t love a lot of the linearity here, they do a fantastic job developing Tazmily village and squeezing everything out of it, and I think the set pieces sprinkled around the world like the Survival Horror-esque Chimera lab or the mushroom trip are incredibly memorable. My favorite moment of the game is the dream sequence in the sunflower field after you fall off the cliff reaching out for Hinawa and land in the haystack. It is a very small, one off line of text but it states that Alec- the person who put the hay there and father of Hinawa- had a dream of Hinawa telling him to move the hay there, and it ended up saving Lucas’ life. I found it both incredibly subtle and moving, and really emphasized that warm motherly love from the beginning of the game I mentioned earlier and makes it hit harder when it returns at the end. Brilliant stuff. This game is also presented really wonderfully, especially for the hardware. I’ve always been a fan of the cartoonish art direction with the beady eyes and flat colors in this series, and this is no exception. The animation accompanying it all is impressive and expressive, which I thought was really cool given how the previous entries never really emphasized it. GBA music is notoriously crunchy, but the music here also managed to avoid that hardware quirk which was great, and it also ended up just being really great alongside it- though I think that was a given if the previous two games were any indicators. High highs to be found in this game, no doubt about that.

This is a strange comparison, but I find Mother 3 to be similar to Metal Gear Solid 4, of all things. Not in the sense that they play, look, sound, or commentate anything similar at all, but they share a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses. I think MGS4 has an incredible character story with beautiful moments and tons of creativity. Yet it also is bogged down by some incredibly unfun and annoying gameplay segments, a more linear approach and one that stumbles a little bit with the gameplay to story relationship, and some distasteful fan service for the sake of tickling nostalgia. MGS4 has been a game that has stuck with me in my head, but it has stuck there due to me constantly sorting out my thoughts and opinions on it to this day, six years after playing it. Mother 3 is to Mother what MGS4 is to Metal Gear, at least for me.

Mother 3 is my least favorite game of the trilogy. Not because it’s bad- not at all- but it is the one that I had to fight with the most to have fun with, and this is a series with two other games that I am simply enamored by. There is a lot to love about this game, and a lot of it rightfully got my approval and admiration- but it is a mixed bag to sort through to get there. I truly wanted to love this game, but I am an honest man and I felt the tugging of that two steps forward one step back dynamic this game plopped onto my lap hard. There is a good time to be had here and I am sure I am in the minority here even just being more neutral rather than actively negative, but that's just where I landed. Maybe with more time and eventually coming back to it in the future I’ll have an experience with more unconditional love, but for the time being it gets my stamp of “pretty good but also kind of confusing and conflicting on my opinions so don’t take my word as gospel”. Video games are pretty neat, and I hope any and everyone is able to get something out of this game just like I and many others have been able to. Have fun, thanks for reading, and send your regards to the next frog for me.

In the span of a week or so, I went from an apathetic “I should try that out sometime” stance on Star Ocean into a giddy little man grinning ear to ear with love because I took that plunge after all this time and was rewarded handsomely. Star Ocean Second Story is such a wonderful video game and I couldn’t be happier.

It’s been a while since I have played a game with a story that feels so vividly “golden age of JRPG”. The main plot kicks off and is so endearing and exciting, in large part due to the outstanding and incredibly lovable dual protagonists. I love the story setup, and even just in my first play session was fully on board with everything being presented, but that momentum just continues for the entire game. It paints an incredibly vibrant and detailed picture of the world of Star Ocean, yet is simultaneously paced brilliantly and always serves to grow the characters just as much. Midway through the game has a twist that brings it all together and really cemented this as an all time great for me. Such a great time.

The beginning couple hours were a bit confusing due to the wealth of mechanics tossed to you to play with, combined by battles so easy I was finishing them within seconds- not allowing me the breathing room to comprehend the aforementioned mechanics. However, once the game kicked into full gear and my learning increased alongside it- I had a blast. Combat leans a little bit into the “mashy flashy” side of things, but the depth in its systems and leveling don’t make it feel mindless. You are given an absurd amount of agency into growing your characters with different skills and abilities, and finding a way to use the many tools given to you effectively is where the game really shines. I love the battles- they’re fast, exciting, and still give lots of tactical decision making- but even more so was doing things like leveling up Rena to be an author so other characters could bypass using skill points on other skills, making characters good at pickpocketing and stealing amazing gear early, or giving everyone the option to nerf stats in exchange for experience boosts. Combine that with the character recruition (which allowed me two entirely different parties by the endgames for my two playthroughs) and I just think it's pretty damn cool that everyone can adopt their own ways to play and still be validated, challenged, and rewarded for it. I found it to be just as addictive as it was mechanically dense, and I did go out of my way to fight every superboss and reach max level.

Structurally the game is a little more linear than the rest of the mechanics might make you think, always having a destination you need to go to for progression, but it still gives plenty of agency in a way that feels liberating. I found myself wandering around the world map constantly, and finding extra hard enemies that rewarded me with extra experience and skill points was really cool- along with chests, new towns, new characters, and party dialogue. The world feels very lived in and has tons of lore and history going into its details, and the lovely characters you can recruit go a long way into making it feel as such, which is just a lot of fun. The towns often have interesting NPCs to talk to, architecture, and generally feel distinct and dense. Being a part of this universe is simply captivating, and it is tied together by the excellent soundtrack and wonderful visuals of this remaster and in the pre-rendered backgrounds of the original too.

There are a couple little nitpicks I could scrape together if I wanted to, but I see no reason to given how much I enjoyed this game. I have the platinum trophy on my Playstation- obtained simply because I was having fun and not due to a previous intention. The story is great, the world is exciting, it's incredibly fun, it's presented beautifully, and I want to go on adventures with Claude and Rena in real life. I love this game and will continue to love it for a long, long time. Great stuff here and an easy recommendation to anyone who loves PS1 era JRPGs as I do.

I try not to let expectations dictate anything before I play through a video game with eyes unclouded- but Wild Arms is a strange case. On the surface, it seemed to be a game that I’d absolutely adore. Classic simple turn-based PS1 era JRPG with a unique aesthetic and lots of fanfare? Sounds right up my alley! In execution, however, Wild Arms fell apart little-by-little and resulted in something less than favorable overall. I don’t despise this game by any means, but I am confused by what it had to offer.

The peak of Wild Arms- funnily and disappointingly enough- starts before you even begin the game. The 90’s anime intro movie combined with the frankly outstanding music is perfect. Watching that intro on Youtube years ago was the biggest advertisement that got me curious about this game, and it worked because it looked so.. unseen? The PS1 era of JRPGs is famous for bursting with creativity. Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Cross, Parasite Eve, Persona- decades later and I struggle to think of any games since that feel like any of those. Wild Arms seemed like it would be another on that list. A blending of Fantasy, Sci-fi, and the Wild West? Just on paper that seems like a Pandora’s box ripe with ideas. In practice it lent itself to a game that felt dull, derivative, and worst of all dissatisfying.

Being blunt, I think Wild Arms is boring. I don’t like to toss that term around much, but I found this game to be just that. More than any JRPG I’ve played in recent memory I can recount many times where I was just standing still or drifting off on my phone because I didn’t find what it offered very compelling. The combat mechanics are very straightforward- which is not a criticism as someone who’s favorite video game series is Dragon Quest- but lacks any real agency or depth. The first half of this game I just turned on autobattle and watched me win every fight no problem. The second half when I unlocked strong multitarget magic turned into me using one thunder spell and reaping the rewards. Every boss fight is buff Jack > have Jack do strong sword techniques > have Rudy shoot gun > heal when needed. I described the game to a friend as being “babies first JRPG'' because it is absolutely pathetic in terms of difficulty and holds your hand so much that nothing scratches any itches this genre provides. Even the superbosses of the game, which I fought out of curiosity, are effectively impossible to lose to if you just equip a certain item. I don’t have a problem with easy games, heck, a lot of the JRPGs I love are easy- but when it’s presented so sluggish and with so little agency, I found myself spamming the invisibility spell every second I could just to avoid getting into fights entirely.

I also think the game is borderline broken and unbalanced as all hell when it comes to your very few bits of player agency. The notable example for me is the magic system, which gives a surprising amount of freedom in your choices of what spells you learn. About halfway through the game though, you are given the option to learn advanced magic. It costs the same amount of resources to learn as basic magic, and you can undo your spells at any time and reallocate those points. So basically, halfway through the game you can just undo the progress you made and choose a lot of options that are just.. objectively better. Cecilia the mage gets exponentially stronger at this point if the game in the span of like 10 minutes of menu fiddling. I liked that I had the choice to redevelop the character, but it makes an easy game even easier. The EXP balancing is also all over the place. In one of the dungeons I fought a regular random encounter that netted me 10k EXP. The boss at the end gave me 4k. The satisfaction of fighting a strong enemy- like a boss encounter- is ruined when the rewards aren’t even close to proportional. I can think of even more examples like how strong Rudy’s ARMs are to use versus the price to refill the ammo- but I think it’s emblematic enough of how thoughtless the game feels already with the current examples.

The overworld is also just.. not very fun to explore. The drab colors fit the story and themes of the game well, but it lends itself to a very homogenous world that feels clunky to navigate as a result. The map is near useless and shows the bare minimum amount of info possible, along with needing to be found first entirely rendering a good chunk of the game map-less. And most annoyingly is the use of teleporters sprinkled all around that disorient your location and make (the prevalent) backtracking convoluted and slow given the long repetitive animations of using them. By the time you reach the advanced magic and can finally fast travel, it feels like a godsend- and while satisfying in that regard, feeds into the frustration even more retrospectively.

Finally, I think the story is just whatever. None of the side characters stood out to me at all and the main cast is decent enough if only for the fact that I just like the trope of a trio on an adventure. Plus you get a talking mouse companion which is just objectively awesome. I wish the world and story used the barely prevalent wild western themes more given it was one of the things drawing me here, but the fantasy and sci-fi elements were interesting enough to be passable. The melodrama didn’t really work for me given how uninvested I was most of the time, but there’s some good stuff to be found in this department here and there so I don’t think it’s quite as flawed as the gameplay- even if still pretty bland.

Where the game shines is the dungeon design, which I thought was pretty consistently great. Not everything is a winner, but combining Zelda-esque puzzles, a great balance of labyrinthian exploration, and a perfect length made them really fun, and seeing how the tools you unlocked worked in a puzzle context was neat. None of them are hard or push the mechanics very far, but they are enjoyable. In terms of presentation, the game visually is just ‘pretty good’ or ‘solid’ but in a simplistic way that I like. The music, however, is definitely the strongest part of this all and has some excellent and memorable tracks.

By the end of Wild Arms as it got goofy with the Sci-fi, ramped up stakes, and gave you a more full (albeit shallow) gameplay experience- I warmed up to it a bit more and had some fun with it, but probably the most important anecdote I can give here is that I actually shelved this game for a while because I was so unimpressed by the first half of it all. I never do that, and I think it speaks volumes to how middling this game is to have me go that far in avoiding it. Like I said, I don’t think this game is bad, but a lot of the elements of it are underwhelming or poorly implemented in a way that- even with the good- culminates in an experience that is somehow lesser than the sum of its parts.

I don’t love Wild Arms as much as I desperately wish I did. This era of JRPGs is so, so incredible- but this one is a reminder to me that not everything is a heavy hitter. Maybe someday I’ll revisit this game to see if my mind changes at all, and in doing so I’ll huddle up with it on original hardware to give it that charm, but until then I am not impressed with this game. I got the platinum trophy in an effort to really make sure I wasn’t missing something here, but this will be one I don’t think about all too often in the days to come. A shame, but whatever. Can’t win ‘em all!