This review contains spoilers
MOTHER 3 — A Beautiful Song in the Gashes of Attrition
I played Mother 3 after reading a nearly decade-old Starman.net thread titled “Does Mother 3 say something about capitalism?” with several capitalism understanders™️ within saying that it wasn’t. I called them “fucking idiots” at the time—even as someone who hadn’t played the game I could tell its about capitalism—but now that I’ve finished the game, I can provide a more nuanced take. Those guys are MASSIVE fucking idiots.
Mother 3 is a game about the ways capitalism and fascism work together to destroy society. It is not subtle about this in the slightest. It literally has a long, slow text crawl about how consumerism has corrupted people and made things start to get worse! Not that its bluntness is an issue, clearly some people need to have it shoved straight through their thick skulls. Its genuinely impressive how realistically and thoroughly the game covers these themes, from the gradual corruption of Tazmilly Village you get to experience over the course of the game, to the eugenic experiments of Chimera, to Pigmask’s hijacking of the village’s religious beliefs as a front for their lightning strikes. Even the game’s use of the “everybody is colorblind” trope effectively shows how the fascist power of the Pigmasks isn’t built out of some rigid structure. It cannot be said enough how well-constructed of a story Mother 3 is, elevated even further by the pinnacle of Nintendo’s spritework and animation.
The game is also ridiculously funny. The throughout bits are incredibly well done and always a delight to see play out. My favorite one remains the Dog-Like Dude at the entrance to Club Tittiboo (I will die knowing I missed the chance to get a plush of him 😔), though the entire climb up the Empire Porky Building with a dozen fake 100th floors was also a good ass time. I was surprised how much of a straight line I can draw this game’s humor to the indie rpgs inspired by the series, even moreso than Earthbound.
Underpinning all of this is the emotional core of the game, a family ripped apart by the Pigmasks and a young boy trying to find something in the tattered remains. Overall, I felt the game could’ve done more with its characters. Despite me having become a big Kumatora-head, it’s hard to ignore that I can summarize more or less everything the game tells you about her in two sentences. (She is a redheaded masculine girl who came to the islands as an orphan and was raised by the Magypsies. She has PSI powers and will kick your ass if you mess with her.) I think I could tell you even less about Duster. From what I understand, the intent behind the main characters’ relative lack of dialogue stems from having the their emotions reflect the player’s, much in the same way the first two Mother games handed it, but it ends up conflicting with Mother 3’s much more structured story enough that i wish they gave the core cast of characters some more character.
Despite this, the game still nails its ending with a wonderfully personal and emotional final battle. The framing between Lucas and Claus, the music, their parents’ desperate intervention, Lucas’s struggle being portrayed through the gameplay, Claus’ dying words; it’s all so beautifully done, I struggle to say more about it. The culminating awakening of the dark dragon was mesmerizing and felt like the perfect bittersweet sendoff to the world. And then, as someone who has just changed her name, to get to talk with the characters one last time, with them talking directly to me, thanking me directly, wishing me the best returning to my own world felt incredible.
This entire sequence felt special, a testament to Itoi’s incredible skills as a creative. It’s incredibly easy to see why many people consider Mother 3 one of their favorite experiences of all time, it’s definitely a 10/10 story for me.
But ah—
Mother 3 isn’t just a story. It’s a videogame.
Mother 3 is the sequel to the 1994 probably-too-popular-to-be-considered-a-cult-classic SNES JRPG Earthbound. Those close to me may know that my thoughts on Earthbound amount to “everything about the game is pretty good except the gameplay”. The general vibe I got from hearing about Mother 3 in the years before playing it was that its gameplay is an improvement from Earthbound. It definitely is. Doesn’t make it good though.
The core issue of Mother 3’s gameplay is that everything battle feels like a brutal war of attrition. Enemies hit extremely hard, so you always have to be healing someone, which costs PP or healing items, which are always in limited supply, so you better hope you can defeat the enemy before you run out. And hopefully you’re fighting something that takes a reasonable amount of damage from normal attacks, because 2 of your party members have no other options. PP-restoring items are few and far to come by. You do not have a reliable way to revive party members until at least 3/4ths through the game, and a full party heal option until even later. Sometimes the game will force you to go through an enemy-filled mini dungeon, beat the boss in there, then backtrack through said enemy-filled dungeon without a single hot springs to heal at. It’s all such a pain in the ass. And before you try to “skill issue” me, yes, I made liberal use of stat buffs and debuffs, especially during bosses. They feel essential for giving you a remote chance in several battles.
That’s just when you’ve finally got the whole party together. In the earlier chapters, when you only have 2 party members, you’ll often be lacking much options in
combat, which makes things even more of a drag. There were two separate instances in chapter 4, where you’re playing as Lucas and Boney that I would’ve straight up dropped the game if not for emulator features: the boss in Club Tittiboo and the train tunnel where you have to fight wave after wave of enemies without any respite. The game’s corridor-filled level design means any trip through an area means fighting almost every single enemy makes a beeline towards you, and of course respawns every time you reenter an area.
My gameplay frustrations started to boil towards the end of chapter 7, which a friend has affectionately called “Earthbound 2”, where the game’s structure turns into a series of vignettes where the gang travels around to find the needles and (largely) get punked by the Pigmasks each of them. Even if I was no longer as frustrated as in chapter 4, it started to feel very tedious going through each needle’s section, even if there were good moments along the way. The game’s biggest strength is its well-crafted story by far, and I wish the game didn’t put it to the wayside for such a significant chunk of playtime. A thought crossed my head when I reached the fifth or sixth needle, along the lines of “the story wouldn’t really be any different if we weren’t finding these needles, since I end up getting beaten to most of them anyways”, which I don’t think is a super great criticism in general, but speaks well to where the game was leaving me at that point.
I do feel bad that so much of this review reads negatively. It’s a piece of art that is definitely worth the experience, in spite of its gameplay. Its one of those games that feels special. I rant so much about its gameplay because I suffered through it to see what the game had to show me, and it was well worth it.
I played Mother 3 after reading a nearly decade-old Starman.net thread titled “Does Mother 3 say something about capitalism?” with several capitalism understanders™️ within saying that it wasn’t. I called them “fucking idiots” at the time—even as someone who hadn’t played the game I could tell its about capitalism—but now that I’ve finished the game, I can provide a more nuanced take. Those guys are MASSIVE fucking idiots.
Mother 3 is a game about the ways capitalism and fascism work together to destroy society. It is not subtle about this in the slightest. It literally has a long, slow text crawl about how consumerism has corrupted people and made things start to get worse! Not that its bluntness is an issue, clearly some people need to have it shoved straight through their thick skulls. Its genuinely impressive how realistically and thoroughly the game covers these themes, from the gradual corruption of Tazmilly Village you get to experience over the course of the game, to the eugenic experiments of Chimera, to Pigmask’s hijacking of the village’s religious beliefs as a front for their lightning strikes. Even the game’s use of the “everybody is colorblind” trope effectively shows how the fascist power of the Pigmasks isn’t built out of some rigid structure. It cannot be said enough how well-constructed of a story Mother 3 is, elevated even further by the pinnacle of Nintendo’s spritework and animation.
The game is also ridiculously funny. The throughout bits are incredibly well done and always a delight to see play out. My favorite one remains the Dog-Like Dude at the entrance to Club Tittiboo (I will die knowing I missed the chance to get a plush of him 😔), though the entire climb up the Empire Porky Building with a dozen fake 100th floors was also a good ass time. I was surprised how much of a straight line I can draw this game’s humor to the indie rpgs inspired by the series, even moreso than Earthbound.
Underpinning all of this is the emotional core of the game, a family ripped apart by the Pigmasks and a young boy trying to find something in the tattered remains. Overall, I felt the game could’ve done more with its characters. Despite me having become a big Kumatora-head, it’s hard to ignore that I can summarize more or less everything the game tells you about her in two sentences. (She is a redheaded masculine girl who came to the islands as an orphan and was raised by the Magypsies. She has PSI powers and will kick your ass if you mess with her.) I think I could tell you even less about Duster. From what I understand, the intent behind the main characters’ relative lack of dialogue stems from having the their emotions reflect the player’s, much in the same way the first two Mother games handed it, but it ends up conflicting with Mother 3’s much more structured story enough that i wish they gave the core cast of characters some more character.
Despite this, the game still nails its ending with a wonderfully personal and emotional final battle. The framing between Lucas and Claus, the music, their parents’ desperate intervention, Lucas’s struggle being portrayed through the gameplay, Claus’ dying words; it’s all so beautifully done, I struggle to say more about it. The culminating awakening of the dark dragon was mesmerizing and felt like the perfect bittersweet sendoff to the world. And then, as someone who has just changed her name, to get to talk with the characters one last time, with them talking directly to me, thanking me directly, wishing me the best returning to my own world felt incredible.
This entire sequence felt special, a testament to Itoi’s incredible skills as a creative. It’s incredibly easy to see why many people consider Mother 3 one of their favorite experiences of all time, it’s definitely a 10/10 story for me.
But ah—
Mother 3 isn’t just a story. It’s a videogame.
Mother 3 is the sequel to the 1994 probably-too-popular-to-be-considered-a-cult-classic SNES JRPG Earthbound. Those close to me may know that my thoughts on Earthbound amount to “everything about the game is pretty good except the gameplay”. The general vibe I got from hearing about Mother 3 in the years before playing it was that its gameplay is an improvement from Earthbound. It definitely is. Doesn’t make it good though.
The core issue of Mother 3’s gameplay is that everything battle feels like a brutal war of attrition. Enemies hit extremely hard, so you always have to be healing someone, which costs PP or healing items, which are always in limited supply, so you better hope you can defeat the enemy before you run out. And hopefully you’re fighting something that takes a reasonable amount of damage from normal attacks, because 2 of your party members have no other options. PP-restoring items are few and far to come by. You do not have a reliable way to revive party members until at least 3/4ths through the game, and a full party heal option until even later. Sometimes the game will force you to go through an enemy-filled mini dungeon, beat the boss in there, then backtrack through said enemy-filled dungeon without a single hot springs to heal at. It’s all such a pain in the ass. And before you try to “skill issue” me, yes, I made liberal use of stat buffs and debuffs, especially during bosses. They feel essential for giving you a remote chance in several battles.
That’s just when you’ve finally got the whole party together. In the earlier chapters, when you only have 2 party members, you’ll often be lacking much options in
combat, which makes things even more of a drag. There were two separate instances in chapter 4, where you’re playing as Lucas and Boney that I would’ve straight up dropped the game if not for emulator features: the boss in Club Tittiboo and the train tunnel where you have to fight wave after wave of enemies without any respite. The game’s corridor-filled level design means any trip through an area means fighting almost every single enemy makes a beeline towards you, and of course respawns every time you reenter an area.
My gameplay frustrations started to boil towards the end of chapter 7, which a friend has affectionately called “Earthbound 2”, where the game’s structure turns into a series of vignettes where the gang travels around to find the needles and (largely) get punked by the Pigmasks each of them. Even if I was no longer as frustrated as in chapter 4, it started to feel very tedious going through each needle’s section, even if there were good moments along the way. The game’s biggest strength is its well-crafted story by far, and I wish the game didn’t put it to the wayside for such a significant chunk of playtime. A thought crossed my head when I reached the fifth or sixth needle, along the lines of “the story wouldn’t really be any different if we weren’t finding these needles, since I end up getting beaten to most of them anyways”, which I don’t think is a super great criticism in general, but speaks well to where the game was leaving me at that point.
I do feel bad that so much of this review reads negatively. It’s a piece of art that is definitely worth the experience, in spite of its gameplay. Its one of those games that feels special. I rant so much about its gameplay because I suffered through it to see what the game had to show me, and it was well worth it.