(written as part of my review rewrite request)
Mother 3 has so many issues.
Kumatora (who I'm sure just happens to be the only prominent female character) has no story and barely any characterization. Everything about the magical ancient beings whose name contains a slur is just awful.
The gameplay is really bad. The rhythm element and the rolling hp in combat are pretty much its only saving graces, and even they're not great, just interesting and decent. Everything else about the gameplay is either average or awful.
I genuinly have no idea why the save point system is like that. Not regaining your health when saving but regaining it when respawning means the ideal way to play against bosses is to intentionally get killed the first time so you can encounter them with all of your health and pp. Also not regaining items you used before you died is incredibly frustrating, I get that you also keep items you got before you died but couldn't you at least regain stuff you used in your last encounter so you don't have to decide if this is the right attempt to use a healing item?
I often find it very difficult to believe that this game came out in 2006 and not the early 90s.
That being said, the game's writing and its message of hope in the face of societal collapse caused by capitalism is nothing short of amazing. Amazing enough to make this one of my favourite games of all time.

This is an incredibly flawed game. There are way too many random encounters and there are so many balance issues that I won’t even bother listing them. Combat is fairly boring.

Despite this, I greatly enjoyed my time with this game. It oozes charm. The music and character design are amazing. It has a real sense of adventure. While it might not have much of a story, it can create great stories. Here’s an example for what I mean by that:
My Warrior and Thief were poisoned, I was out of antidotes and barely made it to a tavern thanks to the healing from my white mage. Nothing special. But the way I decided to remember this was that Glitz dragged an almost dead Morgan and Arael into bed, their bodies ravaged by the poison, while Aeneas prayed that they would make it through the night.

I played this game to prepare for playing Stranger of Paradise later this year, but I ended up loving it so much that now I want to play through all of the mainline Final Fantasy games. This game lays an amazing foundation and I can’t wait to see how other games expand on that.

Hauntingly beautiful, amazing OST (as is to be expected of Darren Korb), and the combat is nothing short of amazing. Amazingly deep and super innovative, probably the best combat out of any Supergiant game.
The game isn't without its flaws though. The story is good, but not quite great. Its main issue is how obtuse it is. This came out in 2014, so maybe Dark Souls made them think that hiding all of the story in item descriptions is peak video game design, but it doesn't really work here.
Also making most of the villains queer while making the hero's goal to rescue her male lover means that the story has some (unintended) homophobic vibes.
Also I don't like the ending.