Mother Trilogy

 

The first had been an obscure Japanese release for a long time, until emulation caught up with the West and thus, discoveries in the East were getting made. Mother uses a traditional battle system similar to Dragon Quest where basic action can comply. 

As Ninten, you are on a quest to unravel the mysterious phenomenon occuring at your home town. As you recruit new friends, you notice that the setting is more of recent times, with modern NPC's, baseball bats instead of swords and more ideas such as being able to bring back fallen allies using hospitals.

There are also weird scenarios that made their debut here and never really went away with the trilogy. In Mother, there is for example a dream world that is important for the quest to continue, and some enemies are rather odd, such as hippies attacking your party.

Like many old RPGs, Mother suffers from illogical walkthroughs and offers very low knowledge towards items, PSI(magic), weapons etcetera. To smoothen the gameplay, I sped up the level grinding by use of the “Easy patch”, which honestly made the game more enjoyable for me.

In this age of video gaming, I must try my best to play as many interesting games as I can and beat the majority of them if possible. So, while there are no major faults with this RPG, it does show its age.

Rating: 6.4

 

Massive improvement over the original Mother, EarthBound, which is the more recognizable title of this sequel, is a favorite of seasoned SNES gamers. 

With it’s many references towards pop culture, wacky dialogue, odd mood and strange themes playing, it’s one of the quirkiest RPG games I have played. That is in essence why this title is still beloved and remembered by many today.

The difficulty is more fair in here, plus the length of the game is pretty big. The graphics are cute in their own way, and did not hinder the modern 90’s based setting. Never mind the fact that molecules, annoying old party men and abstract arts amongst other enemies for instance can be aggressive against your party members. 

The soundtrack is quite diverse, with a few outstanding ones, plus some remixes from the NES game. I enjoyed the Threed, Moonside and Fourside songs, the dungeons were most of the time forgettable though. And perhaps EarthBound relied a bit too much on so much weird occurences that it kind of hurt the overall score. 

The final boss Giygas is easily one of the most unique ones out there, worth experiencing after all that traversing, level grinding and unusualness. It's the same alien from the original, and this time, he is defeated in an entirely new way.

Nothing beats the Moonside area though when speaking of total unexpectedness. It’s probably one of the best trips you can have inside video games. So Mother 2 has plenty to offer for many of us, but it is understandable if you cannot grasp the excitement around it.

It is simply one of those games that you probably had best grew up with in order to truly love it.

Rating: 7.6

 

It ends with a bang, so to speak. Situated at the Nowhere Islands, away from the settings of the other two, Mother 3 comes with new features, a varied new cast and a touching story that will no doubt hit you at certain times, despite the game’s quirkiness, as fans of the franchise are already used to.

While the traditional turn based RPG gameplay is still here, as well as the humoristic parts of it, it comes with a new rhythm based feature that is sort of akin to how Paper Mario games reward players when they hit enemies at the right time. 

Instead of watching closely when to strike them in Mother 3, you must listen to the beat each tune provides during battle, in order to score more hits. While it isn’t necessary to use this feature, it will certainly help out anyone who is prepared to memorize the tunes and thus, deal way more damage.

That isn’t to say that the overall difficulty is noteworthy lower, on the contrary, this third entry is around the same really, if you forget about Mother 1’s tremendous amount of grinding. Bosses are unexpected adversaries of varied origins, and likewise it goes the same with the regular enemies, that can start from strange roadblocks or flying mousses, to the craziest, including Horseantula’s and Negative Man, who is depressed about everything. 

The story is about a troubled family that eventually gets separated from each of the members. While a mysterious pigmasked army has come to do malicious business around the once peaceful village and other areas, you will meet up with another bunch of bizarre characters, such as 7 “transexual sages” of some kind protecting magic needles, mole crickets and peculiar oxygen supply machines along your long journey.

The length is split up between chapters. The first few of them will let you control different kind of characters, eventually all related to the overall story, but starting from Chapter 4, you will control Lucas as the main protagonist from now on.

What Mother 1 and 2 established as a way to deposit or withdraw items and/or money has been changed here to quite different characters. Now, homeless men and wandering frogs will fill their roles for these desires, and hospitals no longer seem to exist.

In fact, I don’t even know if it’s possible to revive party members in this game by myself, because I would usually find a revitalizing machine or a hot spring that both fill up the party’s health to the maximum. 

The comedy most of all comes from the bizarre situations and characters you encounter during the game. As far as I know, there aren’t that much pop culture references as there were in EarthBound, but feel free to prove to me otherwise. I did however notice one that brought a smile to my face at New Pork City in the theater. There, a reference towards the classic movie Cinema Paradiso(1988) is readable.

While maps got introduced with Mother 2’s towns, I must say that they have been improved here, for allowing much more locations to have maps now, resulting into navigating around much easier and more comfortable.

Several characters have also returned, such as the Mr.Saturn’s, some familiar NPC’s which are quite taller and even Porky, who has now become the main antagonist and the final boss. He’s old and sick now though, so he resides in this dangerous looking machine that seems to be keeping him alive.

He wishes to see the end of the world, get rid of everyone who hates him and while doing so, turn it all into one giant toy ground for his ultimate pleasure. At the endgame, you must first overcome Porky’s twisted Empire Building, which involves cameos, tricks and challenges. 

After Porky defeats himself, the story then ends with a sad piece of tale about two brothers confronting each other to settle family issues. Well, after that, it truly ends, but what happens to the people of Nowhere Islands is up to the player’s imagination.

Rating: 7.8

All in all, while they won't appeal to everyone, even when speaking of RPG's in general, the Mother trilogy has a specific own style of approaching traditional thinking, as they blend their odd characters, story and settings, while adding in lots of humor and charming dialogue. In short, they are an oddity when it comes to RPG's. 

They're good games in my eyes, and they are masterful games in other eyes. I'd say, for the best introduction, especially try EarthBound first, and then decide how to go further. Lots of gamers grew up with that game, but not me, I just went from 1 through 3. Still, even I can conclude that it's recommendable to play at least once.