Mother 3 was my introduction to import gaming, and I heavily credit it with spurring my interest in niche Japanese video games (at least within English speaking communities). Referring to Mother 3 as one of the most significant games I've engaged with in my life would be an understatement. Using the word "engage" in lieu of "play" drives home the recourse of my time with Mother 3, with the game being a catalyst for more in my life than simply a concise piece of media.
Mother 3 was a game I purchased on release with zero knowledge of Japanese. Despite this minor (enourmous) setback, I still managed to play through the game while I was an American middle school student. This is by and large due to the online forum-based community I engaged with, starmen.net. The community there and resources such as walkthrough they would eventually release guided my young self through the game while being able to experience the atmosphere of the story beats despite not being able to understand the dialogue.
Even from day one, the community and discussion surrounding Mother 3 was just as vital to me as the game itself. In 2024 I find myself struggling to separate online discourse from games, wishing people would just actually sit down and play games themselves. Mother 3 gives off the aura to me of being a game where people discuss the characters in terms of Smash Bros appearances, beg Nintendo for an official localization, endlessly *say* it’s a great game, but rarely do I see anybody actually playing it. Thinking back to my own experiences has a slight tinge of irony then. Knowing that without posting online, and without a vibrant fan community for the Mother series, I’d have never have been able to play Mother 3 on release.
Mother 3 is a game that made me learn Japanese later in life. Mother 3 is a game that got me interacting with gamers outside of my tiny real life friend circle, it’s a game that has story beats and themes that continue to echo through my mind to this very day. I don’t think it’d be a stretch to say that I’m not exactly a unique experience. Especially once the fan translation was finished, it feels as if Mother 3 touched a lot of Western fans in the same way it did.
Did the Magypsies being portrayed in a positive, if not slightly neutral light help me discover my own gender identity? Would I have started importing more games and learning Japanese if I didn’t first learn how to import games to acquire a copy of Mother 3? Would I still be an adult content with seeking my own internal pleasure in life. Not succumbing to a desire for consumption and discontent with the societal norm of pushing people towards a constructed sense of monetary gain, and the greed and social stigma that come with it.
The critique of consumerism/greed/social status that Mother 3 sheds on the player is a perfect example of a deep topic, presented in a mostly surface level manner, but with enough nuance to really let questions fester in your own head if you’re a curious type of person. I’d like to think Mother 3 shaped my personality in a lot of ways, the parallels to draw are more than visible. Would I have become this person without Mother 3? Possibly, probably? But I’m very thankful for this game at any rate.
Mother 3’s strongest suit really is in the theming of the game, more than the actual writing. There’s some witty dialogue sprinkled throughout, and a bit of humor here and there. But the writing in my mind, as well as the story as a whole is more just a vehicle to present these heavy themes to you.
With all that being said I find actually playing the game to be a big leap up from Mother 2. Despite being a very big fan of Mother 1 and 3, 2 has always been a bit disappointing to me. Mother 1 is a late Famicom RPG in its blood. There’s very little depth to the combat, the systems only really exist as a “numbers go up” type of RPG. It’s good! Simple RPGs can be excellent, especially if aspects other than the gameplay are meant to shine through. But the gameplay still needs to be engaging enough to hold you for 10+ hours.
Mother 1 manages to keep you engaged, not only by having your expectations tempered from remembering its release date, but also by having characters with a lot of personality and giving them several story set pieces to really shine in.
Mother 2 in my mind dropped the ball, there’s a lot of witty NPC dialogue and humor within the script, but the appeal of that wears thin after so many hours. The characters in Mother 2, save for Jeff, never really get their time to stand out or push the plot forward.
Mother 3 fortunately revamped the gameplay in a way that allows for consistently engaging battles. Although I felt it might be a bit alienating to people unfamiliar with playing JRPGs more complex than the absolute beginner focused ones.
Mother 3 combat really just revolves around buffs/debuffs and occasionally using ailments when enemies are explicitly weak to them. This isn’t anything truly deep or special, but combined with difficulty tuning that makes enemies hit lethally hard, and the scrolling health meter, battles do have a bit of real-time engagement to them in terms of stabilizing and buffing up before you can go on the offense and win. Having Boney and his sniff ability operate outside of PP and have infinite uses also lets players exploit those ailment weaknesses without needing to resort to a guide or second playthrough. However if you just go into encounters and simply use your most powerful attacks, you’re going to lose. The game is balanced around you using most of your abilities, not just what deals damage, and exploiting those mechanics. I could see a lot of JRPG novices really struggling to get through this game.
There’s also the rhythm combo mechanic which I think is fairly fun, if not a little win-more. If I ever see a sentiment that this mechanic matters from a gameplay perspective I’m always a little cautious at if people actually like Mother 3, or if they’re just taking a jab at emulation over perceived input latency. The rhythm combo mechanic of every battle song having a heartbeat, and you can time A button presses to the heartbeat of the song to get extra hits in. It’s fun to do and feels very satisfying given how tight the timing window is. I always engage with this mechanic simply because it’s fun, not because it’s mechanically useful. With a full 16 hit combo characters can have their attack command damage somewhere around doubles. The only issue here is that it takes real time to input these commands since you’re timing it to the heartbeat of the song.
Encounters in Mother 3 are balanced around a speedy damce of buffing/debuffing/healing while you try to get to a point where you stabilize and can comfortably receive damage at a slow pace where you’re never rushing to heal, and comfortably can slap the enemy to death. At this point getting high combos may be fun, but you’re in the winning position of the fight anyway. If you’re in a losing position in a fight, using up precious scrolling HP time to just double the damage of a single attack command isn’t worth it. Two characters can take an attack command faster than one character can get a 16 hit combo. If you’re pressed for time in battle, just taking actions faster takes priority. If you have time every time to get 16 hit combos on all of your characters, you’re poised to win the battle no matter how many extra turns you take (and you’ll be able to get through those extra turns faster and with lower effort than you were comboing.) The rhythm combo system exists to be fun and makes trivial encounters stay somewhat enjoyable to interact with, not to actually make a gameplay difference in terms of player skill/stats.
Mother 3 is a significant game in my life, I’m convinced I wouldn’t be the person I am today without it. I’m intentionally not saying much about characters or anything deeper about this story because this is a game I’d truly recommend for everyone to play at least once. Too many people already spoil such significant aspects of this game (Nintendo included, the spoilers just within Brawl are crazy to me) online. If you read through this without having played Mother 3, please go do so. You don’t need to have played the first two games, Mother 3 stands on its own. If the game presents a bit of a challenge or is too vague about where to go at points, there’s a community online of people eager to assist others in getting as much as possible out of this game.
The people I see begging Nintendo for an English release of Mother 3 (without having played it already) are kind of missing the point. There’s already a wonderful English patch, that in my opinion is probably better than anything we’d get officially. Play this game now, don’t wait for a future that’ll never come, or a monkey’s paw type port if that day ever comes.
Just play and enjoy video games with those around you, and be open to trying new things. That’s Mother 3.
— Juni - April 21st, 2024 —