Before I start my review of this game I want to give it a little bit of a background. This is the sequel to the SNES game Earthbound. A game that wasn't hugely popular in it's day, but does have quite the cult following, which is the main reason this game can even be played in the United States. A few years ago Japan released Mother 3 aka Earthbound 2 on the Gameboy Advance, but didn't port it here for many reasons. Fortunately, the people at Starmen.net spent the last few years developing an English translation patch so that we can finally play it here. Now you will have to get the Japanese ROM, which can be hard to find legally, but once you get it you can just go to Starmen.net and grab the translation patch and your game is magically in English. With that out of the way let's start the review.
Story: If you've played Earthbound (and if you haven't you should get out and buy it right now) then you basically know what to expect from this game. A great story that is jam-packed with laughs and great characters. There isn't a character that's on par with Poo from the first game, but all the characters here are awesome. I can't tell you how many times this game had me laughing out loud at the ridiculous dialogue and hilarious combinations that served as the enemies. I'm also a huge fan of Duster and his grandpa, easily the best two characters in the game. And one of the big villians of the game has one of the best names in gaming history.
Design: Not too much differs in this game from the last one in the design portion. I can only think of a few that really changed how the game was played. First is that you seem to change between controlling the different characters much more often than in Earthbound. If I remember correctly you control someone other than Ness four times throughout the entire game. In Mother 3 you'll find yourself playing as different people all the time, from Lucas, the main character to Duster to Lucas' dad, Flint, to a monkey named Salsa. Another huge change is that they added a run button. I didn't really use this very much unless I was trying to run from monsters, but it did add something cool to the game. The only other big design changed I noticed was that enemies tend to always stay in their same place. In Earthbound if you walked off the screen and walked back then you often find new combinations of enemies or they might not even be there. This came in handy if you had time to kill and were close to death. You can kind of do this in Mother 3, but it didn't work as often in the past, which I liked because it forces you to fight more things and better prepare you for boss fights.
Gameplay: The gameplay stays about the same as it was in Earthbound. If you've ever played a Japanese turn based RPG you've basically played this game. You get to choose between using a normal attack, using an item, or using PK, which is basically different kinds of magic. When you get four people in your party this can make for some devastating combos. One of the two major updates is that if you time your button presses to the music you can get combos up 16X on your normal attacks. It's kind of hard to get used to and it's not really a huge game breaker, but it's always cool to get a 2 or 3X pop up on screen every once in awhile. The last big thing I've noticed in the combat is that every character has some version of special attack. In Earthbound you had three characters that could do PK attacks, but in this one only two can. Fortunately all of the other characters have their own special attacks to use. Duster has some spy tool kits that he can use to lower defense, make the enemy cry, and many other things. Salsa can do different dances for various effects and your dog can smell the enemies weakness. Non of these are super big attacks, but knowing how to attack things and throwing smoke bombs at them to keep them from hitting you is very helpful.
Presentation: Visually this game is much like it's predecessor. This isn't a bad thing because those graphics are really colorful and wacky, which means you will always leave the game in a good mood. The best news is that, unlike some N64 3D graphics, these stand up today so that it's not a eyesore. Don't dismiss this game because it looks to "kiddie" because it is one of the best games in a long time.
Overall: I won't call this game a step up from Earthbound because it doesn't improve on it too much and the story isn't quite as good. However, if you can find the time to place this game it's an absolute gem. If you're a fan of old school RPGs you simply must play this game. I honestly can't really think of anything bad to say about this game and hope that at some point Nintendo wises up and releases it in the States along with the sequel.
Score: 10
Just because I've given out a perfect 10 score to the second game I've reviewed, don't think that I'm always going to be giving out high scores. This game is just amazing and deserves to be played by everyone. That's all for now. See ya later, some time, same place.
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