Spoilers to both Mother 2 and 3 are to be found.
While the one who defeated Gygas, the final boss in Mother 2, was the player with their prayers, I discovered that I was the real enemy of Mother 3.
If that was Itoi’s intention or not, I cannot really say. Did he mean to give us a game that felt almost like the beloved Mother 2 but wasn’t quite the same in order to trick us? It wasn’t until near the end of the game where you travel down a hallway with all sorts of items from Mother 2 being shown that it hit me. Here was the game going “You want Mother 2 so badly? Here. Look at all these things from Mother 2. Does that make this game what you want?”
It didn’t.
But it did open my eyes. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t harshly comparing Mother 3 to Mother 2. I was trying to let it be its own game. But I couldn’t do that.
The only game that I have played nearly as many times as I have played Chrono Trigger, my favorite game of all time, is probably Mother 2. It is one of my favorite games. It was a huge moment of my childhood. I can’t remember ever wanting a game more than I wanted my copy of EarthBound that I got for my 14th birthday. I can’t remember spending as much time as a child on any other game. I must have done every possible thing in that game that I could figure out. It’s one of the few games I know very, very well.
Now, there are things I simply don’t like about Mother 3. The chapter system and how the game feels like less of a journey. I dislike how much simpler the items are. No condiments! No cheap instant win battles for fast experience! The list could go on for quite some time.
But these things are only things I dislike because of how much I like Mother 2. Taken on their own they are not bad. They are merely different. Had I never played Mother 2, who knows how I would react to Mother 3. Then again, who knows if I would be in Japan if I had never played Mother 2. But I do not compare every game I play to Mother 2. Well, at least not this harshly.
There are things I do like, of course. I love the battle system. I liked how much emphasis was placed on using stat altering skills and items during battle. I love how the game did entertain me. I may not have liked the characters as much, but I liked the characters. I liked how the game did things its own way and succeeded. And that’s just as important.
I’m mostly sad that we won’t get another Mother game. They are brilliant and always have reminded me why I enjoy playing games. Despite having a turn based battle, which is considered one of the most archaic and basic game elements in gaming, they each do things so damn brave, so damn unique and so much a slap in the face of gaming and it’s “standards” the fact that there are only three of them is a damn shame.
Or perhaps it is a blessing.
