5/5 ★ – kimchia's review of Mother 3.

This game’s ridiculously high average rating says it all - this is a masterpiece. Effortlessly, seamlessly shifts between styles and atmospheres, often leaving a theme or feeling behind and never looking back, passing through like the wind. Normally we see that as a bad thing - we value stories which start at a beginning and end at a preplanned ending and carry a similar theme all the way through. This game throws that concept out the window. Every time you visit Tazmily, something is different. Every chapter, you have no clue where you’ll be in fifteen minutes. But despite this madness, much like Everything Everywhere All At Once, this game manages to somehow stay grounded. There’s so much thrown at the viewer, and so much change that happens, but it stays cohesive through it all. All of this is helped by the fact that the gameplay of this game is fantastic. I wouldn’t say I hate JRPGs, but they certainly can get boring when not done well. This game is done well. Every bossfight is perfectly tuned so that on your first try, you’ll probably be demolished - on your second try, you could try something completely different and get way further. Without grinding, without leveling up, just by changing up your strategy. Not to mention the rhythm battle system, which adds an extra layer of interactivity. You could get through this game without using a single rhythm combo, but it will certainly help you out if you land some. (*spoilers incoming*) My favorite part of this game comes in the monologue by Leder towards the end of the game. Mother 3 seems to be about so much at once - abuse, nature, animal rights, communism vs capitalism vs fascism. It seems like a mess, but then near the end Leder comes in and it all starts to make sense - it’s a game about society, whether that’s expressed in the power difference between Fassad and Salsa or Wes and Duster, or the fascist takeover of the pigmasks, or the portrayal of humans destroying the environment as they expand. So, finally, it all made sense. The game isn’t a mess, it’s organized! It’s structurally designed this way on purpose! So, I went into the final hour or two of the game ready for- ZZZOINGGG!!! Hear that? That’s the sound of Shigesato Itoi knocking my socks off from under me! No, stupid! Mother 3 was NEVER a game about society, and that’s clearer than ever in its final moments. Mother 3 IS a hot mess, because the world is a hot mess. It’s a hot, inorganic mess of love. Societal studies are cold - they take the diversity that is humankind and flatten it into a system. Shigesato Itoi builds that coldness up and then tells us to go fuck ourselves. Love. Love is the power, the glory, the melody we all can sing. Love is how you defeat an evil institution. Love is how you overcome the cold grips of sOcIeTy. Like every game in the Mother series, this is 100% absolutely unequivocally a game about love. There’s one thing that gets me about this game. I love Earthbound Zero and Earthbound for their vibes - they give this incredible feeling of wandering through a world of different people with different lives, moving somewhat slowly through a wonderous world to explore. They give a romanticized, beautiful portrayal of what it’s like to be a child again, viewing the world with new eyes. This game kinda drops that, exchanging it for a full-blown wall of fantastical wackiness thrown unabashedly at the player - it feels less like walking through a wonderful world, and more like being forcibly slammed through it. At first I was thrown off by it, expecting something similar to Earthbound (my favorite game of all time). But then, as I began to understand the character of the game, I smiled. This game is different because it wants to be. It refuses to be pigeonholed into any particular style. It embraces change and frowns upon being static. It made me laugh a lot, and then it made me cry my eyes out. And then it made me smile. This game is eternal.