RPG Diary

Mother / EarthBound Beginnings

Now that I've completed the mainline Phantasy Star series, I'm ready to start another classic RPG series. Since that was Sega's first-party series, I think I'll go with one of Nintendo's: Mother. I don't know much about the first game, but the series is well-known for it's goofy sense of humor and for its unconventional setting and story (for RPGs). This is another 8-bit game, so I have lower expectations for the gameplay (i.e. I'm prepared for grinding).

Title	Mother (US EarthBound Beginnings )
Year	1989 (US 2015 )
System	NES
Developer	Ape
Publisher	Nintendo

Well, it took me a long time to complete Mother, but it wasn't because the game was long. Mother starts off pretty slow with a lot of grinding (which is not uncommon for an 8-bit RPG), and I just lost interest in the game. I got distracted by other things and took a break from RPGs for 7 months. I picked it up again in May and finished it in a week.

In many ways, Mother plays like a parody of Dragon Quest II. The game starts off linear as you assemble the party, but becomes somewhat open-ended as you collect the MacGuffins scattered throughout the world. Along the way, you stumble through some towns with some local problem that is insingificant to the greater plot, but you still solve it out of the goodness of your heart anyway. The final dungeons are very painful to navigate, and it is best to run from the random battles as they can easily wipe out your party at a moment's notice. (The encounter rate in this game is excruciatingly high too!)

The main feature of Mother, in my opinion, is its quirky and whimsical atmosphere. Instead of the high fantasy setting with knights and wizards, there are goofy kids in suburbia with boomerangs and explosives. Instead of dragons or demons, there are wild animals, hippies, gang members, and trucks. The soundtrack is similarly unconventional, memorably including some early rock and roll style songs.

Unfortunately, I found the story too minimal to keep my interest, especially in the beginning. While there were some interesting lore dumps towards the end, it was too little too late for me. Mother was probably interesting and different at the time of its release, but has not aged well.

After completing a game, I add it to my overall enjoyment ranking which orders the games I've completed from those I most enjoyed to those I least enjoyed. I did not enjoy Mother, and found it fairly tedious to play. While it is mercifully much shorter than Dragon Quest VII, I found it much less interesting than Phantasy Star III.