–PORTABLE BACKLOG UPDATE–

Today, my family and I went on a trip to Colombia to visit extended family members and maybe so some touristy stuff, too. In fact, I’m typing this on my tablet since I don’t have access to my computer (it’s torture, especiay when I loses what I just typed; may not respond to any comments until I get back). Of course, today was mostly plane rides and waiting for planes while eating airplane food, but at least one good thing happened to me: I beat another game in my backlog!

EDIT: By “today,” I mean the 26th; it took me a while to type this on tablet.

This is a turn-based RPG, not the ones where you and the enemy have separate turns, but where turn order of both allies and enemies rare determined by the speed stat (most of the time, anyway). If you get game over and choose to continue, you’re sent back to the last savepoint with everyone in your party fully healed (you don’t get items back, though), so it’s not crazy to save before a boss and get yourself killed by it before your serious attempt. This game also recycles the rolling-health system from Earthbound (Mother 2): when you get attacked, your health declines slowly in real time (guarding doesn’t reduce damage taken; it slows the decline of your HP for the turn, so it’s better to guard after being attacked). In other words, if one of your party members takes mortal damage, you can use an ordinary hearing spell or item to prevent said member from dying, assuming you’re fast enough (or spam attacks until said member dies as your own sort of desperation attack, as winning the battle will stop HP from decreasing). The only problem I found with this mechanic is that it works the same way for increasing HP as it does with decreasing it, so if you heal someone and still want to take advantage of the aforementioned strategies, you have to sit there and wait for all that HP to tick up. I’m sure they did this because one character can be gaining health while another is losing health, but they could still have addresses the issue by making the health tick faster by holding the L button (as it is, the L button is just a duplicate of the A button).

Of course, clever mechanics aren’t very appealing if difficulty isn’t balanced properly, and this game’s difficulty is a bit fickle to say the least. Let me walk you through how the game treats its difficulty curve (don’t worry;no plot spoilers), and as you read, keep in mind that you can’t get items outside of item boxes and enemy drops (no stores):

The prologue starts with the player controlling the protagonist (Lucas by default, but you can rename him and quite a few other characters), and the battle tutorial is introduced shortly afterward. The game also has a running tutorial, because its running mechanic is…unique. Rather than hold the B button to run and release to walk, you have to hold the button for a second without moving, then release to run (and you can just tap the D-pad to change direction.

So far so good, but chapter 1 foreshadows my issues with the first part of the game by having the player control someone else. This person only has 4 moves besides basic attack, two of which are stat increases (which aren’t much use this early in the game) and the other two being lower hit-chance moves (and if you read my post about Total War: Shogun 2, you’ll know I’m not too fond of those). You get a second member a short way in the chapter, but the only move this one has besides basic attack is to read enemy weaknesses, so after your first encounter with a new enemy, this character doesn’t lend itself to any strategy besides attack or use item, essentially making it a useless dog of a character. Then again, with this being the beginning of the game, the enemies won’t pose much challenge. For example, shortly before the dog joins you, one of the save points warns you about an enemy so powerful, the save point almost saves without your permission. You might think this heralds the arrival of the first boss (as those would normally show up at this point), but it’s just more cannon fodder enemies with the only noteworthy part being it’s required for story progression. Maybe it was, but things were changed around and they forgot to/couldn’t remap the pointers for that bit of text. The actual first boss, the Reconstructed Caribou, doesn’t show up until around halfway through the chapter (and without any build-up from the save point). You do get a third party member just before this point: a thief-type character who, just like the dog, has one special move: it can pin an enemy down. However, we have three party members now, enough to come up with strategies through items alone (party members have individual inventories), so of course the thief leaves shortly after the battle. What’s worse is the dog also leaves your party, and with you back to one character, strategic options are stifled even more than before and the game remains in beginner-fodder difficulty when it should be time for it to start amping things up a bit. Sure, you have an AI partner with you as you fight your way to the second boss and second chapter, but if you played or saw the opening minutes of Earthbound, you’ll know that AI partners in this franchise are jokes.

Of course, I can understand that games are supposed to start easy, even if this one is taking its time getting to a difficulty incline, so what about chapter 2? Well, this one switches control to yet another character (the thief from before), so you still only have one party member for much of the chapter. To be fair, at the start of this chapter, this character gains a bunch of new abilities (the last time said character gains abiities), like lowering enemy stats and putting an enemy to sleep, so even though you only have one party member, you have a bit more options than last chapter. The game also introduces one of its more original mechanics in this chapter: if you put an enemy to sleep, you can hear its heartbeat, and if you attack and press the A button the moment it beats, you land an extra (albeit far weaker) attack, and you can get up to a 16-hit chain. You can do this for enemies that are awake, but it’s trickier since you can’t hear the heartbeat. As the game goes on, enemies get increasingly irregular heartbeats (on top of those immune to sleep), so after this chapter, it’s better not to worry about it. Anyway, back to chapter 2: the first level in this chapter has you exploring a castle, and shortly before a dead end, you come across a large room filled with NPCs, one of whom is playing a song on a piano. The song mentions a lonely room room with a weeping wig, and it says not to attach anything to the walls of this room. I bring this up because I spent way too long wandering around the castle trying to find this room, only to look up a walkthrough and find out that the wall I actually had to attach something to was in the room with the piano player in it. You know, the crowded one without a wig in sight. I’m not sure how accurate that line is to the original, but either way, I’d prefer if the translator had taken a few liberties to avoid being misleading for that part (there is a subtle visual indicator on the wall, but it’s easy to miss if you don’t think to look for it in that room). After making it past that hurdle and beating the chapter’s first boss, you get an AI partner who helps you get further in the castle, and a few rooms before the chapter’s last boss, you finally get another party member. This one can use attack spells and learn new ones as the game progresses (one of only two party members that does; the rest are lucky if their skills don’t get depreciated). This introduces another of the game’s unique mechanics: rather than learn new spells directly by levelling up or simply by progressing through the game, characters learn new spells by levelling up, then wandering the over world long enough, at which point the character will get “feverish” and prevent you from running (which is especially annoying during the part of the game where you have to run into things to progress), and after walking around for another minute or so, the fever goes away and the character finally learns the new spell. I wasn’t a fan of this mechanic. As a side note, the last part of this chapter has a room where you have to avoid NPCs, and if you’re caught, you’re sent back a few rooms before the last save point, so it’s quicker to reset if that happens.

Speaking of not being allowed to run, the game does the same thing if even one of your party members is dead. I always found forced slow movement in games to be inherently annoying (“Sprained” status from Chrono Cross, anyone?), but as you can imagine, this would be the scenario where you’d want to run the most (aside from the part where you have to run to progress) since you’d be trying to avoid enemies to get to the last hot spring, where you have to wait in it for a few more seconds before the game realizes you’re there to be healed and it restores your party’s status.

Anyway, so the game may have started slow, but now it has given us two characters, each with somewhat diverse moves, so the game is starting to pick up, so how does it follow this up in chapter 3? Why, by switching control to yet another new character, of course! What’s worse is that this character has very low attack power, so you can only defeat enemies by guarding and letting your new AI partner take them out in 1-2 hits. It’s moments like this that make outside observers think that all turn-based RPG battles are just pushing the A button through menus to grind to the next story segment rather than the more mentally challenging strategic battles they’re supposed to be. Come on, game, you had finally started heading in in the right direction at the end of the last chapter! Why’d you have to go and pull this crap? There is a boss here, but its more about using what few abilities you have to stall its attacks so your AI partner can kill it. After this, there’s a story segment that involves slowly delivering packages to townspeople (there’s no puzzle element to this part) and at least one plot contrivance (Nobody gets suspicious of the antagonist if he zaps you in front of a crowd), and then you finally get another party member for this part: the spell-wielder from last chapter. Of course, strategy for the rest of the chapter isn’t much different from earlier since the initial character still has low attack power and few skills.

At this point, I had played for over 8 hours (1/3rd of the game), and the game part of this game continued to be underdeveloped and boring. I was starting to think that this game was made by and for people who only play RPGs for the story and aren’t entirely sure why that pesky “combat” thing keeps showing up. However, chapter 4 makes some notable changes. First, you’re back to controlling the protagonist, and you never switch to someone else for the rest of the game. Second, the game decided to have shops after all and introduced them here. This means that even though your only other party member for this chapter is that useless dog from earlier, you can buy attack and healing items for it to give it some semblance of usefulness (if only for a moment). Also, just like the previous Mother games, money gained from defeating enemies is deposited directly into your account (the only difference is you deposit/withdraw money from save points). Lastly, a few enemy-halls into this chapter, the protagonist gains the ability to learn spells, too (the second of the two party members mentioned earlier), and his spells are even differentiated from the other spellcaster’s spells. Yup, the game finally started to pick up the pace, and it only took three years. Of course, the game can’t let its gameplay become too fun yet, so there’s a part where you have to go back and forth slowly pushing statues from one room to another (and passing through a few rooms on the way). Just like the package delivery last chapter, there’s no puzzle element to this part, either; you’re litretrally just pushing the statues from point A to point B. Not long after this, you make it to the chapter’s last level, and at the end is one of the hardest bosses in the game (and it’s only partly due to the fact that you only have two party members at this point, one of whom is the dog). You see, this boss has two normal enemies accompanying it, and on top of getting two moves per turn, it has an ability where it and its partners attack in a row. Not only does that take over half your max HP from both characters, but each attack has its own fanfare, so you’re less likely to be able to heal one of your party members before death (and you can’t buy reviving items at this point). The only way to survive is to spam your most powerful spell and attack items to take care of the normal enemies, heal yourself when the dust settles, then you can take on the boss directly, but it’s not over yet. You see, when you take out the normal enemies, the boss increases its attack power; that’s fine, but it also uses hypnosis to put one of your party members to sleep, and if it uses this on the half of your team that can actually do stuff, you’re kinda screwed since the shop doesn’t sell the item that wakes up a party member. Well, at least I know where all the difficulty from previous chapters ran off to. Oh, but this isn’t the end of the chapter; you have to take on five other NPCs so the characters from chapter 2 will join your party. Luckily, you don’t have to do this in traditional battle, but rather through a variation on janken. That may sound boring, but its actually a puzzle since you have to interrogate everyone to figure out who will use which move.

Chapter 5 is when the game finally reaches peak-strategy: you have three party members, each of whom has a variety of skills or spells at their disposal. Enemies and bosses can be threatening without being unfair. You also have the dog, so I guess that’s technically four party members. Anyway, like I was saying, this may be the best part of the game. If a boss gives you too much trouble, it only takes a change in strategy to win (unlike the crazy desperation moves you have to do to get past chapter 4’s final boss). You even get to ride a vehicle for a bit, which is faster than running and doesn’t slow down when someone gets feverish. The only issue I have with this chapter is that it becomes pretty obvious who the masked man is, yet the game still tries to pass it off as a twist at the end of the game.

Chapter 6 is mostly plot stuff and is fairly short, anyway (there aren’t even any save points in the entire chapter), so there’s not much to talk about here.

Chapter 7, on the other hand, is easily the longest chapter in the game. Plus, this is where the plot takes a sharp turn into “7 seals trap a great power” territory, with the rest of the game being you trying to get to this power before the antagonists. Remember that really important item you spent all of chapter 2 and half of chapter 5 trying to get? It has no impact on the story or gameplay, and it’s never even mentioned again aside from the end-game exposition dump. Also, you get separated from the chapter 2 party members, so you’re back to the protagonist and that dog. You have to go through two levels to get the spellcaster back, then you have to go through a tedious maze, one more level, then trek through a few areas from earlier in the game to get the thief back. That last level is notable for being a bit of a difficulty spike since I had to start using my defense-up and attack-down spells for that level’s boss. After getting your full party back, you explore a volcano. This level is only really noteworthy for two things: 1) there’s a part where your path is blocked by three identically-looking rocks, but examining them has one move differently than the rest. I kinda wish there was a visual difference between them and that this part was expanded into being an actual puzzle instead of “you can’t examine the rock on its side or it won’t move.” 2) it’s the first of only, like, two times where a boss isn’t directly preceded by a save point, so you can’t abuse the tactic I mentioned near the beginning of this post (it also makes me think the devs intended for that to be a genuine tactic). After this level is an underwater level, where your movement is slowed and you have to use stationary oxygen machines to prevent yourself from drowning (though your oxygen meter doesn’t decrease during battle). If you drown, you’re sent all the way back to the entrance of the level. This part can be rather tedious since you barely have enough time to explore the side paths and make it back to an oxygen machine. When you beat this level, you lose all your items and your party’s HP drops to 1 for story reasons, so for a brief period of time, dying doesn’t restore everyone to full health (you get full HP shortly afterward, though; the devs just wanted an excuse for a trippy level). After the trippy level, the game gets tame and has you scale a mountain. Again, there’s not much noteworthy about this level, but it is the last level of the chapter.

Chapter 8 is the last chapter of the game, and its also the only part of the game that references the previous Mother games: there’s a “movie” (slideshow) based on Mother 2, and near the end of the game, there’s an empty hall that exists solely to play the first few seconds of the Mother 1 title theme, and this hall is followed by a boat ride across different sprites from Mother 2. The movie could have been a neat easter egg, but all the other references felt forced. It came across as the game saying “hey, remember the previous game? That was such a great game, wasn’t it? Don’t you just wish you were playing that game instead of this one?” It reminds me of Chrono Cross: the game could stand on its own in theory, but someone felt the need to shoehorn in out-of-place references to the previous game because reasons. Back to the game: after a somewhat unintuitive puzzle regarding how to reach the sewers, you get a mini-level that gives you the aforementioned exposition dump, then you have to backtrack through the level and are ambushed by the level’s boss near the entrance. After this, you can finally enter the final boss’s lair, though it’s less of a level and more just a series of wacky set pieces (this is where the hall and boat ride show up). If you continue after beating the boss of this level, you reach a point of no return, so if you need to buy or withdraw items, this is the point to do it (the game will give you a bit of a shortcut to the beginning, but you have to go through the whole level again if you backtrack). After this point is another level, then the final boss. Even though it’s the only other boss that isn’t preceded by a save point, it still isn’t as difficult as the chapter 4 end boss.

Now, I’m gonna discuss some story bits. I remember hearing that the mother is supposed to be a central character in this story, but I didn’t get that impression. Sure, you could argue she helps set the plot in motion, but on top of her role being rather passive (pun intended), after the first half of chapter 1, she barely does anything, only appearing in the briefest of cameos. Then, there’s the ending: like the previous Mother games, the true final battle (after the final boss mentioned earlier) has a trick to winning: in the first game, one of your options in battle is subtly replaced by a different option, and in the second game, the mechanic of one of your battle options is subtly replaced by a different mechanic. This game doesn’t do anything that unintuitive; instead, the game won’t let you attack at first, and you just have to guard constantly and heal yourself until, after a few cut-scenes, you can finally fight back (though the battle is over not long afterward). Once again, just like in chapter 3, you’re just going through the motions, waiting for the next story segment.

I know a very vocal group of people really like this game, but overall, I find it hard to recommend. It reminds me of a common defense I’ve heard for FFXIII-1: if you can put up with the boring first 3rd of the game, it gets better (though this game still has a few hiccups left afterward).