Part 26: Explosionface's Final Thoughts

Explosionface's Final Thoughts



Is Mother perfect? Not quite. In fact, it has a number of glaring faults that will plague it forever. Most notably, the sometimes infuriatingly high encounter rate. It's also a bit grindy in its nature with comparatively low experience values given to the enemies. The story is told in a somewhat simplistic manner. A lot of these issues have to do with the age of the game. Most of these were the status quo at the time. Grinding made you play the game longer to get your money out of it, there wasn't enough storage space for even more story. Hell, I'm pretty convinced the color palette was kept so incredibly simple to make room for everything else in the game.

That said, I really like this game. Mainly because of how it leans so heavy on the musical side of things. Before I actually ran through this game all the way recently, I had only played most of it about a decade ago, but I could still vividly remember songs like Pollyanna and Bein' Friends. The music brings me a sense of joy I seldom get anywhere else. I was about to write it off as a mediocre game just before Mt. Itoi, but the way you are bombarded with story and the way it handles itself is something you just don't typically see in any game and that was what finally sealed the deal and made me a Mother/Earthbound Zero fan for life. Giygas feels like a such a traumatic enemy and you feel sorry for him, having to choose between his race and the people that raised him like parents. Having chosen the former, he had to deal with the consequences as he led forces against their home planet.

Between the two versions, I definitely prefer the NES version hands-down. In the GBA version, the sound is just always wrong and typically too shrill for me to want to listen to. Having a larger view of the environments is pretty nice, too, if unnecessary. What about the Easy Ring, then? It's pretty cool, I guess. It's just not for me. I like being the manly man that barely squeaks by at the end. I really did feel like I was trying to cheat my characters up to ludicrous levels while using the ring, but it might just be what helps make the playable for some, so I won't judge.

Sorry for all the , but I just to share how I feel about this game. Hopefully some of you enjoyed this thread. Thanks for hanging in there for me.