Mother 3
is really good, at least, for this starved Earthbound fan. The game has tons of callbacks to the last one as you would expect. But the reasons that I like it can be summarized into how cinematic it looks, sounds, and feels as the story progresses (keeping in mind that it is a GBA game). The music is just as great as it was in Earthbound (if you as well dare to call all of it "music"), and fits the tones of the characters and events in action. Maybe it helps that I'm playing it from the couch via wireless xbox 360 -> pc control on the tv screen with a 8 speaker sound system boosting the immersivity. There're some themes along the lines of brainwashed society and... Progress (capital P) coincidentally good to the common man, but actually instrumented by those powers that pull the strings (the big bad guys)... that kind of stuff. Good people die (I was a bit surprised by this one, kind of a "wtf, did that just actually happen?" moment).
Some notes: It seems you never have to grind extra levels just to move forward, though some of the fights may cut pretty close if you keep riding the edge; but nothing that "fast-forward" and holding the A button through battles can't cure. There's some kindof rhythmic tapping added to the basic bash attacks, but it doesn't sync up correctly on my emulator so it doesn't work half the time.
I'm not done yet. I have no idea how this is going to turn out (see Earthbound), which makes it all the more interesting. I also don't know how many chapters there are, so I don't have to worry about that problem with books, or movies, or tv shows, or every other medium out there. You know when they're gonna end, and that ruins a lot of the surprise.
Some notes: It seems you never have to grind extra levels just to move forward, though some of the fights may cut pretty close if you keep riding the edge; but nothing that "fast-forward" and holding the A button through battles can't cure. There's some kindof rhythmic tapping added to the basic bash attacks, but it doesn't sync up correctly on my emulator so it doesn't work half the time.
I'm not done yet. I have no idea how this is going to turn out (see Earthbound), which makes it all the more interesting. I also don't know how many chapters there are, so I don't have to worry about that problem with books, or movies, or tv shows, or every other medium out there. You know when they're gonna end, and that ruins a lot of the surprise.