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A month ago, September 20th in fact, I mastered Mother 1, and made a post about it. I should go back and change that post. I feel like I was focusing a bit too hard on Mother 1 and comparing it to Mother 2, and didn’t talk enough about what I liked about it. I’ll try to do a little less of that this time, though some of that will probably come out anyway. These two games are VERY comparable, because they’re very similar, at least in how they present themselves.

Earthbound, or Mother 2 in Japan, is often considered one of the best RPGs of all time. It is HIGHLY influential. And it booooombed. It did NOT do well over here, though giving credit to it, it DID actually come out here, unlike its NES prequel, Mother 1, which got translated but was never released. When I was a kid, I played Mother 1 thinking it was this game, and didn’t learn that I was wrong for like, months. When I DID finally play this game, I got into it, and stopped playing prooolly around after Threed. And that’s about the way it was, for years. This is the best RPG ever, you HAVE to beat it, I’d pick it up, play until around Fourside, and then stop.

This year though, I FINALLY beat it. And yeah. It’s good. Pretty good! I do see why people like it. But some parts of it fall…. flatter than I’d hope.

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Earthbound is about a young boy named Ness, who lives in the town of Onett in Eagleland. One day, he’s woken up in the middle of the night by a meteorite falling onto the hill near his house. After some shenanigans with his bratty neighbor Porky, a fly named Buzz Buzz comes out, claiming he’s a hero from the future who is here to warn Ness, the Chosen one, that evil is on the rise. An evil named Giygas has come to destroy the world, and Ness must gather three friends and stop him. And then Buzz Buzz is swatted like a fly and dies.

That’s kind of how I’d describe this game. It’s got a big plot about friendship and banding together to overcoming terrifying odds and circumstances, and then its also filled with very goofy funny moments. It’s maybe a little jarring? You’ve got funny goofy moments that are nonsensical, like oh hey, you need to move forward but there’s a big metallic pencil in your way. Well don’t worry, just get your handy dandy pencil eraser, which will erase any pencils! And then you have scenes like the one where Poo is meditating and a spirit comes to rip off his arms, legs, eyes, ears, and brain, violently, and horrifyingly.

It’s got a little bit of a tone problem.

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That’s not to say that either of these moments are bad. They’re both good. And this game is really quite funny. I love the little inconsequential dialogue, I went around speaking to everyone, cause it’s just funny and enjoyable. Everyone’s got something weird to say.

Let’s talk about gameplay for a bit. There’s no run button, which IS pretty painful. The first game didn’t have one either… except for the American Beta, which added a run button. So this is kind of a step back, actually. It’s slow and plodding, which is a little painful tbh. IMO the pacing of this game is off, and it’s not jsut with how slow it runs, the game REALLY drags in the middle, and then it doesn’t pick up for a while. But anyways, the gameplay is still a Dragon Quest-ish JRPG, though this time you can have up to four characters. The backgrounds aren’t all black now, you’ve got some really frekaing cool effects back there, I’m a big fan. Also a big fan of the new rolling health system. As you take damage, your health ticks down. If you win before it ticks to zero, you live, and your health stops falling! You can also do a quick heal as it’s ticking down to save yourself. IMO this is an ingenius invention, and GREATLY improves things. As you panic and quickly mash through menus to heal Paula for the millionth time, it keeps turn based combat exciting and fun!

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One of the things that feels a bit downgraded over the NES version is actually the world itself. The NES game takes place on one giant contiguous map. You go out, you explore the world. You see how places connect and move together. This doesn’t quite have that. It’s more like, a few dozen maps stitched together with doors to and from. I don’t think it’s a big deal for most, but for me, it feels like a downgrade. You know what’s also a biiiit of a downgrade? The music. I know, I know, I KNOW you’re booing, but look, Mother 1’s soundtrack is fucking fantastic, and while Earthbound’s is very, very good, and I like it a lot, it doesn’t have a Pollyanna, or a Paradise Line, or a Bein’ Friends, or an All That I Needed, and definetely not an And Fallin’ Love or a Mother Earth. Sometimes I heard tracks from Mother put in this game as a remix and I got VERY excited, but they’re few and far inbetween. You hear a relaxing heartwarming rendition of Polyanna in Ness’s house, and a great remix of Youngtown in Paula’s house, but that’s about it. again, this is not to say the soundtrack is bad. It’s very good. And it’s got a LOT of really interesting things about it, and a lot of references.

Okay, let’s talk theming. Mother 2 has, in my opinion, a bit of a theming problem. Like I said, it’s a game about friendship and banding together to overcome powerful odds, constantly pushing through even if it’s scary, because that’s what you have to do. That second part, I think the game handles quite well. The final area is really intimidating and scary, and it and the final boss emphasise this part of the theme very well, in my eyes. It’s the friendship part where IMO the game falls flat… I don’t think I can imagine these people as being the best of friends. Poo shows up randomly and says “I am your friend now” and then leaves with the exact same energy. Jeff leaves the game with a “Well, call me if you need some appliances fixed”. All of the characters talk about have a bit more character than their counterparts in Mother 1…. maybe. Honestly it’s about the same. There’s not a lot of character here, and because of that, I can’t really feel like they’re best friends who are banding together. They’re just random characters being shuffled together as fate decides, because a psychic child had a dream that said they’d be best friends.

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This also leads me to one of my other major problems with Earthbound. It’s a big retread of the previous game, and yet it also has NOTHING to do with it. The only thing that links these two stories together is the main villain, Giygas, who might as well be a completely different character. The game does nothing to actually explain the connecting bridge between the two games, and if you didn’t even know Mother 1 existed, like kids didn’t in the early 90s, you wouldn’t expect anything is out of line. Ninten, Ana, Lloyd, and Teddy might as well not even exist. They’ve been replaced. Now we have Ness, who is just Ninten again, Paula, who is just Ana again, and Jeff, who is just Lloyd again. Teddy has been replaced ENTIRELY with Poo, who’s his own thing, at least. But there’s a LOT of retreat ideas. Area under attack by zombies? Yep. A desert filled with a monkey cave? Yep. Collecting 8 parts of a musical piece? Yep. Musical act scene? Yep. Gotta do a thing so that the pubic transit works and you can go through the tunnel? Yep. Like, the thing is, most of these would feel like references to JP kids who played both, or at least I think it was intended to feel that way, but it feels more to me like they were just trying to make Mother 1 again. There are plenty of unique ideas, and they’re all quite good, but a lot of the retreating feels like it doesn’t fit the themes and is just… there. And yeah, there’s no connection to Mother 1 despite all this. I know a lot of fan theories, like Giygas erased Ninten and his family from the timeline, which broke him because he also erased his mother. Or Ninten is Buzz Buzz. I’ve heard all these theories. But that’s all they are, theories.

This doesn’t actually make the game bad in any way. I’d give this game an 8/10, it is a very good game, and I totally get why parts of it are very influential. But people kinda ignore the most obnoxious forgettable moments, and especially the pudgy middle section, as they just re-do the same really interesting parts over and over, like the final Giygas battle, which is VERY influential, and yes, quite good.

Well, there’s Mother 2 done. I really only have one more thing to do…