Mother 3
I loved how Mother 3 approached its narrative. As an evolution of Jeff and Poo's introductory chapters in EarthBound, Mother 3's first few chapters focus on a wide variety of different characters, from a cowboy to an actual monkey, each with their own largely disconnected adventures. However, the threads slowly reveal themselves throughout the chapters before they're woven together into one overarching plot. Thanks partly to its excellent structure and partly to its heavier themes, Mother 3's narrative hits much harder than its predecessor. While it didn't surprise me as much as EarthBound did, it ended up being more memorable.
I don't want to inadvertently spoil the game for anyone who hasn't played it yet, so I'll try to be a little vague with the details. I found that Mother 3 expertly balances comedy and tragedy by building a world that's just absurd enough for all of the weird things it does to feel appropriate while injecting some saddening realities of the human experience into what is otherwise a colorful setting. As you progress in the story, you'll see families shattered by loss and grief, friendships overrode by greed, and lifestyles manipulated by corrupt leadership. It's the injections of comic relief that ensure none of that becomes too overwhelming to continue. The pacing helps as well, as it always feels like you're accomplishing something.
I used a guide to get strategies for a couple of the boss battles, but the rest of the game did a good job of telegraphing or explaining what I needed to do next. The enemies scattered all over the place slowed me down a little, but otherwise, it's a pretty quick process to get from one story sequence to the next. As I've gotten older and the amount of time I have to play games has waned, I've lost some of my patience for repetitive RPG battles. While I definitely felt a little bit of that annoyance with Mother 3, especially when some of the bosses felt far too powerful relative to the enemies leading up to them, The reuse of EarthBound's ticker system kept the combat just engaging enough.
It's hard to talk about the best parts of Mother 3 without spoiling the experience, so my best recommendation is just to play it. The game plays off of EarthBound enough that it's worth playing that first, but there's still plenty to enjoy without understanding the references. The unique RPG gameplay combined with an emotional story and colorful characters makes Mother 3 a very memorable game, and it still holds up extremely well. I don't think it would ever be released today without significant alterations to certain characters, and I feel like there would be too much controversy for Nintendo to weather, with or without such a change. Instead, I would absolutely recommend playing the excellent fan translation, as it is the best way to play the game right now, save for the original Japanese if you are fluent.
