Just went through Chapter one.
Thoughts below! Spoilers, of course … spoilers, everywhere.
! So, naturally a bunch of thoughts outlined from the moment I started.
The naming returns from Earthbound and is as lovely as ever, and I particularly love the music in this one. What I also like though, is the focus on the family from the get-go. There's no four meant to save the world, no "name your best friend" or any of those shenanigans. The game explicitely tell you who the characters are and what their personalities are. Definitely more of a story sort of game just from there.
Same goes for the way the game is introduced. The beginning is almost pretty much a tutorial, with it establishing Lucas as the main character even if he doesn't necessarily seem the most heroic (and you won't be using him for a while.) Also at this part it becomes obvious how much the sprite work in these games has evolved, since there's sooooo much emotion and movement and character in how the sprites move, like when Alec implies Lucas is weak and you see the sweat on him. Another little touch of course is the fact you can talk to the animals and they say phenomenal things ("what the pig next to me says worries me", and next to that pig the pig says "don't worry") … I'll talk more about this later because there's more brilliant ones later on.
The touch of nature is also immediately more obvious. Little touches I like are stepping outside from home and a flash of sunlight greeting you while awesome music plays in the background and you come out into the most possibly open environment. The dragos are also a nice touch being so intimidating but in the end just plain, simple natural creatures that live with their families and interact with you.
How the game goes about teaching you stuff is also something I love. The series as a whole is super-self aware but even with that the little touches are really notable. I'm a fan of Alec going "Imagine a thing called a B button" while teaching you how to dash. Later on there's another one I also like, which is Mapson telling you to "let your right index finger make a wish" to then later explain he means to press R. The first fight is also really amusing as a whole, with the mole cricket, and the little touch of it wanting to prove itself to be strong only to be easily squished unintentionally by Hinawa. He'll be fine I'm sure.
Oh, and before I move on, I like the little touches of the dialogue. The Hinawa-Lucas conversation in the beginning is one I love, because I love how Hinawa responds when you refuse to get out of your jammies. Also, did you know that she gives you nut bread if you slam into her? She also surrenders xD. She's a very easy character to love, definitely a great Mom. Alec and Claus, meanwhile, only laugh at you when you dash at them.
Also really like how cinematic it gets once you go back home, with the slow scene establishing how peaceful everything is, then the Hinawa letter, and then the interruption of the music and entry of the pigmask leitmotif ... and then BAM, this. IS. MOTHER 3. Fucking love it, reminds me of the Lion King starting with the epic music and then BOOM, logo and name.
! Moving into Flint's part, there's again just a lot of gushing over all the little details. Flint's gesture where he adjusts his hat is a brilliant addition, and says all about his character that we need to know. Still, I'm a fan of Thomas's "times like these need a nice reckless guy like you!" which also gives us the little insight in that Claus is more like Flint and Lucas probably more like Hinawa.
I generally like to use this time to talk to Tazmilians as much as possible, mostly because I'm still trying to get to the point where I remember all their names. And it helps a lot that they all have considerably distinct personalities. Bud and Lou always have some weird meta-comedy gag going on, like the one where Bud blames gagging on you pressing the button. I also like Jonel always including himself in his statements. But my favorites come up later.
Now that fighting starts with the ever-awesome Batty Twist, I have to say, I don't get why as a whole a lot of people dislike the battles in this game. From here to the very end of the chapter I only fought monsters I ran into, and I leveled up really nicely without an issue, had no problems beating anyone, had more than enough battle and healing items ... in other words, no difficulties whatsoever. What also helps, I guess, is that to me the battle rhythm thing is almost intuitive, and for most of the themes doing 16-hit combos is genuinely easy. It's later on in the game that it becomes to hard that it's not that worth it, but by then you have other things to be doing with your turn. But here? Where you just have Flint to wallop things with, battle rhythms made it all go like a breeze. I also feel like it all goes super easy given all the weapon upgrades are distributed fairly evenly, first with the Stick in boney's home, then Lighter's Lumber, and finally the Better Stick later on in the "store." They power you up sufficiently so even the tough enemies are no problem.
Regarding Flint's skills, I also discovered I was only really using them during "boss" battles. For example, when doing the flying mouse I actually raised my defense and offense before going all-in with attacks. I only used swing probably three times, two of those against the fireflies. Power Smash I never even touch, I feel like missing that much makes it worthless.
A note I had forgotten to bring up: Save frogs. I love love love save frogs. It's such a simple concept, the whole saving thing, but I love how they pulled it off, and while it's not so visible yet, the personality of the frogs is genuinely enjoyable. I think I'll highlight my favorite frogs of each chapter whenever I write about this game.
Once you save Fuel and return him to a weak Lighter is one of those moments that remind you how human this game is. The Lighter-Flint relationship overall isn't really explored a lot in the game, since other larger things take hold, but I really appreciate that they gave them this moment and we got to have these villagers fleshed out. To me it gives more meaning to rescuing Fuel knowing that Lighter is pretty much Flint's childhood friend and Fuel is the same to Lucas and Claus. The fact that this scene goes on with Gentle Rain also makes it extremely touching, as does the fact later on that the whole village is intent on helping Flint find his family.
But before that, I also want to geek about the Hinawa letter. The game has you read the same letter TWICE, and each time the weight it has is completely different. When Hinawa is reading it the scenario is peaceful and wholesome and you just get this appreciation for the sort of environment Lucas is growing up in. Then when Flint reads it there's a whole new twist to it where all those words are words from YOUR wife, who is STILL not home. There's no urgency at that point, nothing like when the fire was going on, just an uncomfortable sense of worry. Uneasiness. Crafted fantastically.
On that note, I like that the game is not shy in giving you the suspicion of what it is that may happen. The chapter itself begins with the title "Night of the funeral", Isaac tells you he heard a scream, you read the letter, you see Hinawa's torn dress ... it doesn't beat you over the head with it, but it's letting you know. And the greatness of it is that when playing it you still want to see what follows and have that sense of actually being able to do something.
Before that revelation though, I have to give props to the cutscene of Boney getting Duster. Fantastic introduction to a fantastic character. Who at this point is with you for just what happens to be the world's easiest boss fight. But that's enough for the character to start making his mark.
There's not much to say about Hinawa's death that hasn't been said. The game lets you know beforehand that it happened, and I particularly love that Lucas and Claus hint at it if you talk to each one twice, Lucas saying " Mom's ..." and Claus going " ... darn it" (also a great use of their distinct character to tell the story without telling it) ... but the best is how the whole revelation comes into play. First of all, Bronson is terrible at relaying these news, and it's one of those things where a lot of the shock is just in how he says it. And then how everyone reacts. Flint has possibly one of the most human reactions to grief I've seen in a video game, easily. I also really really like the way Tessie is executed. She approaches Flint gingerly, and he pushes her back, then she's on the floor crying, but when Flint starts beating up people she goes and covers Claus and Lucas ... this game is SOOOO human, my god. And the fact that it's Lighter, Flint's best friend, who has to knock him down ... uuggghhh.
Then is more of the game breaking your heart without saying a single thing when we see the last time hinawa and flint interacted. Not a single word, but between the sprites and that music, this is one of those golden scenes where if we were talking about a movies we'd call it a classic. And it's stuff like this that make me say without hesitation that this game is one of the greatest examples of art in this medium and why I will shove that in everyone's face as much as I can.
After the Hinawa bit I moved a lot faster and took less notes, since in part I was also devastated (again.) Something I noticed more this time is that after Lucas got yelled at by Alec and ran away, he went to Boney and didn't really speak again. It's a little touch that makes future situations I won't speak of now have a deeper angle.
And before I forget to talk about it again, the animals. My god. So, when you go to Butch's pig farm southeast, the pigs give you a fantastic revelation. It seems, there's important, behind-the-scenes MOTHER 3 info that only pigs know about. And then when you talk to all the pigs to get this info … LMAO, great stuff. Also extremely enjoyable to me was one of the cows doing a save frog impression. God bless this game.
Alec as a whole is a character I don't care much for, but I do appreciate his lightness and constant desire to get people to just smile at everything they do. Gives you an idea of why he can get along with magypsies. I won't talk of magypsies yet though. I can say, though, from this chapter, that Doria is super awesome.
And from here I pretty much just played on until the end. Normally I would be afraid of the exploding trees, but I fought them all as I was unexplicably overpowered for some reason. It also gave me an excuse to use healing items and open up my inventory a bit. Then Mecha-Drago fight, where I went all out with three thunder bombs, running bombs, sprinting bombs, and then a couple hits. Overall a fairly easy chapter.
The end bit is an interesting one I wonder about, since here's a gap in what the game tells us. We can assume that this is the drago that killed Hinawa, and if I looked correctly I think one of its fangs is missing? Or at the least colored differently, I didn't see properly. But like the caribou, we can assume it was mostly a reaction from rage and confusion at this electronic stuff the pigmasks installed on it, but then later on when its weakened and its baby saves it, we see it cry ... does that mecha-drago die or continue living? Is it able to control itself? Something I don't think is really addressed in full. There are some implications as to what happens to the dragos, but that's later I guess.
And my god, the pigmasks are such a piece of work. On one hand they have that silly slapstick thing going on with their pig squeals and falling and just being derpy. But then you couple that with cult-like salutes and overall just really really wrong stuff ... quite unsettling. Also, why were they just burning the forest? For fun? Those jerks! I love their theme though.
! Ok, so that's all the juice I was able to squeeze out of chapter one, or at least all I wanted to do for now. Some things like Tazmily stuff I'll talk about more, probably.
Meanwhile...
Favorite save frog of the chapter:
"A story is a series of memories. Memories are remembered with other memories, and in turn become memories themselves. If you don't take care to preserve your memories, you'll forget them. So, please tell us frogs your memories of everything so far... That is what people refer to as "saving". Now, then... hop Save your game"
(probably the chapter with the least variety in save frogs xD)
! And something else I want to do ...
Favorite songs from this chapter:
! Limiting these to five a chapter. Which is really really difficult …
! Ok, that's all for chapter 1. Now to end this all with a sparrow-like ...
Chirp, chirp!