GAC #1:Mother Series part 1

As I start my blog, I think about the earliest of video games. Believe it or not, though Pong was the first commercially available game, the true first game was a text based role-playing game (RPG). Since those early days, the RPG has grown to include many popular series such as Final Fantasy, the Tales series, and the star of this edition,the Mother Series.

Now, you may ask "Why choose Mother for a first review? Why not say, Super Mario or something?" Well, to put it simply, Mother is probably the most natural progression of the text based RPG,and it fits that I'd be reviewing the closest thing to the first game.

I'll start with the series' opening, Mother for the NES.

To put it simply, this one hasn't aged well.

It's by no means a bad game, with charming characters/setting, catchy music and fairly well balanced game flow. However, some of the elements of the game just don't hold up compared to its sequels and the rest of the RPG genre.

Let's start with the base gameplay. You play as "Ninten", a young man who is asked by his father (Who you never see until the ending) to go on an adventure to collect eight melodies which will save the world from an alien force. These eight melodies are extremely well hidden, either requiring a strategy guide or CHECKing everything you see. Which leads me to my next point-there are multiple interaction commands in the menu, and sometimes it's rather unwieldy to use them. There's TALK, for talking to humans (and oddly enough,animals), CHECK, which investigates objects, GOODS,which pulls an item from the inventory, and PSI, this game's version of magic skills.

Now, PSI has two uses. There are PSI skills that are used in battle,with different levels of intensity and PP usage. These are learned at different levels of growth. The other type of PSI is used in the field to interact with objects. Unfortunately, these are also sometimes learned at certain levels of growth,making this game a grind-fest.

Speaking of grinding, the enemy encounter rate is extremely high, and unless you're a high enough level, even the weaker enemies will kill you in a few hits,making grinding extremely frustrating.

What's worse, every character you get starts at LV.1, forcing you to grind when you get a new character.

Now, to be fair, this was made in the late 80's/early 90's, so it's not made to be easy.The actual quest itself is rather short, it took me 7-10 hours to complete. The difficulty level was likely made high so the quest would seem longer. But with today's standards, that excuse wouldn't hold up.

Mother started something great and really special. But, if it weren't for its sequel, and the timing of its release, this game would have faded into history.

Next up:Mother series part 2-Earthbound!