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Without this, many English speakers would never get a chance to witness the beauty of Mother 3. It's quality rivals that of an official English release. The letters aren't block like but pay homage to Earthbound. There's nothing more i can say about this translation other than it being a life-saver. Thank you.

To say the very least, this is an amazing game that everyone should at least try at some point. As with the previous two entries in this series, the game is really centered on awesome music and dialogue and a fun, funny, quirky environment to explore. The difference is that this time the world is much more lush and vibrant than in Earthbound. The story and characters are interesting and at times rather complex, with a few incredibly unexpected twists.

The character interactions are one place where Itoi truly shines. It's easy to see how much love(for both his characters and this world itself) and thought went into crafting the actions between the party and the NPCs and the party and the monsters/villains.

The battle system is another neat feature that really enhances the game. The characters can perform "combo" hits when attacking if the player taps the A button along with the beat properly. It isn't needed to finish the game at all, but it does add something special to this system.

Another extremely useful feature is the rolling HP counter that debuted in Earthbound and has found its way to this game also, thankfully. If a character is dealt mortal damage, the party can heal them and continue on as long as it happens before the rolling HP counter reaches zero.

Now, on top of all of the superb elements already mentioned, one aspect of this title truly stands out amongst the rest: the end of the game. I've been playing games since I got my NES when I was 4, and I know that in the past I've encountered a few games that have made me kind of emotional in a good way. When I say in a good way, I mean that these games "involved" me enough that I came to care somewhat about the characters within. Mother 3 goes well beyond that bit of empathy or emotion. I'm a 25 year old man and this game had me openly crying at the final battle. The dialog and scenario are so incredibly emotional, touching and saddening at times that it's difficult to believe. I've read in articles before that Shigesato Itoi created large numbers of lines that could have potentially been used in place of any of the actual lines that were used in the game. He would create all of this dialog and then take it and think about each bit for days afterward until he decided on the perfect "version" of each line. To say the absolute least, the dialog at the end completely shines amidst a large amount of other good writing and is the "star" of the ending . There are multiple lines that almost hurt to read in terms of how deeply emotion-invoking they are.

All of these things come together to create a game that is (to steal a greatly overused term) legitimately epic in scope and shouldn't be missed, and the game's tagline, "Strange, funny, and heartrending" couldn't be more apt to describe the experience.

I really can't recommend this game enough. Go find it and play it. Also, the translation itself is top notch, essentially professional quality and is legitimately a sight to behold.

If I prepatched this game for you, put it on a GBA flashcart and never explicitly showed you that this was not an official GBA cart, you may have played this game thinking that it was officially localized.

No seriously! Everything reads as if it had been targeted towards an American localization (doesn't mean our European and Australian buddies can't play this game though). I don't remember any awkward Japanese terms, so there shouldn't be anything that would scare those that players who know next to nothing about Japanese terms. Even some jokes have been localized, which is a good thing considering many jokes wouldn't make sense in English if left intact.

The game itself is a blast to play through even if it is really linear. It plays more like an interactive book with RPG elements thrown in.