When my backlog wheel landed on this for me to play, I was beyond hyped. This game, after all, jumpstarted one of Nintendo's most unusual and influential franchises, and would go on to inspire masterpieces of its own. Hell, freaking Yume Nikki has a whole world referencing bits of Mother 1, and that's easily one of the most original and experimental titles ever conceived. So it paying homage to this game must mean a lot.

Well, I'm just going to say straight off the bat: this game induces suffering. Every cool mechanic you know and love about the MOTHER series, this one does not have. That means no rolling HP, no psychedelic background, and random encounters. On top of that, I found the game had a ton of balancing issues. On a whim, the right enemies can bind you into a lock, with hardly a chance of breaking free from it. The cherry on top has to be Mt. Itoi, which is from what I've heard never playtested 💀 Nintendo really smoked crack on their part. I thank myself that I had a guide and an emulator to speed up the battles when I needed to.

All the little gameplay quirks really got to me at first with the inventory management and shops but once I started to view everything from the perspective of real life, it made sense. Of course you're not going to be able to hold a whole lot, and you're going to have to swap around goods so that it can be usable. Of course you're being charged an egregious sum just to see your friends revived. Of course, instead of simply interacting with the ATM, you have to open your inventory, scroll to the Cash Card, and hit use. It makes so much sense. That also goes for having the train animation play whenever you use it, and your dad blabbing on and on before you get to the point.

I think the smartest I ever felt when viewing this game through that lens would be when Lloyd joins your party. The game tells you that he's a weakling, and he has the low stats to back that up. The most useful he gets is using gadgets that break often. I asked myself, "why would the game deliberately give you a weak party member?" Then it hit me. Of course, if you were to go on an adventure with your friends chances are you're going to have drag the dorky kid along with you. They're not all combat ready. I love how the game then ties up Lloyd's character with the typical "I'm going to prove myself" arc.

But, those quirks didn't make me fall in love with the game though. After all, this game had indeed made me ragequit, to the point where I would take weeklong breaks from the game when it's not even that long. As I mentioned to my friends, it's art in the same way that a bully beats you up and your mom gives you grilled cheese and apple slices to help make you feel better.

It was the end that the game really got to me. Out of nowhere, I started crying after Ninten sang the Eight Melodies to Queen Maria. She started talking about Geigue and how he was when she raised him, and how his tail would always wag like a dog except for when she sang that lullaby. I was seriously fighting back tears (which I was told NOT to cry about yet, thanks Mother fandom) because the way she talked about him sounded exactly like a loving grandmother on her deathbed, recalling all the fun little memories she had with her grandchildren before passing away peacefully. And then Magicant disappearing, a place that said to always have a loving home for Ninten, felt like the emptiness I felt when my grandmother passed away. I haven't actually properly cried for her passing away, and I haven't done so for over 10 years now. But now I definitely feel like I've let out some of the deep-seeded pain. Even while writing this review, tears are dripping down my face.

So yeah, the ending manages to pick everything back up all at once. It's really not fair of me to attach a score to this game because of how deep the emotions run with it. I feel the same about this game as I do with my own life. It sucks a lot. I've been through a lot of mental pain. But there are just those tender moments, like dancing on the stage, or walking around the elementary school, or sharing a close bond with Ana, that really just make it charming. And then sometimes, it really turns out for the better.

In short, if you're able to love a piece of art, thorns and all, then I definitely recommend it provided you promise me you won't get hurt too much by it. Because this game hurts a lot but man I'm glad to have gone through it.

I think everyone had really high expectations for this one, but in my opinion, this game is not nearly as good as the first game is.

I believe it all comes down to repetition and the execution. This is by all accounts Breath of the Wild but bigger, longer and uncut.

I wasn't doubting that I would be playing in the same map again, but somehow I was expecting to do something at least slightly different than unlocking every single shrine in Hyrule yet again. AND THEN SOME, because you also have to do that in the depths and the sky islands, so there is double the busy work.

Speaking of, I believe that both the depths and the sky islands were kind of disappointing, for different reasons. The sky islands were the selling point of the game and yet, there are barely any of them in the sky and they barely have any relevance in the game outside of the few that are required to progress the story.

Most of the islands in the sky will be tiny pieces of land, where really nothing interesting is going on and there isn't much to do in them, other than to find one or two chests and do a single puzzle to unlock a shrine.

There was this one time when I was exploring a set of floating islands completely covered inside an infinite thunderstorm; I think I wasn't even supposed to be up there without clearing the storm first, since I couldn't see shit, but this was one of the only times I actually felt like these islands were giving me an actual challenge. I ended up getting to the end of those islands and found the beginning of a side quest that would lead me to unlock Mineru's construct, all by complete accident.

The depths on the other hand, I feel like suffer from the opposite problem...And also the same problem. The depths are absolutely MASSIVE and I'm so glad they kept it as a secret instead of revealing them in the trailers....However, once you jump down one chasm, it feels like you have jumped down every single one.

Yes, the depths are big and dark and scary, but once the novelty wears off, you notice that there really isn't much to do down there other than....Find light roots. I just feel like this was such a wasted opportunity; there isn't anything all that scary down there and at most, I only remember seeing one type of new enemy down there...The rest were just gloomy re-skins of the same enemies you encounter on Hyrule...

Maybe they should've kept the weird monster hands exclusive to the depths, or the Ganon clone...And just MAKE NEW THREATS! The depths as they are just feel like Hyrule 2.0 but with the lights off and far less things to interact outside of a few Yiga Clan hideouts and some ancient mines. For the most part you are just going to be walking...or flying on your flying bike...or riding a Zonai car...all just to get to the next light root.

I still like these inclusions, don't get me wrong; this game sure has more content than BotW...But is it really all that worth it...? When it is this barebones, all it does for me is just make this game way longer than it needs to be and doesn't make me want to replay it the same way I replayed BotW.

I also don't know what the fuck people is on about, saying that the temples here are better than in BotW. I skipped almost the entire fire temple just by abusing my flying bike (Except for the boss, obviously), and the water temple is a complete fucking joke.

I simply preferred the divine beasts and how each one did require you to use their respective gimmicks to get past certain sections of the temple or solve certain puzzles in order to get to the terminals. Here, except for maybe the air temple, all of these feel half cooked...And the fire temple relies heavily on you not upgrading your Zonai battery beforehand so you can just cheese through the entire thing the way I did.

The story also sucks but you already know about that...Uhh...I will say tho, just to say something positive about this game that I love lol. The Zonai abilities are pretty cool (Even if they got rid of bomb jumps), the construction aspect really changes the whole game, the shrines are better than in BotW and the way you get to Ganon is absolutely perfect...And that final fight?

I'm sorry, but the final fight against Ganon is the coolest shit this franchise has ever done. When you are in the middle of fighting him and then he shows his second form...And the health bar EXTENDS ALL THE WAY TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SCREEN?! Rawest shit, chills every time.

The dragon part of the fight sucks tho. Just to balance it out with some negativity lol, I know I haven't been negative enough in this review.

Overall, I still loved this game and unlocked the entire map in Hyrule, the sky islands and the depths. I just feel like this game could've been more and they got really close...The ideas were there, they just didn't quite get there.

I still recommend it if you haven't played it, and you probably will enjoy it more if you didn't already play Breath of the Wild.

If nothing else...At least play it for Purah, my god is she hot.