Incredible. I'm biased as a complete Mother fangirl, but this game was just fantastic. It has a couple issues I'll acknowledge, movement kind of sucks, the early game is a bit boring, and sometimes things can be a little obscure, mainly optional content. But dude, this game is freaking EPIC! The story is really cool and clever in how it builds up the series. The writing is consistently quirky and hilarious. The combat, while time-based is not my preference, is still really fun and honestly way better than a lot of RPG Maker games. The world of this game is just crazy, there's so much in it with tons and tons of optional side quests, added context to things like races in the game, and LORE. This was just such a trip as a Mother fan and when I wasn't geeking out, there was awesome original stuff just around the corner. Loved this all the way through.

This game is really lopsided. The combat is absolutely fantastic, easily some of the best in the series. It's fast, flashy, challenging, a good cast of playable characters, and still takes thought to string together good combos. The dungeons and skill system are mostly decent too, so that's nice.

On the otherhand though, the story and characters are pretty lame here. On the characters end, the cast definitely has its highlights, but a few of them I honestly thought were either boring or pretty underdeveloped. Story-wise... Eh. It has its moments but its mostly really boring and the story's pacing in the second act is honestly pretty bad. A lot of the time I was just wanting to get back to the gameplay, but I wouldn't say it's bad either.

That being said though, the fact I gave the game such a high score really just shows how fun the core gameplay is. The game's worth playing for that alone, especially when compared to the PSX version.