Mother is where absurdist fantasy, playful mundanity and hints of horror join to produce an atmosphere that is uniquely "Mother-like": one second you're fighting crazed hippies and living cars, the next you're meeting the princess of a dreamlike realm, then you're accompanied by a janitor through school halls while he casually talks about his wife. This delightful surrealism is pretty much the only thing that the game has going for it, though, as combat and exploration structures largely fall into the same crude, tiresome formulas and (now) terribly dated designs of most RPGs of its time.