At our core, every human is a patchwork of ideas imprinted upon us by others, both consciously and subconsciously. We then continue the cycle of imprinting on those around us, again, both consciously and subconsciously. There’s a reason all art is political, even if not all art desires to engage politically.

It feels impossible, no matter how trite it may feel, to discuss Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass without consistent reference to the inspirations it wears on its sleeve (a strong enough invitation for comparison). Something of a classic Final Fantasy-structured globetrotting adventure with a reinterpretation of Yume Nikki’s transformation system. And, most pressingly of course, a closer set of vibes to what makes the Mother trilogy so beloved than any other game I’ve played. Standing on the shoulders of giants, Jimmy manages, with only a few missteps, to coalesce into an immensely charming RPG with an impressive amount of depth to it.

It’s quickly apparent getting situated in Jimmy’s home atop the clouds it’s some kinda of dream world, beset by the growing rot of the titular Pulsating Mass (an obvious stand-in for… something). This vast world, so rich in variety, is the star of the show. A constant stream of interesting new locales and dungeons reflecting upon Jimmy’s young psyche manages to capture the oh-so-pristine feeling of being a real globe-trotting adventure. It really hits in the endgame cleanup, having the Final Fantasy airship moment and realizing how far I’ve come since the starting island, and how much there still was to experience. Even when I dug well into the game, there was still a solid half-dozen side dungeons with their own unique aesthetics, lore, and gameplay mechanics I never even touched.

Combat alone is chocked to the brim with a stupid number of elements that are so fun to really dig into. Jimmy alone has like 10 separate forms he can switch between in battle, each with completely different niches. As you level them up you unlock pieces of each form to spec base form JImmy into any sort of fearsome fighter. The rest of the team have more predefined niches, but plenty of weapons, equipment, skill manuals, accessories, and collectable furniture that gives a ton of flexibility in the team dynamics. Towards the end, the game does some I LOVE when games do: giving you gimmicky equipment that fundamentally changes how characters work. In the final areas, my healer was rocking with the strongest basic attack in the entire party after an entire game of her being the weakest by a large margin.

The enemies, not to be outmatched, are full of their own little gimmicks, particularly interacting with Goon Jimmy’s grifting. Got an alarm robot in the way? Just steal its voice box and let it flounder in silence. Didn’t steal it and let the alarm summon a Deathbot 3000? Just steal the Deathbot 3000’s voicebox and—oh—that doesn’t prevent it from death-ing you. Of particular interest, basically every boss fight has an interesting gimmick attached to it as well. It’s an interesting contrast to Final Fantasy VII, which (like VI) opens with a boss who’s counterattack serves as a good tutorial to the ATB system, before forgetting boss gimmicks can be a thing until the superbosses. It’s really impressive how well realized Jimmy’s combat ends up being, easily the best combat of any RPG Maker game I’ve played (granted, Omori is probably the only game that remotely competes).

Unfortunately, the game decides to take on particular element from the Mother series that… well… read my Mother 3 review: the combat gets to be a SLOG. While it has the nice QoL feature of being able to ignore some encounters when you hit some arbitrary requirement (I assume level??), each individual encounter is difficult enough and enough of a resource drain to become exhausting, and often leaving you unprepared for boss fights with massive HP pools at the end of a long dungeon.

Almost every boss became a loop of attempting it, realizing I did not have the resources to survive the war of attrition against the boss, then switching to easy mode to get through it. The reason it took so long for me to beat the game was the constant ramming my head against a wall before putting it down for a few weeks, several times over. Until halfway through the game when I decided to just keep easy mode on full time. despite the game pinning normal mode as “the intended experience”, easy mode was so much more enjoyable. It saved the experience for me really, turning it into a really chill adventure overall.

This adventure is constantly intertwined with the adventures of a whole bunch of other characters. While the concept of “reoccuring side characters” is of course not remotely unique, I think its notable how many the game has. Halfway through the game the game stops everything to do what could be called an “every character in the game so far tournament arc” and it’s a delight. It (perhaps counterintuitively) really builds up the sense of adventure and strong vibes.

To reuse the phrasing that certainly made people silently wish death upon me on the Mario Discord, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is the “quirky Earthbound inspired indie game” that most exactly captures the vibes that made the progenitor trilogy so appealing. I struggle to pick out the exact elements that make them match so hard beyond a lot of very earnest humor interspersed with some really engrossing descriptions (albeit far more R-rated than anything you’d find in Mother). Still, it ended up making for a very similar feeling experience to the one I had playing Mother 3 last year—and not one that felt derivative in the slightest.

The art style does not carry the vibes as well as the writing, with sprites often looking fairly crude in a way that feels amateurish. It gets a tad unbearable in the game’s gorier moments. Sometimes, the game pulls out a pretty impressive looking part that makes me think the spritework is meant to reflect the crudeness and edginess of a child like Jimmy’s thoughts. But then I see the kinda abhorrent spritework for the visual novel section of the game and I lose benefit of the doubt. At least the soundtrack absolutely slaps.

Ironically, the weakest characters end up being the main cast: Jimmy’s family. They’re not bad characters, but just end up feeling kind of thin and “along for the ride” when spending so much of the game with them. And when the story is so focused on Jimmy’s family, it ended up not really emotionally landing for me, especially compared to how I’ve seen it hit some others. It took until near the end, when Jimmy is given brief flashes on consciousness to realize the Pulsating Mass I suspected to be some sort of metaphor (Earthbound-inspired indie RPG about depression REAL???) was literally a Pulsating Mass. It’s a cancerous tumor. Jimmy is in a coma. Then the rest of the game ends up playing out just about how you’d expect it to. While there’s some texture provided, particularly during the glimpses back into reality, to keep it from feel too trite, I can’t help from feeling somewhat dissatisfied.

Jimmy’s adventure is moreso about the journey than the destination, though, and I think the game even makes the case for that. While not some must play game that will stick with me forever, there’s so much heart that it’s hard not to really like it in spite of the issues. It’s a game of impressive craft, especially considering it was a solo development.

For the final, secret form Jimmy can unlock, he imagines himself as the phoenix. “He feels alive. Energized. Jimmy thinks that if he put his mind to it, he could fly right out of bed. He could fly and fly. He could burn bright forever, like a brand new sun.”

It’s a game that knows how to be beautiful.