Mother 3 high playthrough part 1: The Funshine Sorest is on tire!

Starting a high playthrough of Mother 3 Fan Translation v1.2
The first time I played this was like 10 years ago, back when the translation patch first came out... I don't remember much at all except for the major story details.. I've really been looking forward to replaying this.

The naming screen animation is so cute.
Went with all the default character names of course... and fav food noodles and fav thing weed... and grape window color

- Prologue -
- Mt. Oriander 1 -

I'm at the home of Alec, Hinawa's father, where Hinawa and her kids Lucas and Claus are visiting...
Claus knocking on the door, telling Lucas to get up so they can go see the dragos.. his mom tells him to go change out of pajamas before leaving

So far the exact same gameplay stuff is happening as the Earthbound intro, except with a totally different story/context.
Unlike Earthbound, there are sometimes some unique looking things in houses that you can examine for a bit of flavor text.

Hinawa's dad is outside... both of him and his mom called him sleepyhead...
Alec: "Well, today's the day you head back home."

left pig:

What the pig next to me says worries me...

right pig:

Don't worry about it.

cow:

All cows, no matter what they're thinking, go Moo. It'd be handy to remember that.

lmao awesome, I guess Lucas has the same abilities as Ness, including his ability to I telepathically talk to animals.
The chickens are too chicken to talk to you, they just run away instead.. you have to run them into something to hear what they say.

oh cool... no more skip sandwich nonsense.. now you can just hold B to charge up a run.

South path:

There are ants at your feet. You might accidentally step on them, so please don't continue in that direction.

Frog:

A story is a series of memories. Memories are remembered with other memories, and in turn become memories themselves. If you don't take care to preserve your memories, you'll forget them. So, please tell us frogs your memories of everything so far... That is what people refer to as saving.

this is too deep I can't handle it...

West path: Claus is charging and knocking over the father dinosaur...

You should play too, Lucas.

>Yes >No
Yeah, let's decline the offer to play with Lucas's brother who I'm sure nothing bad will happen to ever in this game.
Actually it doesn't seem to matter what you pick... Alec comes and shows you how to hold B and ram into things like Claus was doing.

Mole Cricket objects to our play-fighting, and teaches Lucas and Claus real fighting. He doesn't tell you yet, but you can easily find out on your own that with the "Bash" command represented by a music note... in this game you can tap A along to the beat of the background music to get combo hits.

Then Hinawa shows up...

I stepped on a mole cricket. I hope it's all right...

lmao wow.. another EarthBound parallel... as soon as the intro barely starts, the tutorial character gets squashed by some woman.

After Hinawa calls them in for noodles, Alec looks at the player and tells you that you should talk to frogs often... this guy replaces the EarthBound dad as the savings/growth info expert character... Frogs replace the telephones, though I don't know if these frogs allow Lucas to talk to his grandpa...
Hinawa is talking about how they'll get home safely, while Alec is talking about how peaceful it is and that there's no danger... Hinawa goes outside to write a letter to Flint, about how this place is so refreshing after being at their sheep farm all the time...

- Chapter 1: Night of the Funeral -
- Tazmily Village 1 -

I'm just guessing that a bit of time has passed...

That odd music from a thing that flew over the house as Hinawa was outside... some pig soldiers came out of it and threw bombs killing a bunch of stuff... someone from Tazmily Village comes and knocks on Flint's door, saying the Sunshine Forest is on fire...
This feels really dire and serious suddenly...
Lucas's father, Flint is level 7, has some useful fighting skills...

geez, who would lock their door in a village as peaceful as ours?

Thomas:

I'll follow behind you. What? What's so wrong with that? I happen to like following behind people!

Flint takes a stick from his dog's doghouse... Thomas is like

That'll come in handy as a weapon

...in a forest fire? really?
ah sweet... unlike EarthBound you don't have to go to the "status" menu item and hit A to read through the item status dialog... instead the item status dialog is instantly fully there on the screen to read it if you want, as you have the cursor over that item in the Goods or Equip screens... the whole menu interface is just way quicker and easier than the earlier games...

Despite how dire everything is, you can still take the time to talk to all the silly npcs if you want... although most of them are not actually in town right now, they're in the forest helping to rescue people.

Th-th-the Sunshine Fire... It's on forest!! No, wait! The Funshine Sorest is on tire!!

Oh and you can easily find out that Thomas is the owner of this town's general store.
If you try to go in any houses: "Now's not the time for that."
Jackie from Jackie's Yado Inn is too busy to help out.

Some women in the central square talking about the fire, wondering if it'll destroy this town... Lisa asks Thomas what he's running around acting like a siren for... lmao is that background siren noise seriously coming from his mouth?
Jill tells Flint not to take Thomas too seriously... what?

Some guy sitting on a bench:

If you need something from the map-loving and map-owning Mapson, it must be a map, yes?

He tells me how to use the map...

Fill your right index finger with a wish. or strength. to put it more bluntly, I guess do something R Button-ish?

Woah.. Tazmily is actually pretty big... there's like 4 other south Tazmily town sections, in addition to the Flint's house section and the shop/inn section. Flint's house seems to be near an ocean/lakeside cliff, while the 2 south-western sections look like a beach/port and the 2 south-eastern sections look like a mountainside area near a river...
Then up ahead there seems to be some fields/houses and a church, surrounded by a moat from that same river... then the west path from there goes up into Sunshine Forest...
yay weed-induced overly detailed map analysis

Pusher, who is I guess this town's mayor, is telling Flint and Thomas, the only 2 town firefighters to do something...

North! North, I say!

oh, so you mean go east of here right?

Flint! The fire isn't that way!

Abbot tells you the directions to the woods, then apologizes for sounding so explanation-like...

Picked up a mushroom in a giftbox and some nuts on the ground... Abbey tells us out of the kindness of her heart to read all signposts so we don't get lost.
South: Tazmily Village, West: Sunshine Forest, North: Sunset Cemetary... oh and there's some blocked off cave path to the east, I wonder when that'll be relevant

- Sunshine Forest 1 -

Lou and Bud escaped, but Bud starts puking... Lou says Lighter and Fuel haven't escaped yet... lol these guys aren't the pig enemies who caused it I hope.
So, sparrows are what replace the EarthBound moles I guess...

The yin-yang altar in this temple place asks the player for their name...

After I count down from three, you will forget you were ever asked this question.

...Have you forgotten?

>Yes >No

Now it's the first actual combat part of the game... it starts quite a bit later than in EarthBound's intro, mostly because of all the extra flavor text you can waste your time with.

Ed won't let Ollie and Butch in to see the fire.
Mike:

Let this slightly unclean and not very tasty cookie be of use.

Another sparrow tells Flint about how some people prefer to keep the peace as much as possible, and dash past enemies you can avoid... but if you run away from everything, you'll have a tougher time later on...

Always running off will only lead to regret, my young disciple.

I'll usually prefer to just fight any enemy that's in my way.

Walking too close to the fire damages you. The left path leading north to the mountain/Riverside is blocked off by a huge wall of fire... you see one of those pig soldiers open a box to let some flies out, before running through the fire like it's nothing... Lighter is there coughing... he was trying to fight off the pig enemies, but they just kept coming... Fuel is still in the shack up north... Flint inspects some strange dead bug on the ground...

You've never seen a bug like this before.

As Flint tries to go further, a bunch more of those strange bugs show up and attack him.

A frog hiding in a barrel of water asks me to save.

A flying rat... it's the first enemy that does a combo attack on you... with this you should be able to figure out on your own that tapping A along to the beat gets you combo hits... and if you see the enemy do it to you, then you have a better idea of what the timing for the combo hits should be.

lol I just noticed Thomas stayed behind at some point when Flint went into the burning forest.. how did I not notice the siren noise not being there anymore? I'm way too high.

Um... wtf am I supposed to do on the 2nd floor of this building where Fuel is stuck behind a fallen support beam?

I thought maybe examine the dining table/chair that's below where that kid is stuck in the floor, and try to grab him that way? nope... and it doesn't let me leave until I save him...
Oh right, the dash ability... you can use that indoors too, and knock away the rubble that's blocking the way.

Abbey was attacked by some enemies... says she's never seen any creatures like this before, some weird hybrid combinations of flies, mouses, and other bugs...
Thomas is near the sanctuary... oh I see he took Lighter here to save him while Flint went to get Fuel.

... oh man... sad stuff.

- Tazmily Village/Sunshine Forest 2 -

It starts raining... back at Tazmily Village, Tessie heals Flint and Fuel at the inn, but Lighter is still in bad condition.
Lighter:

Flint... did you see anything else in the fire besides those weird bugs? Suspicious people with pig-like masks on.

Lou says there's yet another guy named Isaac who went out to the woods to pick mushrooms, not sure if he's back yet...
Wow this Innkeeper guy looks perpetually depressed... I guess you've never seen him pre-pig crisis... his wife thinks he's a coward.

Another thing I noticed is this game seems to have a LOT more named characters than EarthBound.. idk if I can remember all these names lol.

Isaac is outside the inn.. asks Flint if he's seen Hinawa and the kids.. He saw Hinawa by the mountain riverside when he was up there picking mushrooms... then he heard Drago screams and human screams off in the distance a bit later.
You still can't go in any other houses in town besides the inn, because it's late out... It seems like you have the choice to either sleep until morning or go looking for Hinawa at night... idk maybe not? Okay yeah, sleeping doesn't do anything but heal you, got it.

During the forest fire, the frog was like "you really should save", but now that it's raining and things are calm, it's like "wanna save? ribbit".. I like how the frogs can all have different dialog depending on the situation.
All of them end by saying

Give my regards to the next frog you meet.

Flint finds a carrier pidgeon with a letter from Hinawa...

Next time we visit, let's ask one of our neighbors to tend the sheep so we can come as a family

...

Isaac says he'll get some other villagers to help with finding Flint's family... Fuel goes to tell his dad that he's going out to look too.
Also you can explore the rest of town now, just can't go in any houses still... sherriff's office is to the west, the sign there says

Sheriff NOT wanted! After all, there's no crime!

This map design feels quite a bit different from EarthBound's and Mother 1's giant areas with an angled point of view... This feels kinda more simple, but still has the Earthbound style linearity where the way forward is usually pretty obvious, but if you go exploring for optional goodies it's easy to get lost.
Everyone's searching the forest for Hinawa, Claus, and Lucas.. further up at the mountain...

At the north end of the forest, near the foot of a mountain, there's dragon claw marks everywhere.. looks like the dragos fled up the mountain... the npcs want to check out Hinawa's father's house but something snapped a bunch of trees in half and now they're blocking the way.

- Mt. Oriander 2 -

Fuel, Lighter, and Isaac show up, and start trying to push through..
Now some people are gathered at the cliff where the dragons climbed up.. Boney notices something here.. and if you look up you see a red piece of cloth that Flint seems to recognize.

The old man says he can get his son to help Flint up the cliff, Duster... They send Boney to go get him... Duster has the ability to staple soft walls to create a path to climb up them...

Just realized, in EarthBound's Lost Underworld, the place where dragons lived, that's where Ness found his final memory and went to Magicant... and the peaceful (pre-pig crisis) place you start out in has dragons living there...

Up ahead there's this tough cyborg mountain goat thing that the pig enemies activated on us.

Died the first time, cuz I didn't think to start using anyone's battle skills yet, but once I started using the character skills it was easy... Duster can even immobilize it with his staple power.
After defeating it and chasing the pigs away, my levels are now 12 / 9 / 11

If you try to go back down the mountain after it stops raining, some npc who is slowly trying to climb it blocks you off from returning

Some letter with a pig nose stamp on it:

All the creatures around here suck. We need to make 'em cooler. So the theme will be: Tougher! Rougher! Badder! We'll mix and match this and that to create whole new things no one's ever seen before! I dub it the Fascinating Chimera Project.

yikes...

Saw a pig-nosed UFO fly away... can't go any farther due to part of the cliff being destroyed... back down the mountain... the npcs who were at the knocked down trees have finished. One guy finds you and says he found Lucas and Claus, washed up the river.

...
Fuel:

I wonder what they'll get to eat when their mom gets back.

Bronson shows up looking really awkward... he says he found a drago fang... but...

no more noodles ;_;

- Tazmily Village/Sunshine Forest/Mt. Oriander 3 -

Bronson tells Flint that he can come pick up that drago fang when he gets out of jail... Claus comes and breaks him out.. says Lucas is been at mom's grave crying...

Most of the characters who couldn't help search earlier are still in their houses, most others are at the cemetery...... the west side of the village has this old guy name Scamp, and a Myrna bird and a teddy bear... can't enter Wess's basement.

Tessie:

It seems Claus was the first person at Hinawa's grave this morning. When I called out to him as he was leaving, he gave a tiny little smile... and then suddenly dashed off...

aw...

Some little girl named Alle says Clause went off somewhere and said "we won't see each other for a while", asks Flint if he knows where he went..

Alec asks Lucas where Clause went...

h-he didn't take dad's homemade knife and go to slay the drago

Okay, got the drago fang from Bonson, the only weapon that can hurt a drago... and got some new armor from Lighter... seems like a good place to stop.