🍔 Mother 2 / Earthbound (Game Club) - Week 4


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Welcome to Week 4 of Mother 2 Club

:house: Home Thread | :video_game: Game Club

Pacing will feel a bit faster this week, as we’re covering a few distinct areas.

Week 4 May 22nd
Last Week Week 3
Start Point Return Paula to Twoson
End Point Ride the Sky Walker
Next Week Week 5

Not here yet and need help catching up? When you reach Week 3’s Sanctuary boss, open by paralyzing it, and you should have a much easier time of it.

A guide to this week (spoilers) 🎷 🚐 👻 🐒

It’s time to head back to Twoson. You should find enemies much easier to defeat, and you can even try taking out one of those trees if you ran from them before (but they still hit hard when defeated). There’s a shortcut to get back through the valley this time (you’ll know it when you see it).

Once in Twoson, head to the preschool to reunite Paula with her parents. Upon leaving, you’re be invited to hang out with Tonchiki in the park. Then head to the theater next and see the manager. Finally, ride the Tour Bus to the next destination, Threek.

Treek is the main destination of the week. Explore as much as you’d like, then save the graveyards for last. When you reach the graveyard, talk to the zombies there, then head to the hotel.

The next stop is a snow-covered land. Explore a little there, then after getting over a fence, head to the shop to buy gum and get a :monkey:. Don’t forget to equip anything you have on hand before venturing out. Follow the path south and take care around :goat:. Once you reach the final tent, stop in for a meal and a night’s rest. Then step out onto the bit of land sticking out south for a ride across the lake.

The path from here is fairly straightforward. If you enter a cave and get stuck at a dead end with a wall you can’t get up, don’t forget your bubble gum. Past there, watch out for the big feet, then continue south to the lab. Take a bit of a trip, then use the key machine to unlock the door.

If you haven’t fully explored Threek yet, you can do so now, but avoid the purple tent. Stop by a phone to save for the week.

Tips:

  • Possessed? You might become unable to attack for a few turns. Go see the healer to give up the ghost.
  • If you’re running out of item space with {redacted}:glasses:, you can drop the ruler and protractor.
  • {redacted}:glasses: can fix broken items overnight. Whether he can fix specific items depends on his IQ. Aim to get him up to level 12 to increase what he can repair.

Walkthrough: English | Japanese

Script (with kanji!): Script

Participation :admission_tickets:

Will you be joining us this week?

  • Yes, I’m playing along
  • I’m still playing but haven’t reached this point yet
  • I’m just here for the discussion
  • I’m playing after the club has ended
0 voters

How do you feel about the pace of the club so far?

  • It’s a bit too fast, and I may fall behind.
  • It’s about right.
  • It’s a bit slow for me, and I could go faster.
0 voters

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Fun Stuff

Maps
Threek

Brick Road Maze

Shopping Guide

Arms Dealer


Threek Bakery


Threek Drug Store


Snow Wood Store


This week's monsters (spoilers)

Treek vs Threed? The town’s Japanese name is Threek. It was changed to Threed for the English release.

Ah, in the tip section about running out of inventory space and dropping an item:

You do need a Ruler later in the game, and you can definitely buy another, but I usually keep this one for when it is needed later.

I did it; I’ve managed to get my life together enough to get caught back up. Maybe I should try to take the work of posting these threads back off you at some point.

Few thoughts

So the band is absolutely using kansai-ben and the like; there are a few Kansai specific alternate words in there that I’m not even sure if I’ve seen before despite my exposure to the dialect. Ultimately they seem like pretty clear replacements if you understand the rest of the sentence, but interesting stuff to run across. I always remember their performance as a part of this game that really stuck with me.

Love the vibes in this horror town we find ourselves in and the deep bass music to go with it. All the music is great, that warped hotel stuff and then the Winters theme is one of my favorites.

Jeff is here! Great pace breaker to shift over to someone else for a bit. Riding Tessie is so funny, the way you just silently get on then Jeff, the monkey, and Tessie all have their own dopey faces pointed at the camera for the whole journey, I love it. Low budget dungeon is very amusing too.

I feel like the game never quite emphasizes enough how Jeff’s real purpose as a party member is really strong items. You do get a couple here but it’s easy to overlook and I don’t think they make it clear they’re just for him in the descriptions? The way he repairs stuff hints in that direction but I feel like on my first playthrough he seemed like he sucked until I realized how crazy strong his one use weapons were. [Edit: The wiki definitely says the description starts with “Items for Jeff,” I assume it’s more likely I just whitenoised that entirely when I glanced at it than that the Japanese version lacks it. Really my first playthrough confusion might’ve been more about me being stubborn and not playing around with consumables enough, haha, who knows.] Really, a section like this where you mostly have to use him for mindless auto attacks since he’s alone might cause more confusion.

Nonetheless, delightful little week, and other than running into the bigfoot cavemen at stonehenge, it’s a pretty laid back one compared to what we’ve had recently.

Yay! Happy to hear that, I was thinking about you these past few days. I even started playing DanganRonpa again.

I’m slacking on getting the next post together, but I’ve got it about 30% of the way there and plan to get that up to about 60% today. Just working out where to end the week, with consideration of the difficult-to-read text coming up in week 5.

If ever there was a game where you want to use up consumables, this is it.

It’s a good thing when I needed to make a decision I went with the one skateboarders probably like

my favorite part was when it took a little longer to disembark than I was expecting so I thought Tessie was saying farewell

I thought I was on a roll but then they showed me whose boss

Week fork in Threek! Now I’m starting to remember hearing that it’s called Threed in English too. Just from reading it, Threek and スリーク totally make sense but unfortunately it sounds like freak if you hear it out of context so I’m guessing that’s why they changed it

After hearing “cheese sandwich” so many times, it’s got a san and an ichi in there so maybe it can be like a countdown

Cheese two one

The graphics glitched and Paula’s dad got a taco on his head

And then I went to Threek and saw some rad signs

I remember hearing the phrase from the first billboard somewhere, I think it was from a Bluesky post quoting it with Mother 2 or 3 stuff on Mother’s Day, I think it might’ve been a tagline or something. And then the 2nd billboard instantly became my favorite haiku

I wasn’t expecting the atmosphere of Threek at all, there was a little bit of Gig’s influence in Twoson but nothing too crazy, and Happy Happy Village made sense because of how small it is, but Threek is a whole town so I didn’t think it’d get so bad. I love fixing the screwed up dystopian towns they keep catching me off guard

When I saw the tent in the centre of town, I automatically assumed that was the zombie headquarters. Then some guy told me that’s actually the resistance hq lmao. Then I saw a shady guy selling stuff and hearing about a suspicious lady talking to the zombies and seeing ghosts and puppets and

I got into an encounter and audibly said “hey a zombie do- A ZOMBIE DOG?!” and then saw its name was actually zombie dog lmao

When things switched to Jeff I had already spent a while in Threek so I decided to take a break right in the middle of talking to someone, then when I was done the Dad called Jeff thinking it was Ness

I also liked the music, I think I remember hearing the song somewhere, maybe Smash Bros or something

But after hearing of Andonuts I was wondering what was up with his name and I guess he likes donuts, I can’t believe I missed that

Now that I’m back in Threek I’ve been itching to check out the tent, but now I’m hearing DON’T go in the tent? Ooh I’m really curious now, I was saving it for last because as I said before, I thought it was zombie hq, and then I missed my chance to check when I got abducted

After getting Jeff, there will be a second tent. You can visit the first one you saw!

I’m just going to humbly give up on this game for the time being, the lack of kanji just makes this unenjoyable for me, I run out of stamina for phonetic decoding after 10 minutes and then it’s pain. Since a whole lot of the enjoyment comes from the jokes and references in the dialogue, it’s just not a good way to experience this game for me right now.

Shame, but yeah if it’s dragging down the experience I get it for sure, save it for later. A little more reading elsewhere and it won’t bother you; I was actually thinking this week about how little it even really registers to me anymore that it’s kana only, outside a few lines using weird words that tripped me up. The ability to just read it without too much issue does eventually come, you’ll be here too and then you can revisit it. :saluting_face:

I need to work on my listening more (more in this case mean “any amount bigger than 0”). My love for retro gaming conflicts with that though.

That’s alright, come back to it later! I feel like the only way you can really gauge your progress is revisiting something difficult. It’s also okay to dip out of something if it’s too difficult or you aren’t getting a lot from it.

I am excited to see how much my comprehension has improved next time I play this game.

The journey continues in week 5:


The best way to build up that stamina is to keep at it. But you also need to do so with material where you feel you’re able to enjoy it as you build up that stamina. And there’s no harm in starting the game over in English if you’d like to give it a full playthrough sooner rather than hoping to return to it later.

My sole focus is on reading, but I have to believe getting into listening (a no-kanji environment) can only help with reading kana-only video games down the line.

I fell behind, sorry. Been really hot in the UK lately (Tuesday was the hottest day in May on record apparently) and so I’ve not really been in much of a mood for sitting in my room gaming because it gets really warm in here

Anyway:

Week 4

What do you mean we don’t just play as Ness???

Genuinely had no idea there was any part of this game that saw you controlling another character so that was a huge surprise when it happened. And the little section where you play with just Jeff was quite fun. I especially enjoyed タッシー because of course this game would throw in a loch ness monster that’s real and it just ferries you across the lake

Lots of pictures this week. I wonder if there’s any greater significance to these pictures. Will we get to see them later? Is there some reward for getting every picture spot? Who knows?

スリーク was an interesting town to explore. Felt a bit more moody and gloomy, and the zombies were fun. I also enjoy that this week we had enemies that disguised themselves as both rubbish bins and as present boxes

When I was playing as Jeff I did die once, and that was to the walking mushrooms getting a big crit off. That sucked. But the monkey did get a few crits which was fun. The bigfoots (bigfeet?) were fine, they mostly missed their swings and I was able to heal before they did any real damage. I did find out that there’s something under stonehenge, but then I walked into the freaky horror room and backed out immediately. I take it we’ll be back later on. Especially because there was one of the power spots that only Ness can use

Finished this week today!

Thoughts

JEFF!!! I was surprised to see him, I didn’t think we’d get him in the party this early!

Yes that surprised me too! That’s why I thought we wouldn’t see Jeff so soon, because I knew he lived in winters

I know vague stuff about this game, but less than I thought (which is good! I’m glad I really didn’t have many spoilers)
Despite not knowing Jeff I loved his character, so I’m glad to have him in the party now!! I didn’t know the part about his character living alone with other kids :(( I did like the kids bonds though (shoutout Tony!!)
And to meet Professor Andonuts and he barely remembered his own son :(((

I’m so glad Jeff is with Ness and Paula now though :head_shaking_vertically: They will be great friends!!

I really enjoyed this week, and I LOVE the snowman song and winters theme :sob: :heart_hands: If I had to pick, they are my favorite themes from the game, and I feel like that won’t change
Oh, I also enjoyed the balloon monkey! He was cute

Looking forward to continuing!