The game follows Lucas, a young boy with psychic abilities, and a party of characters as they attempt to prevent a mysterious invading army from corrupting and destroying the world.

Like previous entries, Mother 3 focuses on exploring the game world from a top-down perspective and engaging in turn-based combat with enemies.

The player controls a party of playable characters who explore the game's two-dimensional fictional world, primarily shown from a top-down perspective.

In response to the Pigmasks' invasion, neophyte thief Duster is sent by Wess, his father and teacher, to the abandoned Osohe Castle to retrieve the mysterious Egg of Light.

At the same time a mysterious peddler known as Yokuba,[b] who works with the Pigmasks, introduces the concept of currency and sells television-like devices known as Happy Boxes to the townspeople, with the unwilling help of a monkey named Salsa whom he abuses.

Lucas hears rumours that Duster, who has been missing since leaving for Osohe Castle, is working as a bassist at the nearby Club Titiboo, and sets off with his dog Boney.

Lucas and Boney land in a haystack back in Tazmily, and learn from the Magypsies that beneath the Islands is a massive, sleeping creature known as the Dark Dragon.

To prevent a second apocalypse from occurring, the survivors sealed their previous memories in the Egg of Light; Leder was given the role of revealing the truth if the situation called for it.

This eventually causes Claus to remove his mask and commit suicide by casting lightning at Lucas's magic-reflecting Franklin Badge.

[9] Unlike previous RPGs, which he saw as "road movies" with little reason to revisit, he wanted the player to see the town gossip grow dynamically.

[21] The series' games were written in the hiragana alphabet instead of in kanji (Chinese characters) so as to remain accessible to young children.

[23] The antagonist, Porky, was designed as a "symbol of humankind", complementing Itoi's view of evil on a fungible morality spectrum with "pranks" and "crimes" at its extremes.

Kyle Miller of RPGFan wrote that the game retained the quirkiness of the previous soundtracks in the series despite the change in composers.

that plays after the player chooses the character's name was recorded without Itoi's knowledge by Hirokazu Tanaka more than a decade before the release of Mother 3.

[32] At one point leading up to its release, the game's "Love Theme" would play as music on hold for residents who made phonecalls to the Japan Post.

[33][34] The game was marketed in Japan with a television commercial that has Japanese actress Kō Shibasaki on the verge of tears as she explains her feelings about Mother 3.

[35] Game Informer editor Imran Khan alleges that Nintendo planned an English localization but canceled it due to fears that the central theme of bereavement, as well as instances of drug use and animal cruelty, would generate controversy.

On October 17, 2008, Starmen.net released a fan translation patch that, when applied on a copy of the Mother 3 ROM image, converts all the game's text into English.

[40][41] Reid Young, co-founder of Starmen.net, said that when they realized Nintendo was not going to localize Mother 3, they decided to undertake the task, for themselves and for fans of the game.

[43] The localization team planned to end the project if Nintendo were to make an announcement about the future of the game, or if they were asked to cease development of the translation.

It sold around 200,000 copies in its first week of sales in Japan and despite not having an English localization, critics imported it for reception and gave it mostly positive reviews.

[51] It was one of Japan's top 20 bestselling games for the first half of 2006,[29] and received a "Platinum Hall of Fame" score of 35/40 from Japanese reviewer Weekly Famitsu.

[49] Eurogamer's Simon Parkin detailed the 12-year development, the series' legacy as both "one of Japan's most beloved" and the video game cognoscenti's "sacred cow", and the endurance of its fan community.

[32] He was impressed by the quality of the fan translation and described Itoi as a "storyteller" who chose the Japanese role-playing game medium to tell his story.

[32] Parkin noted how the "excellent" script unfurled from a "straightforward tale" into "breadth and depth of quality that few titles many times its budget achieve" with "affecting scenes" and "unexpected impact".

[2] Parkin wrote that the script allowed for the somewhat "heavy-handed" juxtaposition of "nature and technology, feudalism and capitalism, individuals and community",[2] and that what he first considers a name customization "trick" becomes useful later in the game.

[32] NGC Magazine's Mark Green wrote that the game felt like Mother 2.5 in its look and feel, which he did not consider negative, albeit somewhat antiquated.

Eurogamer's Parkin wrote that the "childlike" and "unusually Western" graphics were similar to EarthBound's in "flat pastel textures devoid of shading" as juxtaposed with background art that "fizzes with life and character".

[4] Eisenbeis of Kotaku cited "the importance of mothers" as a key theme about which the game revolves, which he preferred to the mid-game "slapstick insanity" and final plot twist.

[51] The Super Smash Bros. series features Lucas as a playable fighter, as well as minor characters as collectibles, items, or stage hazards.