Mother 3's spin on turn-based combat

Something I find fascinating about Mother 3’s combat is how the player’s health gets displayed. For the un-initiated: Damage and healing don’t happen instantly but instead count up or down gradually. In a typical turn-based RPG it doesn’t matter how fast you decide your next action. In the mother series it does. This gives the round-based combat a faster pace since you can negate the damage of even the strongest attacks, if you beat the enemy before the damage subtracts.

In addition to the pace, the turn order of your party members gets a different strategic spin as well. Boney and Duster start the turn, afterwards Kumatora and Lucas do their moves. This is pretty much the inverse of the order you choose their commands. Before I get into the game design implication of that, I have to admire the thought that went into the order you choose the moves and when they get executed. Mother 3 has very little party banter, or conversations between the main group in general. So it lets a lot of the character’s combat traits do the talking for them. It makes sense that an animal that hunts in the wild attacks first, and doesn’t need to think long before acting. Duster, who trained to be a thief, thinks and acts quickly. Contrary to them Kumatora wasn’t really trained to fight and Lucas isn’t confident in his abilities for most of the game.

Thanks to this turn order you get to think about your most powerful moves first, since Lucas and Kumatora use PSI abilities that can do big AOE damage or heal their allies. On the flip side, Duster has mainly de-buffs and does pretty good physical damage whilst Boney’s attacks are only ok. That’s why he’s very effective for using healing or buff items. This naturally forces you to consider your strategy, since the strong attacks get executed last. Which in turn enhances the stress effect of the ticker system since you want to end the fight quickly. It’s such a cool system and was one of the reasons I could get through the game unlike some other turn-based titles.