Mother 3

I picked this game up after hearing Dan Bruno rave about it on the Brainy Gamer podcast.

It's quite good because it goes into creating an intentional ludonarrative dissonance and using that to communicate an effective satire on gamers. Brainy Gamer did something about this but I can't find the post, the notion that one should not just arbitrarily assume it is bad when it is occurring. I suppose we can label this game Exhibit A in that argument.

Because the game uses so many health boosts, tricks, and ways to warp the system in conjunction with a hefty difficulty curve it was a JRPG that I ended up seriously taking advantage of. Even the sound beat system is totally irrelevant to the plot and must be relied upon heavily, a skill that has no meaning in-game yet is essential to play. Where the satire comes in is that the plot has several sad moments that dissonate (is this even a word?) with this whole attitude. What makes it a satire is that the dialogue makes fun of you for treating everything like a game so much.

It's interesting because it's still distinctly Earthbound, it's still poking fun at JRPG's, but now the butt of the joke is you.