I'm on Chapter 3, at the end of it (If I'm correct, and I'm positive I am) (EDIT: And I was! Chapter 4 time ). Playing on actual hardware myself, enjoying it. Play time...12 hours.

It's been commented on several times on the Starmen.net forums, but there is a sound issue where it will randomly start clicking. Opening a menu or changing the song fixes this, so it's not a huge problem. It does kill the mood if it happens during a cutscene (Like it has to me twice). There has been two cases I've seen that were spelling errors (You instead of You're and something else). I would assume we'll be seeing a v1.1 patch sooner then Mato had hoped.

If anyone here wants to play it on official hardware (And has a DS) like I am, I reccomend getting a Slot-1 + the EZ Flash 3in1. You need the Slot-1 to write to the 3in1, but if you write in NOR mode (Which takes anywhere from 1 to 6 minutes) you can use it like a real GBA cartridge and put it in a GBA if you wish.

However, some may have heard about the crashing associated with flash carts...

Unlike some flash carts, I haven't had a crash yet. Several people with M3 Perfect/Pro's and other SD media based carts are reporting crashes when using certain special abilities in battle or just during normal gameplay. The reason for that though is that most Slot 2 cards stream the game off of the media which creates slowdown and other bugs. My flash cart in particular writes to on-board memory (NOR or PSRAM, but you have to use NOR for ROMs over 16MB (Mother 3 for instance)) so it has a literally perfect compatability (F-Zero Climax for example, does not lag). So if anyone was interested but worried about it crashing, don't be with this cart, because it won't

I will say though, I know I saw it once before on a DS game, but I forgot about it. The DS does have a refresh rate line that is barely visible. For some reason though, the colors in Mother 3 really bring it out and you can see several refresh rate "bars" going down the screen. It sucks, and once you see it enough times you can't unsee it. MobileSprout (Mitch) has seen it and fallen victim as well. If anyone plans on playing this on a DSLite, know in advance you may succumb to insanity-by-bars.

On the actual game: I really like how there is a lot more exploring then battling, it feels much more wide open and free compared to Mother 2. It does have it's moments where, despite fighting everything you have seen several times over, you may run in to a boss that will crush you until you come back with a ton of healing items or more levels. So far, there have been two bosses I have had to grind for (No more then 10 minutes though), when really it seems like I was overleveled (Getting to the point where you can dash through enemies, the mechanic that tells you that you are strong enough to one-shot the enemy). I don't mind it too much though...

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