Mother 3: "Let's Play" or just play it myself?

[Gaia]

I don't see the point of watching a game's play-through on YouTube just so that you've seen it. The whole point of a game is that you experience it fully, you are the main character, you do stuff. Simply watching someone else play it as opposed to playing it yourself practically defeats the purpose of the game itself. What's more, a lot of games are good because of how the player experiences the game, and watching it being played absolutely annihilates that dimension.

As an example, if you were to watch a Braid walkthrough, that would be the most horrible choice in gaming you would ever have made. You would have no idea why it was so highly rated. That's because Braid's greatness comes from the player discovering the answer to puzzles by themselves. In every level there is some little detail that you just can't manage to see. And when you finally figure out how to solve it, when that little switch goes *click* in your head, that is what you enjoy. That is what Braid is all about. Not the arbitrarily cryptic story, not the beautiful graphics, not the wonderful music, but actually solving the puzzles yourself.

I realise that the above paragraph is very specific to Braid. However, I'm sure that lots of other games, including Mother 3, will be extremely under-experienced if you don't play them yourself. You say in your post that you've heard "nothing but spectacular reviews", and I can tell you that those reviews weren't written by people who watched a playthrough.
I highly recommend getting everything you can out of the game, and to do that you must play it. If you don't have the time, do it later. And if people are gonna bug you because you haven't played the game, or they really want to discuss the storyline, well then tough cheese for them.

I do remember beating a few games (or at least playing myself) before starting to watch an LP. Though, I'd rather not get my hands dirty on the more shittier titles, so I just let whatever poor bloke let 'em have it and watch his tomfoolery.