Game Debate #9: Earthbound

[RH | 4,895]

8 hours ago, Fio said:

Earthbound is a really good video game but not a very good RPG, which kind of holds it back since it is, after all, an RPG.

The game has a really charming sense of humor and a really great localization, and aesthetically it's extremely unique and mostly well done.

But it's really straightforward as an RPG. There's really only one way to play through the game and no real decisions to be made with regards to equipment, (if it cost more at the store, it's stronger 95% of the time) party, (you never get more party members than you can use at once) or techniques. (There's only really magic and items. You learn new spells by leveling up and that's about it.) The only unique system is the rolling HP mechanic which frankly, very rarely matters.

Ultimately I think the game knows that it's not really anything special as an RPG and there's not much mandatory combat and very little of it is difficult. If you want to  play an offbeat adventure game and don't mind being interrupted by a lukewarm RPG throughout then you could love Earthbound. If you want Dragon Quest with a humorous modern setting, this game actually isn't that, even though it sorta looks like it.

If you haven't played Earthbound or Mother 3, just play Mother 3 first and come back to Earthbound if Mother 3 made you cry.

You know what, this makes sense to me. I'm wanting this game to be an RPG but with Nintendo charm and it just didn't gel with me. Honestly, Super Mario RPG almost doesn't either and I guess the inclusion of Squaresoft in development is probably what helped push that game into the "good" territory, rather than just "meh" as well.

Yeah, if this were probably a Zelda-style game, and a bit more fast paced, I might would like it a bit better. Still not an 8 of 10 or better, but it could have been a 6 to 7.

[themisfit138 | 523]

5. It starts out fun, but I always loose interest at the same point. The part where you get to the city with the blues brothers. In all my attempts of playing I rarely get past that point.   

[fox | 1,665]

10 hours ago, Fio said:

But it's really straightforward as an RPG. There's really only one way to play through the game and no real decisions to be made with regards to equipment, (if it cost more at the store, it's stronger 95% of the time) party, (you never get more party members than you can use at once) or techniques. (There's only really magic and items. You learn new spells by leveling up and that's about it.) The only unique system is the rolling HP mechanic which frankly, very rarely matters.

Dragon Quest didn’t have a lot of decisions in terms of equipment, if it was stronger you bought it.  Spells were given out by leveling and only handful of items were useful.

Having tons of convoluted systems that make you spend half the game in menus looking at spreadsheets trying to figure out how to equip your characters for incremental gains isn’t fun.  Doesn’t make me feel like a bad@$$ adventurer, makes me feel like a football manager buying pads for the boys before the big game.

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

It's probably a good game. It is a cult game and I tend to gravitate towards those. But not Earthbound.

It got lukewarm reviews (from magz that I read, your experience may differ) at the time and I can't say I blame the reviewers, especially coming off god-tier games like Chrono Trigger. I admit it felt pedestrian after playing super epic RPGs.

And to this day I can't shake that feeling off. The game is not for me. 

 

5/10

Edited August 7, 2020 by WhyNotZoidberg
added score

[Br81zad | 628]

I made it to the caves in the desert before I had to tap out from boredom. The cult/possessed carnival was mildly amusing though.

[Fio | 8]

6 hours ago, fox said:

Dragon Quest didn’t have a lot of decisions in terms of equipment, if it was stronger you bought it.  Spells were given out by leveling and only handful of items were useful.

Having tons of convoluted systems that make you spend half the game in menus looking at spreadsheets trying to figure out how to equip your characters for incremental gains isn’t fun.  Doesn’t make me feel like a bad@$$ adventurer, makes me feel like a football manager buying pads for the boys before the big game.

The first Dragon Quest didn't have a lot of decisions in it, and there was even only one party member! But by the time Earthbound had come out Dragon Quest was up to its 5th mainline game and had monster-catching mechanics, a tactics system, a party larger than you can take with you at any one time, etc etc.

As for whether or not poring over game menus is fun, I would argue a good RPG has to strike a balance between menuing and "normal gameplay." Pokemon (esp R/S/E onward) does this really well by integrating the party building element into the battle system while still offering you a ton of options with regards to what moves to use, which pokemon to train, abilities, held items and so on. I don't know if I would play an RPG that's entirely character management but according to Steam about 10,000 people play Football Manager every day -- so someone out there likes that.

[Tanooki | 4,930]

I was split on 5 or 6, went high.  Straight up, if it wasn't some $200 game but a $20 game, I wouldn't own it right now or the guide.  It's great to finish once, but the fanboy hype is unfounded and nausea inducing.  There's very little all that special or magical about it, especially as a re-run.  There were just far better games from more grounded companies in the genre before and after it that it really is just middling at best.  While it has a unique take on the genre on some levels, others, it really does not.  It stands out just for the sake of standing out being like some B-tier shlocky sci-fi movie plot of an RPG with the usual trope of a bunch of kids saving the world only this time in the (then) modern era.

[SpoonMan Abrams X | 697]

5/10 for sure.

I got like half way through but gave up. Really havent picked it up since then, Maybe some day?

I really dug the heck out of Mother 3 though, but that has it's own charm & polish unlike anything else.

[AstralSoul | 502]

On 8/6/2020 at 4:05 PM, Richardhead said:

About how many hours would you say this game takes to get through?

I'd estimate about 20 hours for a regular playthrough though it's hard to gauge given there is no time recorder in game.

[doner24 | 1,195]

10 for me, mostly nostalgia driven. Rented it when it came out and me and my bro kept it a full week so we could both beat it.   Bought it from KB Toys later that year and still have it complete when the original price tag!

[erac | 78]

1/10 terrible altogether. It's just trying to float on its "oh so gimmicky" nature, which in reality makes it just tedious. The story is nonexistent, there is nothing interesting in the gameplay, and even the graphical style irks me.

[OptOut | 8,881]

Wow, Earthbound is being put through the ringer! I was not expecting this, damn, I always thought everybody loves this game!

[Sumez | 2,933]

Lots of reasons to not find Earthbound too appealing.

I played it when I was first getting into turn based RPGs, and a lot of things about it just felt incredibly dry to me. Hell, the entirely menu based battles where you don't see your own party as you fight is just that much closer to a spreadsheet than Final Fantasy was.

It wasn't until much later that the things that made Earthbound stand out really clicked with me. There really is nothing else like it, at least not at the time. The dry humor, and unique quirkiness just stands out. Other games have done that since, from Paper Mario to obviously Undertale, but I don't think that takes anything away from Earthbound, it's still a very enjoyable game. Not a perfect game by any means, but it's absolutely worth playing.

[Hammerfestus | 3,824]

Played through it years ago.  It was enjoyable.  7/10.  I don’t think it deserves either the praise or the hate it receives. 

[cj_robot | 540]

4/10 for me.

The atmosphere was great, but the game itself is such a chore to play. It's like all the quality-of-life improvements we saw in RPGs since the original Dragon Quest were just thrown out the window. So many things that should have been simple were way too cumbersome. And as fun as the dialogue was, there's just too much of it. I got so sick of sitting through the pages of text from your Dad every time you wanted to save your game.

I'm actually surprised to see how many people here feel the same way. I'm used people treating Earthbound like it's the greatest game ever.

[Tanooki | 4,930]

I'm actually finding a lot of these middling scores (4-7 range) quite refreshing.  I've been for a very long time sick and tired of the starmen.net centric butt kissing of a franchise we got little to nothing of to deserve such gooey blind praise.  The series is not bad, not at all, but it's also not gods gift to RPG gaming and Nintendo titles either by any means.  Unique sure, but that's both in a good and bad sense.  I'm loving seeing this dry honesty with some basic explanations why it's not some 10(or 9)/10 masterpiece as it just isn't.  It's fun, but grating, which is why over more than 20 years I've only finished it entirely once.  I'll throw it in there every 5 years or so and try again, usual fizzle out roughly between the whole nightside bit or when you get into that asian area somewhat.  I'll get into it, enjoy it, then get bored some, finally fed up and find something else, yet it has enough charm not to dump it.

[ookii_risu | 206]

5/10

I played through it when it came out and don’t remember a thing about it. Not the gameplay, not the story, not the music. Was just another RPG to blow through as I was hungry for RPGs in the SNES era. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,510]

No one has said they have no interest in playing it.  That must be a first.

[OptOut | 8,881]

42 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

No one has said they have no interest in playing it.  That must be a first.

Well of course dude, it's got NES from Smash brothers in it!