Fio

Playing through Doom 64 and liking it a lot more than I thought I would. It's definitely easier than Doom or Doom II (probably because they felt bad for making you aim on the N64) but the atmosphere and weapons are honestly a little better. The chaingun in particular really kicks ass and the whole game has a really creepy and foreboding feel. It feels like a dream you might have after playing Doom II all day and running a high-grade fever.

About half of the games on the Virtual Boy would be remembered as classics if they were released for any other system.

"TO CONTINUE THE DOOM EXPERIENCE, PLAY THE SHORES OF HELL AND ITS AMAZING SEQUEL, INFERNO!"

Then of course you buy the full version of Doom only to find out that you already played all of the best levels

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.

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.