Earthbound Sucks!

[fuctfuct]

Later bud *hugs*

[Erik_Twice]

Don't be such a dick ZeroAX, there's no need to go backseat mod and resurrect a three year old thread just to talk about a game.

Back to the topic, the biggest problem with Earthbound is that the art direction and humour can't disguise the fact that it's pretty much a Dragon Quest clone. You can only laugh at the New Age Retro Hippy so many times before you realize it's the game's equivalent of a Zubat or a Slime.

[fuctfuct]

What would a Putrid Moldyman be then? Hehe

Edit: Looks like I'm about half way through. Guess it's to late to turn back. Gonna keep plugging away at it

[BoneSnapDeez]

Dragon Quest clone

Given how good the Dragon Quest games are I say bring on the clones!

I love EarthBound. It has this innocence and beauty to it that doesn't exist in many other games.

fuctfuct, do yourself a favor and play the entire trilogy.

[Tanooki]

Kind of a dig at Dragon Quest a bit. Earthbound is a love it or hate it thing. You may feel you're in the middle on it, but it's very hard to other than being in the middle of due to the price not wanting to sell it off in case you want to play(suffer?) some more at a later date.

The game is slow, the humor is screwy where you take it or leave it. The combat is just odd, even death blows are not if you can end the battle before you crank down to 0. Some of the navigation around towns and stuff gets pretty annoying, yet you get these odd perks of being so over level you just insta-kill stuff for the points without that time wasting involved. It's just very hard to peg down but i think the uniqueness is what drives the overkill fanboy pool on it to claim such an average game is like walking on water.

[Anapan]

I'll admit I've never given the game a fair chance to draw me in; Some weird stuff happened and my conclusion was "This is too zany/wacky/stupid and the story's too slow" but my interest is still piqued because of the fandom. Are the sequel and prequel's stories tied into the same world? If so, the same time period and tied together?
I've read some really cool theories/discussions about the epic end battle of Mother 2 but, with no reference to the game's content I didn't grasp a lot of it.
I am impressed by the effort that was put into making Earthbound 0 playable back in the day - again only reading the dev logs and whatnot.
Earthbound 3 looks to be a fairly polished RPG, and judging by the sheer size of it, it must have an incredible amount of content. I'd like to know more about the golem/mudmen factory(?).
If it really is a jrpg with early DQ mechanics, I don't think I'll be ble to get very far in it. I didn't read the old threads, but I'd sure like to read more responses from people who have played the game(s) in this one.
Discussion from informed gamers?

[MrPopo]

The battle system is relatively simple and straightforward, like DQ. The biggest interesting thing is the rolling HP meter which makes mortal blows potentially not mortal, which adds some tension to the tough battles; rather than hoping the enemies don't use a bullshit attack you're hoping you can outrace things with some healing or just beating the enemy. Since the game uses all enemies visible on the map it lets you realistically work towards a preemptive attack (or punish you with a back attack if you try to skip things you shouldn't) and the auto win when you're powerful enough is a nice time saver.

I think a lot of the charm comes from how the game doesn't take itself too seriously, both in the monster designs and the battle dialog (not to mention the story dialog). And there's the general "America through a Japanese lens" thing it has going on. Mechanically the game isn't too special; it's the overall package.

[BoneSnapDeez]

EarthBound has some of the best NPC dialogue I've ever seen in a video game. You'll literally want to talk to everyone. It completely blows away Working Designs and every other "funny" game translation from the era.

[jinx]

EarthBound has some of the best NPC dialogue I've ever seen in a video game. You'll literally want to talk to everyone. It completely blows away Working Designs and every other "funny" game translation from the era.

This. I spent a lot of time as a kid just talking to everybody in every town. A task that was saved for very select games when I was younger...

[fuctfuct]

The NPCs are great. I would have loved it as a kid/teen.

Just crash landed in Summers.