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The trippy visuals&weird stuff, the humor and the novelty of the setting are the main draws in Earthbound. Mechanically speaking it's nothing special, it's basically Dragon Quest. And it has an awesome soundtrack.
I was kind of dissapointed in the LACK of humor in the overall adventure when I first played the game. The first 30 minutes of the game are so humorous that you're expections are kind of too high, compared to the rest of the game. While overall not as silly as Earthbound, I'd say that Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines is an RPG that's much more funny than EB, despite the fact it's a grim and gorey horror setting. Disgaea games are better in the whole "farce RPG" humor thing imo.

pierrot wrote:Just an aside: I don't think I can really respect the HVGN's opinion very much anymore.

Haha

BoneSnapDeez wrote:Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger are the only games I enjoy more than EarthBound.

Some people analyze it way too "deeply" and focus on all the wrong things - I don't care if it's supposed to be a parody of US culture or whatever. I simply find it to be a beautiful and atmospheric game.

Earthbound has a great visual look. It's very athmospheric like you said it, visually it hasn't aged at all I think, atleast when compared to a game like FF VI that looks very dated in contrast because it's more realistic, serious and epic in scope.

Though I think that Chrono Trigger isn't that much far from EB in that regard, while it's mechanically a much better RPG. The lack of overworld is really what makes EB such an immersive experience in my eyes. It feels like a real, cohesive cartoon world.

But when people go around saying that Earthbound is the greatest RPG of all time, it's no wonder if people dislike it and find it lackluster. It's not the best RPG on the SNES, let alone the best RPG of all time.

General_Norris wrote:Here's an unpopular opinion you may not expect: Toe Jam & Earl is a terrible game.

You know, I went back to it a few years ago and I think I pretty much agree. It is not designed well at all. But I don't really care, and I allow nostalgia to blind me and still love it.

I think Panic on Funkotron is legit though, solid platformer. It seems like nowdays people barely talk about the original now and mostly agree the sequel is the better game.

How's ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth? I'd like to buy all the worthwhile Xbox exclusives.

General_Norris wrote:I have never noticed any technical issues in Earthbound.

If I could record my gameplay, I would. The game is lousy with slowdown, motion is often unpleasantly jerky while walking around, collision detection in narrow spaces is wonky, and the aforementioned collision detection issues with enemy encounters. I'm playing on a Super Famicom, in RGB, though.

General_Norris wrote:Here's an unpopular opinion you may not expect: Toe Jam & Earl is a terrible game.

This assertion surprises me a bit if only because...

General_Norris wrote:When it comes down to it, most of the time spent in the game is spent walking around empty map areas or going around monsters, neither of which is overly interesting. You have items, but you barely need to use them and simply being an accesible roguelike won't change that.

...When re-reading this paragraph out of context, I thought it was in reference to EarthBound, and mostly agreed. Toe Jam & Earl and EarthBound are, aesthetically, cut from the same cloth. When playing Mother 2, I feel like I could almost be playing Toe Jam & Earl, and I would imagine that a lot of the visual cues in EarthBound were inspired by Toe Jam & Earl. I'm not saying I'm much of a fan of the latter, but if EarthBound's draw is the atmosphere, then Toe Jam & Earl should be every bit 'the greatest game ever' that EarthBound is considered to be.

Menegrothx wrote:...Visually it hasn't aged at all I think....

If that's to say that it wasn't very visually impressive to begin with, I would agree. It feels like a Famicom RPG updated to the Super Famicom. I actually think DQ I & II are more visually interesting than EarthBound.

I think Earthbound's greatest addition to gaming was Ness in SSBM. Other than that I will agree it's pretty boring. I kept playing it to see when it will get good. Also all the American pop-culture references are completely lost on me so :/

What I mean is that I think that EB's graphics and art style are similiar to something like Yoshi's Island. You could still see a game with similiar graphics being released today. Because the graphics were simplistic and stylized, they've aged better. Compare EB to FF6, Terranigma or some other SNES RPG and SMW2:YI vs Demon's Crest, Sparkster or some other SNES platformer. It's like Paper Mario

pierrot wrote:If that's to say that it wasn't very visually impressive to begin with, I would agree. It feels like a Famicom RPG updated to the Super Famicom. I actually think DQ I & II are more visually interesting than EarthBound.

Much of Earthbounds areas and human character do look "bland" compared to the crazy visuals and monsters in some other SNES RPGs. But the important thing is that again thanks to the relative simplicity of it's visuals, the world of Earthbound feels cohesive. The characters and the areas aren't in contrast with one another, they look like they belong to the same universe, which is something you can't say about a game like FF7 that has horribly blocky polygon characters right next to photorealistic looking prerendered backgrounds.

I got EarthBound at launch so there may be some sort of nostalgic attachment there... I was 12 or 13 or so. Totally blew my mind.

Toejam & Earl.... I've never liked it. Never made sense to me.

Earthbound is a generic Dragon Quest clone with a unique tone and goofy sense of humour. Whether or not the atmosphere is enough to make up for the horrible battle system and inherent tedium of a Dragon Quest clone is subjective. For me, it is not. But then again I dislike RPGs, so that's a given in my case.

One standout part for me from EB was the music you heard when you got a new party member. I know it's about 6 seconds long, but yeah.

Once *nice* feature that game had that every RPG needs is the automatic win scenario when you run across weaker enemies that might have given you a hard time when you first started but you'd pummel at level 10 and up. It gives you the XP and money without having to fight.

Ness also appeared in the first SSB on the N64.

You all suck, ToeJam and Earl is great and Earthbound is absolutely fantastic

I have no nostalgia for either of those games, and both ended up being far more enjoyable than I expected.