The second game in Itoi's great game developement journey.

There is a lot I love about this game, the music, the visuals, and even the story are all fantastic and make an incredible full package. This game spares no attention to detail and contains a lot of charming small details and odd interactions you wont find in most games. From riding the bus to the camera man who takes your picture every now again, I truly do love the smaller things about this game.

I will admit, as much as I love this game, it has a few issues that keep it from being a perfect 5 stars for me. Some segments of this game are incredibly difficult even by SNES RPG standards, and I think some sections drag on a bit too long for my liking. That said it is still a wonderful time with great music and charming visuals.

I think the characters, world, story, and enemies are just all spectacular. It's such a unique take on jrpgs and it's aged so well with no random encounters and a system that still feels great to play today. The only negative I have to say and it's sadly a big part of the game, but it's the inventory. That will be your constant enemy the whole game, and while they do have a fun inventive way to deal with it the problem is still always there and is very annoying. This is a special game though and that's the only negative I have to say.

This game is a masterpiece, Itoi has outdone himself.

Earthbound is reminds me of why I think games are art. This game for me, is more of a beautiful art piece than a game to me. The only reason I haven't given this game a perfect score is because...there's kind of no reason for me to go back to it, but I can easily see myself changing the score.

The gameplay is kind of barebones and has really strange design choices like the key items being able to take up your inventory space, I am fine with inventory management in games, it can force the player to actually use the items and not hoard them but counting key items? Yeah, no. Also, The goldmine in Dusty Dunes Desert was very tedious and felt like it dragged on forever, However earthbound does have some stuff that makes it feel more ahead of its time compared to the other RPGs around this time, for example, ditching random encounters in the favour of overworld enemies, this is a strength for earthbound as you can avoid them...is what I would have said if the enemies didn't have the same or even faster movement speed than Ness. Sometimes the location you're in is way too cramped and can't dodge the enemies and when you also take into consideration the escape system that 90% of the time doesn't work...Even if the execution was quite flawed, I'm really, REALLY glad they tried to do something different. The battle system is...Alright, it doesn't really have that much depth. The rolling health system is cool but I rarely ever felt like it affected the gameplay that much for me. Some of the enemies can also be really annoying like the enemies that explode when you win...thanks for punishing me for winning I guess?

What kept me coming back to Earthbound was just seeing what it wanted to throw at me. Earthbound feels like a meth trip at times and I absolutely love it and the ost? It's absolutely perfect, in my opinion. I don't think there is any SNES game that has a better ost than Earthbound. The bestiary in this game is so...weird too and I can't help but smile seeing the dumb shit you can fight like paintings, road signs, cars, clocks...I haven't seen anything like it before. The development history of this game and everything else surrounding it is so fascinating to me. I love this game and everything about it. The NPCs are actually worth talking to, they have genuinely funny dialogue that I haven't seen any other RPG inspired by Earthbound pull off even closely as well as it does. Just walking around the towns in the game and listening to the chill osts was one of the best feelings in all of gaming for me, I am a huge fan of the urban aesthetic this game has, even if it does kind of ditch it later in the game.


Thank you, Shigesato Itoi, for making this masterpiece of a game, I'm very excited to play Mother 3.

quirky and self-aware, with an english localization full of love and care. even with the many, many indie rpgs this game inspired, the fun twist on the older dragon quest formula really shines here.

earthbound on some level is a reboot/remake of the first game in this series, but it adds a certain level of weirdness and a sense of pure childlike wonder that nothing but itself really achieves. the incredible soundtrack, simple and fun combat, and colorful sprite work create a very memorable experience i'm glad i gave another shot

At its core earthbound is a wonderful game with a load of charm, but I find it to be a game that is extremely brought down by its lesser aspects. The game's combat is flawed and not really innovative outside of the slot bar health mechanic which doesn't really shine in this game. The game's story is nothing to write home about, it's pretty stock standard for an RPG. The main cast are all blank slates and nothing really goes on with them. Outside of these aspects, Earthbound is still a very slow and tedious game that gets progressively more frustrating and monotonous to play. Overall it really a shame Earthbound is brought down by its bad game design choices because at its core Earthbound has a great charm to it and did a good job at subverting the tropes of most games in its genre.

One of my favorite games ever, and possibly the most important to developing how I view games as a medium. It's difficult to summarize why, but above all other things I have a lot of love for how it subtly develops Ness, who in any other game would just be some player avatar without any agency of his own.

To be objective for a second, though, there are flaws. Gameplay isn't that fun and sometimes kinda cheap, and the dungeons are pretty samey. If the personality and the story and the characters aren't for you, there's nothing for you here.

Earthbound: "Hey wasn't that a funny joke?"
-"Haha yeah, Earthbound"
Earthbound: "Haha, I'll say it 20 more times."

Earthbound is a game I went into with high hopes and ended up pretty disappointed. The game has some heartfelt moments that mostly fall flat. For me, both Earthbound and Mother 3 would be more emotionally impactful games with a more fleshed-out cast. It constantly feels like the game is flopping between having an entire old-school self-insert party and an actual group of characters. This wouldn't be a complaint at all really if any of the story beats were interesting but instead, you're given what feels like filler quests all throughout the game (THE MONKEY TUNNELS! - a pretty funny concept that tried to mix up the gameplay with a really lame execution). On the flip side, I thought Poo was pretty well done and I thought the way he joined you was probably the funniest thing in the game.

As I said before, the game is light on story and is definitely a unique twist on the classic (S)NES fantasy adventure. You are in normal cities for the majority of the game, but end up fighting wacky creatures, cars, and vomit. I don't really have much to say about it as the game didn't really focus on the plot either. The humor didn't really land for me most of the time, but I can see the appeal and this style of comedy definitely laid a great foundation for a more clever execution (UNDERTALE).

Probably my biggest gripe, to my surprise, is the gameplay. I was expecting a pretty laid-back/chill experience when it came to the combat -- it's anything but that! The battles SHOULD be easy -- in fact, they ARE easy. After you have a decent amount of PP every boss is a joke. The problem for me was the encounters. At a glance, the encounters in Earthbound seem ahead of their time with the onscreen enemies - that would honestly be really cool if you could avoid them at all. Putting virtually unavoidable enemies in random areas around the main cities is bordering insanity to me. Why the fuck should I have to fight encounters AFTER GETTING BACK FROM FIGHTING ENCOUNTERS?

"Dude, just run from the battle!"
IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!!!!!!!!! 95% OF THE TIME!!!!!

A lot of people will bring up the fact that you can insta-kill enemies when you reach a high enough level which is a cool idea if it had been executed well (or at all really- i swear this shit only happened 2 times in the entire game). This only really applies if you're backtracking to towns you've already visited... Had this been any other game there wouldn't be enemies there in the first place... Anyways, you have no real way to avoid encounters against enemies that do nothing but waste your PP and that pisses me off—very poor execution of on-screen enemies imo.

I'm also a bit confused about why the combat is so praised compared to other turn-based titles that came out around this time or even earlier. The core combat is nothing new or different at all aside from the rolling health which doesn't really get to shine like it does in Mother 3 which is where my confusion lies. I've seen a lot of comparisons of the combat to Dragon Quest as the influence is apparent down to the placement of the menus and battle screen layout. However, I feel DQ offers a lot more gameplay variety, especially considering this came out 2 years after DQ5 WHICH GOT RID OF LIMITED INVENTORY SPACE!!!!!

Some other random gripes/annoyances-
Status effects: It feels like every enemy has them and they are fucking impossible to cure outside of a hospital for what feels like way too much of the game. Fucking stupid and annoying.
Final boss: Hot take here!! Giygas sucks. Sure it's a big scary red face! I get it! Let's pretend the game had themes: growing up is a big scary red face! -- Maybe make the boss fun?? LOL?? This was the least engaging final boss ever. Fuck off, Itoi.
Spells: There are like 4 spells you will ever end up using in this game. Is that a bad thing on paper? Technically no, but to compensate I think Poo should have been another unique character in battle like Jeff instead of just being an all-rounder type who ends up being a more-useful Boney. (this is minor because I don't mind spamming)

Suitable as a first JRPG if you are interested in an easy turn-based game that's very light on plot. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend EarthBound.