all the fucked up parts of this game are actually good if you assume the setting is a wasteland post apocalyptic america

wonderful, charming and very cute. this game does have huge tedium but nothing that can't be made more serviceable with modern emulation tools, guides and rom-hacks.

don't let the platform of origin deceive you, this game is incredibly ambitious for the hardware that carries it and the time. it wonderfully pushes the NES and created a beautiful narrative sparkled with classic mother series humour, at a time where plenty of games a lot less ambitious than this one were coming out.

heartfelt, charming and incredibly human in a way that seems hard to do on an NES, the way text scrolls on the NES in fact adding to this charm and making punchlines land stronger.

I would caution against assuming this to be a "worse attempt at earthbound" or "just dragon quest", this game does provide a lot of its own merit to stand on if you do desire to tread past it's tedium.

a game that in my mind is defined by it's ambitions, it's technological limitations, it's game design errors and by its legacy.