Ah Earthbound. A game lauded by many, given false praise left and right, where despite the many failings it has, they are all ignored and the programmers could do no wrong. i normally dont bother to include information pertaining to the games development or past, but for this one im going to do so at various parts. some of you are going to see a "rant" because of the low rating and general tone i will take against this game, but play the game and youll see for yourself that everything i say is true.

Graphics: Earthbound has good graphics for a late NES or very early release SNES game. for being 4 years into the system, there is no excuse. the character sprites are very poorly done, as if someone just learned how to code had taken his first steps at making game graphics. this is an apt comparison, because the team who handled most of the game, APE, was a fledgling company full of people who had no experience in coding anything before working there, and in some cases (will come back to this) were illiterate. all of the writing on buildings and whatnot is crooked and sideways, like a 6 year old makes his letters to appear cute, and the backgrounds themselves are generally poorly drawn and are difficult to discern exactly what is supposed to be in them. animation is essentially nonexistent, and battles consist of a non animated GIF with flashing colors or a solid color for a background. attack animations are either nothing, or something stupid looking like a bulls eye pattern stretched to cover the screen.

Sound: though there are claims of this game using real instruments, the proof is in the pudding. the bass drum sounds like a wet fart, the snares all sound like someone coughing into a mic.  all of the instruments sound terrible, and nothing like any actual instrument, and the songs are composed horribly, in a haphazard way that is generally painful to listen to. the sound effects are the same terrible sounds as used in the music, and dont convey anything properly.

Addictiveness: this game isnt addictive. its got a terrible story, with a generic battle system reminiscent of dragon warrior 2. everything is disgusting to look at, painful to hear, and depressing to read due to terrible writing AND translation.

Story: its important to note that the main writer for the game was illiterate. i do not have the links on hand, but it has been stated in several interviews. the story was written by this guy sitting next to another person who while literate, was not literate in whatever japanese script they were using, kanji i think? so basically they were writing the story completely blind. this coupled with the fact that the guy drew his inspirations for the story from movies he didnt understand, childhood memories he didnt understand, a culture he didnt understand, and on a medium (video games) that nobody at the main company understood, makes for a very poor story.

youre some magical hero who needs to find a couple other 6 year olds to go save the world from a giant fetus with baseball bats and pyschic powers. makes total sense right? its full of inconsistencies, plot holes, deus ex machinas, and overall bad writing. 

depth: there's either not much of anything to do other than fight, or the environment was just so bland and unengaging that i couldn't find anything.

difficulty: theres a small bit of difficulty here and there, but overall its a bit easier than most rpgs of the time.

there is so much wrong with this game that it cannot be simply explained via the required sections of this website. aside from looking, sounding, and playing terribly, its just overall boring. the character development is laughable if you enjoy horror, and within the first 10 minutes youll already have a very good understanding that there are alot of people who blindly praise a game just because other people do. there are no redeeming factors in this game, and the fact that these guys later made pokemon does NOT exonerate them from this crime.

You deffinitely didn't give this a fair review. Your review is full of biased opinions, and doesn't take into account any of the things that makes this game amazing.

I definitely agree with bazboyd as well.

There was so much hate in this game review that it makes me even wonder if this is an angry rant of a game that you kept losing in instead. I never played a game in this series at all and there are lots of people who actually love this game series. You stated no fair statement about this game at all. The point of a game review is to observe all of the positive AND negative qualities and every game has those sides. If anyone reads this, they will not be convinced by your opinion especially when you stated so much high hate to this game. You also didn't rate each section of this game review either.

Next time, try not to make this an outrage rant of a game. At least to state some of the positives of this game as well. There are lots of fans of Earthbound who will not agree with your review but try to back-up your reasons as well. You need to convince people to play or not play a game, not rant about a game. Improve next time and I hope that you will do better on your future game reviews.

you both seem to think that a "review" has to be praising a game for absolutely nothing. the game had terrible graphics, terrible gameplay, terrible quality sound, a boring and badly written story, terrible english, and has no good qualities. 

a game has to HAVE good qualities to speak of them. you cant just speak of mundane features like weak battles being finished for you instead of taking the 10 seconds to take 1 turn to kill them. those arent "good" features, they are just features.


  i would rather speak honestly of a worthless game like earthbound, than look for non existent positive qualities, that only look positive in comparison to the rest of the terrible game.

TetraDigm :

this review really doesn't do enough to explain your hate. In order to justify a review of this hate filled there needs to be going on more in your head then just being upset that people praise it too much without acknowledging its faults, otherwise it comes across as irrational and upsets the two people who responded so far. Next time you try to bash a game this aggressively, I would recommend you include and more autobiographical approach that describes in a little bit more detail your experience when you played the game and what led to your belief that it was as bad as you say it is and you might want to compare it to other games of the time you did it a little in the graphic section,but I think people will respond better to your hate if you'll make it marley double to them by sharing more of what led your opinion.

bsnowotter :
ghostfishy :
bazboyd :

C'mon its either you like the game or you don't. This is his opinion. We don't need bash on his review. Though he should have put a little bit more time in explaining some things, Its not a big deal. 

TetraDigm : I honestly liked the game. And yeah there are some very generic things about the game but it stands out. It is good for a modern time rpg unlike medieval time rpg's. But your review wasn't bad. I liked it. You made some good points. 

bazboyd : All opinions are biased, that's why they are opinions. We must not forget that we are not machines and as humans even if we try to be 100% objective, our likes and dislikes will always be put on the mix.

I liked earthbound story, the design, the world and how the game flowed, but I wasn't a big fan of the battle system or some of the enemies xD

I think the overwhelming 1's you put down sort of color you as bashing this game. Nothing good about this game, at all? 

I submit this example of a review for a game I disliked greatly, but had to contend there were people who loved it and tried to see it from their perspective a bit.
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=80863


Every poopy game can have a silver lining. Maybe this one doesn't, though. But I wouldn't but this much negativity on a game this old either.

Ok so you don't like the game.  That is okay and giving it a negative review is okay.  What I think though is that there are not enough examples of what annoyed you while playing the game.  Or why you didn't like certain graphics.  In short it is hard to tell if you even played the game.  The examples you give can be gotten within minutes of playing the game and everything else was just web research.  I have serious doubts about whether you gave this game a chance.  I'll openly admit here that i have never played it for more than 10 minutes because something about it just boors me, but to do a review of a game one expects there to be some time invested in the playing of the game.  

Since this topic/thread seemed to be necro'd a few questions for you.

Did you actually review the REAL Mother/Earthbound game, or this hack that's linked to the review? Or are you reviewing the SNES game? Because all the information I've seen points in different directions

Do you generally like NES games?

Do you generally like RPG's?

I honestly didn't like the NES mother game that much. I found it to be ok, but just a dumbed-down RPG for younger types. Decent, but nothing to go crazy over.

TetraDigm : feels like you merely want some kind of debate to occur.

Jordanv78 :

1: i actually have no idea how that happened, when i submitted the review it was from the SNES earthbound. i never even noticed it linked to some hack till now.

2: some. i dont "generally" like any system really, most are full of trash. i like games from the nes, but most are very bad.

3: again some, but rpg's are my primary genre of choice.

im not sure if ive played the nes game or not, if so it wasnt for long before i noped on out of there.  i do know however that ive seen videos and screenshots of it, and it honestly dosent look much different than the snes game. sure, earthbound looks slightly better. but i mean if you go from a 1 out of 10 to a 2, and everything else thats generic copy/paste garbage is a 3-5, who cares?

Opinions are opinions, and that's fine, but you aren't aiming at opinions anymore, you're aiming for facts. You state your ideals like they aren't. There is no law or theory concerning whether the graphics are good or not for the time period, it's just based off "do YOU like it?" And surprise, lot's of people do. You however don't, and that isn't bad, but the way you state your claims with no regard to another's mindset and how you ridicule the factors most people enjoy, you're making it sound like people HAVE to hate it instead of like it, and THAT'S the problem here.

Dangit that was a paragraph, Darth I'm sorry but I had to T^T

i have no idea who keeps doing this, but i seriously hate you beyond words. be glad this is the internet.

TetraDigm : It's interesting that you're reacting so defensively to people's opinions of your review.  

You went after a game you state many people enjoy.  And while the comparisons you make can be accurate, the word selection shows a level of aggression unwarranted for a review.  Perhaps an Opinion Piece on "Why Earthbound Doesn't Stand the Test of Time," might be better received.

Personally, I think all reviews on here are a waste of time and everyone is congratulating themselves on either trying new games or have grown up with games.  I think I saw someone rate the graphics for Pac-Man at an 8, or something like that.  Really?  An 8?

So, you have an argument in that Earthbound was competing against superior games and is not worth the love people get.  But you're fighting a losing battle because it's entrenched in reminiscence and you won't dig anyone out of that.

I'm curious: Why post a review the way you did?  What was your objective?  Because if it was to rile up the community, you did.  You breathed some life into the posts.  Nicely done.


Sidenote: I won't even get into my complaint about bashing Dragon Warrior II's battle system.  That was offensive.