Hmm, it's a sunday night, and I don't have anything to do. Well, I guess I'll do a review of one of the last games I completed: Earthbound. Now, by "last game I completed" I mean I completed Earthbound in like July/August. But anyway, heres a bit of a prologue:

Now, I've always wanted to play Earthbound and like complete it because pretty much EVERYONE GOES ABSOLUTELY NUTS OVER THIS GAME. Seriously, Earthbound Fans can be rabid when you even bring up their games. So, with everyone pressuring me into playing it, I tried to play it. The first time I played it, I got up to the first time you enter Threed, and then I just stopped. I tried to get far, but sadly I only got like maybe less than a quarter of the way. Skipping ahead a few years to this year, I was getting slightly good as Ness in Smash 4, so of course I wanted to get his amiibo. I actually made a pact to play Earthbound if I ever get my hands on him, and given that April for Amiibos was a disaster, I didn't get to this point until the July Restocks and I just so happen to find a Ness while looking for Bayonetta 2. Then, I looked for a guide (because you kinda need one) such as the one on starmen.net, and with my Ness Amiibo in tow, with it pointing at me at all times like, "you better complete my game", I was ready to play Earthbound completely. So, is it as good as people say it is?

GRAPHICS - 9: Earthbound is a pretty good looking game, with a vast color pallet and because of it's quirky nature with the battle backgrounds, it scores pretty high here. The graphics, after all these years, don't feel dated so it can be easy to get in to if you are playing it even 24 or so years later.

SOUND - 10: Oh man, Earthbound has a kickin' soundtrack. it can be ambient or exciting and it usually does well in both categories. Some of my favorite tracks being Summers, Dr. Andonuts' Lab, Smiles and Tears (not the version in Smash though, that one sucks) and Fourside.

ADDICTIVENESS - 5: I'm not sure why, but I had many times when I just felt like quitting. It might be because I wanted to do other things, and I even put the game down for over 2 weeks. I came back and completed it, but that's still a pretty long break from a game. It might of been because of how saving works in this game. You can't save anywhere like in most other RPGs (Pokemon, and for the most part of FF), and can only save in certain areas. What also stinks about only being able to save in certain areas, is that some save points cost money to use. Sure, there's always another place to save, but that still pretty inconvenient. Why am I bringing up this save issue? Like most other people I used an Emulator (because forget finding a physical copy of this game!) and sometimes the game would straight up crash and all that progress was lost. I felt defeated, almost as much when I was almost finished with a level in FE8 and the emulator crashed, so I wasted like an hour of playtime for nothing. That might have been why I didn't want to continue right away. But still, Earthbound's charm and me being determined kept me going.

STORY - 3: Eh, it's an alright story. It's not like full of plot twists and emotional tugs to the heart but it's story felt like it was a fairly toned down thing. That can be a good thing however. Story doesn't completely make up a game (unless it's Metal Gear Solid or a Visual Novel).

DEPTH - 7: Earthbound can be a pretty long game if you are playing it for the first time, and reading everything. Earthbound can be very good with its dialogue, always being wacky or weird. What the story lacks is what the dialogue makes up for, but if you already know all the dialogue and know exactly how to play this game, you can complete it in a pretty short amount of time for an RPG.

DIFFICULTY - 8: This is where I get frustrated. Earthbound can be absolutely BRUTAL if you don't know what is ahead, or the secret way to defeat the boss, or you have to grind hardcore. This is why I wanted to follow a guide. not only does the guide key you in on secrets, but can also, well, tell you how to play the game sometimes! There's a part where you have to stand completely still for a few minutes to progress, and while there is an NPC that tells you about it, it's still really cryptic. The first boss can do MASSIVE amounts of damage to Ness, and the only way to make it any better is to either grind for burgers or grind for EXP to get Ness' signature attack, PSI Rockin. In Twoson, theres an enemy that not only takes away your PSI (which is your only way to reliably heal) it can give you the mushroom status so you have a large chance of hitting yourself or missing, but on the overworld, your movements are all messed up. Speaking of status elements, almost all of them are annoying and about half of them you can't even reliably heal up from, like Diamonization. Inns can't even heal you from certain status conditions, and you have to go to a certain NPC to get rid of it. Unless you know exactly how to do things in this game (such as following a guide or a friend helping you) you are going to get destroyed.

   Sometimes this game is too real. You can only save at phones. Inventory is extremely limited. You get Homesick (if you get homesick, you won't attack most of the time, and you can only heal this by calling your Mother on the phone, and this status is only caused when you haven't talked to your mother in a while). You don't get money from fighting enemies, but rather you fight enemies, and you have to call your father (which sometimes costs money) to get the money from your fights. Back to the inventory problem, that is my only serious gripe about this game. You are always finding stuff, and you will constantly be running out of space to hold items. What's worse is that some items are specifically bound to Ness (not the Earth, as some would think) and Ness can't even store those items even though they are only used every once in a while. Oh right, the storing items system. Like your father and your mother, your last releative, your sister, runs Escargo Express. Escargo Express is the storage system, and it stinks. For one, you have to pay to store the items, next you have to wait a few seconds for the deliveryman to arrive, and he can only store 3 items. 3. Items. at a time. So, you gotta call the delivery guy multiple times if you intend on storing a large amount of inventory (which, while the inventory you have is limited, happens a lot still), you have to repeat this long and annoying process. This is a terrible mechanic in my opinion, and from what I played of the first part of Mother 3, this is still in that game, too! The guys who worked on Earthbound later worked on Pokemon, and look, Pokemon doesn't have a limited inventory system anymore. Sure, Pokemon Red to Pokemon Emerald all had limited inventory systems, but they were waaay better than Earthbound.

   Overall, what do I think of Earthbound? It's a fun (but sometimes annoying) game, with a terrible Inventory system. But my opinion doesn't matter. If someone (or a fanbase) tells you to play a game because they think it's really really good, Just play with some skepticism. Play it and if something bothers you, let it bother you. I guess what I'm getting at is don't let other's opinions of a game affect yours. But anyway, yet another review and another 2 hours of my life over with just from typing. Maybe I'll do something on Jet Set Radio, or the other games I played... Anyway, thanks for reading!

I don't agree with your assessment of the music (which I found unappealing), but I do agree with the rest. The story is bland and uninteresting (there is barely any character development) and yes, bosses are extremely difficult to fight. I remember a gaming magazine back when it was released that gave the game 68%. Now I understand why...

Anyway good review! You showed the many shortcomings of the game which is, indeed, very hard to complete without a guide - the original game came with one.