Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Review: Earthbound

[quote name="blackwater"]I think a lot of old-timers here played this game back in the day. I somehow avoided it. I decided to play it recently, since people said it was good. Earthbound is a Japanese RPG with a quirky plot. The setting is really different from the high fantasy environment that most JRPGs seem to take place in. In this game, you are a little boy armed with a baseball bat, trying to save your local town. Your parents are characters in the game. It's interesting how they integrated the mechanics with the "family" theme. To save the game, you have to call your Dad. Your sister stores items for you to get around the tight inventory limit. Like a lot of JRPGs, the game isn't that hard. Probably the hardest part is a section where your party gets reduced down to just Ness (the main character) for a while. Since I wasn't expecting this section, I didn't leave Ness any healing items, and you can't access other characters' inventories during this section. There's a very mild puzzle element, but most of the puzzles are easy, with one exception: you have to stand behind a certain waterfall for 180 seconds get into a certain dungeon. I don't remember reading any clues about that. I'm pretty sure they put in just to make you buy the Nintendo Power magazine with the hints. The enemies are weird... I mean, even for a JRPG. You fight crabby old ladies, "new age hippies," "moles playing rough," probably other weird shit I'm forgetting. The villain is weirdly abstract in this game. His final form is literally blank because "you cannot perceive it." I've heard that other games in the series flesh out the villain a little bit more. Overall, this was fun. I would normally compare this to FF6 and FF7, but it's been so long since I played those that I can't really do a fair comparison.[/quote]